Pears...

Last week was Birds...this week it's Pears!

Pears...

I've painted a few (by a few I mean too many to count) over the years in my art practice.  Pears are a simple shape that offer so much room to play in, or play around as you experiment with different mediums, products and brushstrokes.

My more recent pears are worked into mixed media and abstract work, though others started out as representational still life paintings (below) and received a redo as more abstract / mixed media.

Others pears were just meant as paint and play with a shape 

I'm familiar with to explore my creative options around it.

This cool yellow pear was part of a triptych experimenting on burlap and plaster using

Light Bismuth yellow by Golden Paints.

I was painting pears over Venetian plaster in these two.  The pear on the left was painted on a panel with a Venetian plaster stencil relief, while the pears on the right were painted on a rough surface venetian plaster.

I found I love painting on a Venetian plaster surface!

This little group of pears was created with papers, paint, stencils...

a little bit of everything...true mixed media!

Dressmaker pattern pieces and cloth made with plaster is what I was mainly working on in this series of fruits...I had fun adding in scraps of papers and bringing in fruit.

You can see the whole series here...

New Work

This piece was a fun journal page painted over plaster cloth.

And this little beauty is one of my favorites!

It's the pear I've taught all my beginning students to paint, and no matter their skill level, they always walk away with a pear that makes them happy...

I love that most of all!

Seeing all these pears in my photo archive has got me thinking about doing a beginning art/mixed media class...hummmm...

I'll keep you posted!