Missing You
6″X12″ mixed media painting/encaustic on wood. The sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted red.
Available HERE
Dream Warrior
6.5″x17.5 mixed media painting on stone paper. This painting has a .25″ border.
Available HERE
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
Thomas A. Edison
Sunlight On My Crown
5.5″x13.5″ mixed media on stone paper. There is a .25″ border.
This painting is available HERE
I thought some of you might be interested in the process of a painting so I put this together.
The Wonder Of It
6″x36″ mixed media painting on paper covered canvas. The sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted midnight blue.
This painting is available HERE
The Summer Garden (The Poppy Walk Lrg.)
This is a 18″x18″ mixed media painting on canvas. The sides are painted red and are 3″deep.
More poppies…’tis the season.
This painting is available HERE.
maria@mariapacewynters.com
Whisper Me Sweet Somethings
This is a 8″x24″ mixed media painting on wood. the sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted red.
This painting is available HERE
When I was a little girl, I know I have mentioned this before, I would draw for hours, making up stories about the character I was drawing. I would talk out loud to my self. Perhaps reciting the imagined dialogue I was giving them, changing their costumes, hair and make up. This was my favorite thing to do. It was so much fun, I never bored with it.
Sometimes you forget that ‘fun’ part when you grow up. Sometimes you just start going through the motions, not engaged in the moment. Why do we do that, when it is so much more fun to be engaged? To fully immerse yourself in it.
(Ha, ha I could be talking about cooking dinner, couldn’t I? We can just apply this to anything and everything).
This painting is a reminder that, my favorite thing to do is to paint characters. To make-believe these character and then try my best to breathe life into them.
WHISPER ME SWEET SOMETHINGS
She had long tired of sweet nothings.
How many nothings had she heard in her life time?
She longed for somethings to be whispered to her
Slow,steady and sure
somethings
told to her in truth
Lasting somethings
Not
wishing nothings
Givng You Hopes And Desire For April
‘Hopes and Desires’ is this months giveaway. It is a fine art reproduction of my original. Printed on bamboo paper with archival inks and mounted on a 3″x4″ wood stretcher. (VALUE $25 on ETSY)
So recently I watched the 2001 German movie ‘Mostly Martha’. I have seen it before but not since I have had children. I had forgotten how sad it was, even though it is billed as a romantic comedy. I found myself literally sobbing for the eight year old girl in the movie. I guess that is what becoming a mother will do to you, it is unbearable to watch children suffer. Not that it was bearable before I had children but now, I literally feel physical pain in my heart when I hear about a child suffering.
Besides that, because , that is not what I wanted to talk about, this movie was a foodie movie. Martha is a OCC head chef in an upscale restaurant in Germany. The way she talks about food and the process of making it is just brilliant. I love watching the FOOD channel , I collect cookbooks and EPICURIOUS is my favorite APP on my iphone, so this movie really thrilled me.
Do you have a movie that has thrilled you like this? Taken something that you have a passion for and made it part of the characters’ life or the background through out the movie? OR has a book made you feel this way?
ALSO
If you have anymore foodie movies or books for me, please share. I am having a craving for them…
AND THEN…
I’ll put you name down for the draw at the end of the month and you might just win
your
HOPES AND DESIRES….
Lost In Your Dreams ( A Work In Progress)
This is a 18″x14″ mixed media painting in wood. The sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted red.
This painting is SOLD
This painting is not a work in progress. It is complete. Our subject, however, just may be a work in progress, just as we all are. Living our lives on a day-to-day to basis. Doing the best we can.
I had a lot of things going around my head as I painted this one. I was thinking about how when we are young, we sometimes give up our authentic selves in order to be accepted in a group, or perhaps by a love interest. Sometimes we try so hard to become what we feel we need to be, we totally lose sight of who we really are. We try to blend in, to fit, to please, not realizing that, being untrue to who we really are will never lead to happiness.
As a mother of two young girls, intellectually, I realize that helping my children to have self-confidence and self-respect is crucial. Emotionally, however, I find it difficult when they question everything that I tell them and make choices that I would not make. If I don’t let them make their own choices about these small things at this young age, how are they going to have the skills to make good descion when the stake are higher? If I expect them to bend to my way, all of the time, why would I expect that they wouldn’t bend to other people as well?
It is like walking a tightrope, trying to raise children that are considerate and respectful but also have their own ideas and purpose.
These are the titles that I wrote down as I painted this one:
Falling Into You
Becoming You
Becoming Me
I Become You
You Become Me
Blending In
Falling Into Me
Lost In Your Dreams
Lost In You
Don’t Forget You
Harlequin’s Yellow Birds
This is a 14″x18″ mixed media painting on wood. The sides are 1.5 ” deep and are red.
