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Oyster Bay Fairy Compound

Oyster Bay Fairy Mansion. Original acrylic painting on stretched canvas, 16″ x 16.” Sold.

Beyond the cones and up the hill, in the background, blue plastic tulle shades the sky ridge, where she looks down upon the bumbling humans who visit to watch the airplanes come and go from Oakland International. She also encourages the pocket gophers to pop up and surprise the plein air painters and to make sure the gopher snakes don’t bask on the mountain bike trails.

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Scabiosa

Scabiosa at Filoli. Original acrylic painting on stretched canvas, 8″ x 10″ SOLD

I learned from this little scabiosa study that I couldn’t match the purple vibrance in the flowerheads without mixing cool enough primaries. You can’t expect blue and red to simply make purple, even if it’s late at night and you are trying to improvise with a limited palette. It’s best to just calm the nerd within and get some cool red (quinachridone magenta) and more cool blue (I was out of ultramarine) in the morning. So I did. You can see in the process how it made a difference, transforming the purple-gray into a brighter shade of purple.