Bumble Heart

The last mini of this set of 8. I decided to paint a bumblebee as a change from hummingbirds. He’s head down getting all the pollen!

Autumn Market Blooms

This was a demo painting I did during a workshop earlier this fall for a lovely group of women. Market flowers seemed the perfect subject – almost the last fresh local flowers of the season. Despite wandering around during my own painting process to check the students’ progress, I ended up with a piece I was pretty pleased with. It’s fresh and loose.

Rose Sunset

This is another in my “Skyflowers” series. Having so much fun with this. It’s whimsical and there are so many ways to play with the idea. Here I really like the cascade of roses transforming from cooler to warmer depending on how the sunset would affect them.

June Blooms

Fun with colour and flowers! Another view from a friend’s garden this summer. This one was painted in the studio from photo references rather than plein air though. I enjoyed getting into the textures and depths as well as letting the buds dissolve into the sky.

Nola’s Lily Pond

About a week after my first visit to Nola’s pond, I had the chance to go back and focus on the now blooming waterlilies. What a treat. There is something about painting waterlilies …I guess Monet was onto something!

Margaret’s Garden

Another lovely day in late June spent painting a garden. I was so pleased to be able to create this piece which ended up having quite a personal resonance for the owner.

And here is the setup in the strong sunshine we had that day.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy my plein air set up? It’s a Coulter Easel, and I have been using it for a couple of years now both for plein air and often (at least for smaller paintings) in the studio too. It is compact and very ergonomic with the palette and painting held at the perfect heights for working …and in cases like this with sloped ground, it is very easy to adjust a leg of the tripod to compensate for the terrain.

Jenny’s Summer Garden

Another lovely few hours spent in someone’s garden painting a lovely view. Back in June when this was painted, everything was fresh and blooming. All that crazy summer heat we experienced was yet to come.

I have in the past been used to keeping pretty much up to the minute on this blog but actually, I find I have really been enjoying looking back from the distance of a few months and dare I say feeling a sense of accomplishment for everything I did in this (still) rather strange period of history. From the perspective of a bit of time, I no longer see the breaks and gaps but just the work. Interesting.

Jane’s Garden May

Back to plein air painting. I have a friend who lives quite close by and has a most delightful garden. I painted there three times this summer and each time it was a different kind of treat. In May, the peonies, roses and irises were showing all their bounty. So lush and joyful.

Tulip Time

Tulip Time was painted back in April when the tulips were fresh and delightful. Each season brings its own charm. I painted this one plein air out on the deck but simplified the background.

I decided to do a flatlay to show this painting off in a different way for my new website. By-the-way, that is up and running now! Same web address (www.hilaryfarmer.com) will take you to my newly hosted and fresh looking website. Hope you check it out!

Hummingbird Moon

This abstract exploration ended up with some artifacts from fairly early in the layering process that didn’t want to be covered up – flowers, a hummingbird and maybe the moon. This is definitely a case where the original is hard to capture in a photograph. When I paint this way, the textures and layers are quite challenging for me to show on line.

In my mind this one is reaching for “Monet meets Chagall”. 🙂

Tom wrote a really lovely poem that speaks to this painting beautifully.

coalescing currents curl
from out of deeper darkness
flowing down to pools that swirl
with stillness beneath starless
skies where hope abides and wing’d
shapes may one day fly through the
chaos life will strive to reach
afar across this world where
coalescing currents curl

Green Tea Doodles

take some time for tea and check out my doodles

flowers