The Pomegranate Seals Series: "Perpetual"

"Perpetual"

Mixed Media with Illumination

10x12" Framed Gold Plein Air

$325.00

The last of The Pomegranate Seals!  "Perpetual: every ending is a new beginning."  Looking to see what's next!

The Pomegranate Seals Series: "Prize"

"Prize"

Mixed Media with Illumination

10x12" Framed Gold Plein Air

$325.00

The Pomegranate Seals Series: "Propagate"

"Propagate"

Mixed Media with Illumination

10x12" Framed Gold Plein Air

$325.00

This is the Pomegranate Seal that speaks to what we're supposed to be about - spreading the seeds of goodness, truth and beauty.  For the Sweet! show, each artist was asked to video a piece as we worked on it.  Have you ever tried to gild and then paint on vellum while explaining, all while holding the iPhone with my left hand?  Take it from me, it doesn't work... way too much multi-tasking!  Fortunately, I emailed the video with apologies, and Sara Radin did a great job of editing out the kinks (like when I'm talking and the video is recording the ceiling in my studio...).   

The Pomegranate Seals Series: "Preparation"

"Preparation"

Mixed Media with Illumination

10x12" Framed Gold Plein Air

$325.00

"Preparation" is one of my favorite "Pomegranate Seals".  I still have some of the pomegranate seeds I dried at Edisto last fall to use in these paintings, so I think I'll create some other, slightly different, pomegranate paintings. After I went to New Mexico several years ago with my artist friend, Carol Gardner, chronicled at "Have Paintbrush Will Travel", I began to put "matter" into some of my artwork, starting with the "healing dirt" from Chimayo, also known as "The Lourdes of America".  I've been doing it ever since with whatever matter I feel led to use, sometimes with Edisto sand, crushed frankincense and/or myrrh, dried pomegranate seals...

The Pomegranate Seals Series: "Perseverance"

"Perseverance"

Mixed Media with Illumination

10x12" Framed Gold Plein Air

$325.00

Perseverance is difficult but necessary - keep pushing for the breakthrough!

"The Pomegranate Seals" Series: "Planted"

"Planted"

Mixed Media with Illumination

10x12" Framed Gold Plein Air

SOLD

Another Pomegranate Seal sold!  I am still recuperating from 17 days in Marion Square (and blogging it all!). Getting back into the groove at my law office job, hung more Pomegranate Seal paintings this afternoon at my gallery, Studio 151 Fine Arts at 175 Church Street in downtown Charleston, then off to Lowe's for plants.  Hope to spend the weekend painting and planting in my backyard garden.

"The Pomegranate Seals" Series: "Promise"

"Promise"

Mixed Media with Illumination

10x12" Framed Gold Plein Air

$325.00

Another Pomegranate Seal.  Loved making my own seal - I bought a big piece of soapstone and a mallet from Artist and Craftsman and want to carve bigger seals.  We'll see what happens.  I had a lot of fun coming up with the 8 "P's" and the words to go with them...

"The Pomegranate Seals" Series

My show, "The Pomegranate Seals" at the multimedia exhibition Sweet!, sponsored by Piccolo Spoleto and presented by Artist on Fire, featured 8 paintings, one of which is below.  I'll post the others over the next few days.  Below is my artist statement for the show:

The Pomegranate Seals:  Ancient Seeds of Wisdom

When I was 8 years old, my cousin introduced me to the pomegranate.  She had a pomegranate tree in her yard on Edisto Island, and we broke open the fruit right there in the yard and ate the seeds.  I had never tasted anything that incredibly sweet and good, and that taste created a memory that remains powerful 50 years later.

The pomegranate is a fruit that stems from ancient times; it may well be the “apple” that was used to tempt Eve in the Garden of Eden.  Throughout the centuries the pomegranate has been used literally and symbolically in religion, art and literature.

I have used the pomegranate as a metaphor for “the sweetness of the good life”.  This is not to diminish the fact that each life has its share of sorrow and pain; rather, as my father used to tell me, we choose to focus our thoughts on the positive and look to the good.

These eight mixed media paintings, “Promise”, “Prize”, “Passion”, “Preparation”, “Planted”, “Propagate”, “Perpetual” and “Perseverance”, each incorporate words of wisdom illuminated on vellum with 23 karat gold, in the spirit of medieval manuscript illuminations, to reflect on the sweetness of the good life.  Much as the ancients used a seal in wax as a symbol of authority, each illumination “scroll” is sealed in wax with a handmade pomegranate seal.

"Passion"

Mixed Media with Illumination

10x12" framed Gold Plein Air

SOLD

One of the things I love about being an artist is finding out the stories about why someone connects with a particular painting.  Sweet! closed Friday, June 7, and that afternoon, an elderly lady came to my tent in Marion Square, looking for the artist of The Pomegranate Seals at Sweet!  She said she'd been to the show 3 times, and she had really enjoyed my exhibition there.  She said she and her husband had taken a trip to Ireland the year before he died of cancer, and a highlight of the trip was seeing the original Book of Kells in Dublin and how that ancient illuminated manuscript had fascinated her.  There was one piece  in the show she was particularly drawn to, "Passion", and while she wasn't in a financial place to purchase it, she wanted to sit and tell me her story.  She said that she was in her eighties and was deeply in love, and she felt that was part of the reason the painting resonated with her, together with the saying "Passion provides the fire that propels us toward our dream."  It seems that when she was young, perhaps 19 or so, she had dated a young man who took her by surprise one day when he kissed her and told her he loved her.  She was so stunned she was speechless, and he ended up running away.  She never saw or heard of him until recently, 62 years later.  Both of their spouses had died and their children were grown, and a few months ago she and some girlfriends were out and struck up a conversation with another group who said they were from a small town in SC.  She asked if they knew several people she had known from that town, one of whom was the young man from 62 years ago.  Not only did the group know him, one of the gentlemen saw him every day and said he'd have him get in touch with her.  So she gave her phone number and her old beau called her that night and wanted to see her the next day, and both admitted that they'd never stopped loving each other.  That story was the highlight of my Friday, and I shared it when I went to pick up my pieces from the show Friday evening.

I decided to take the unsold pieces to the outdoor art show on Saturday.  Late Saturday afternoon, that lady came back and told me her friend wanted her to get the painting, so she purchased it, and I know it's now where it's supposed to be.