This painting is SOLD
Wonderland
This is a 9″x12″ mixed media painting on wood. The sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted red.
This painting is SOLD
Happy Valentine’s day, I hope that you are all having a great day. Remember to enter this month’s give away.
maria@mariapacewynters.com
I Can See My Dreams
(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW)
This is a18″x 36″ mixed media painting on paper covered canvas. The sides are 2″ deep and are painted deep turquoise with some added butterflies and flower motif.
This painting is $1250 + shipping and is available HERE. It is being displayed at The Highlevel Diner currently.
**************************************************************************
My dreams are just
there
In sight
Yet
slightly different than I imagined
Maybe better
I can see them
Like my breath
on the coldest day
Beautiful
Hopes And Desires
This is a 18″x14″ mixed media painting on paper covered canvas.
This painting is available HERE.
We have all experienced dream crushers in our life. Those people that think it is their job to inform us that are dreams are impractical or unrealistic. Growing up working for my parents at their small Inn in Victoria, I met many people, strangers really , the felt that it was up to them to tell me that my desire to be an artist was just plain silly.
‘Art is hobby’ one couple told my sixteen year old self as I poured them coffee for breakfast.
It is amazing to me, when I think back, at how many people told me this. It got to the point that I stopped telling people what I was studying or what my goals were.
Their comments did not changed my desire to be an artist but they did make me feel that it was perhaps a hopeless dream. After all, how do you BECOME an artist? Sure you can go to college and university but let me tell you a little secret, it is not much different there. My professors may have well been those people that I served at sixteen. They were actually teaching us that being an artist for a living was a crazy idea and not only THAT, but if you did manage to make an living as an artist, it must mean that you have sold out.
HUH?
It is no surprise that I remained confused about my desire to be an artist for a very long time. Until I turned forty, actually.
What changed when I turned forty? I was able to turn off those dream crusher voices in my head and realize that the way to become an artist is to create art. As often as possible. End of story. There is no great mystery here. Maybe I am not making as much money as some one with a ‘real job’ but holey moley, I am doing something that I LOVE TO DO.
There is value in that.
There is joy in that.
There is something so SACRED about that.
The thing that makes me so crazy is that, as a parent, I work so hard to cultivate and encourage my children’s dreams and yet one person can come along and destroy it all with a few ‘helpful’ words. So remember, next time a young person tells you what they want to do with their life, just listen, bite your tongue if you have to. Don’t be a dream crusher, be a dream cultivator. *************************************************************************************************
The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.
-Robert Kiyosak
Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.
-Kahlil Gibran
It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
-Francis Bacon, Viscount St Albans
Dream Magic
This is 6″x12″ mixed media painting on wood. The sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted red.
This painting is available HERE.
My Red Crown and Cape
This is a 6″x8″ mixed media painting on wood. The sides are painted red and are 1.5″ deep.
This painting is $80 and is available HERE.
Yesterday, Scarlett was telling me what her day at preschool was like.
SCARLETT: We went to the gym and I played super hero with Atticus … no, actually, Atticus was a super villain, not a super hero.
ME: Oh, what was his super villain powers?
Scarlett: (Looking at me with much pity and disbelief) He didn’t TELL me.
ME: Oh right. Well, what was your super power?
SCARLETT: ( standing up and putting her right arm in the air) CLEANING!
ME: Now that IS a good super power.
(Here is hoping that this super hero comes for a visit to our house because I am pretty sure her arch-nemesis is living here!)
I love the way kids play super hero. My girls have had their moments, but the desire to be a princess is always stronger. I think that the cape is more of a boy thing. I remember a long time ago, before I even had kids, knowing a woman who had a boy who would not leave his house without his cape. I love that.
You Have My Heart
This is a 6″x12″ mixed media painting on wood. The sides are 1.5″ and painted red.
This painting is $120 and is available HERE.
Looking on with love.
Who has her heart?
Daddy of course!
This weekend I had a birthday and what a nice present, I had two wonderful artists post my art on their beautiful blogs!
Please take a look:
Deep In The Night Garden
This is a 10″x10″ mixed media painting in wood. The sides are 1″ and are painted red.
This painting is $110 and SOLD
The day before yesterday, Turner Classic Movies played ‘Pride And Prejudice’ starring Greer Garson. I couldn’t take my eyes of the HATS! They were all so elaborate but what really struck me was the amazing black and white Tim Burton stripes! They were a delight to my senses and I just had to paint one of these divinely beautiful ‘stripey’ hats!
This is what I was thinking as I did this painting:
Deep In The Night Garden
She thinks so deeply for someone so young
The world’s troubles painfully worn behind her eyes
She would rather walk in the air of the night garden, her eyes wide open
Than be tucked in bed, her eyes shut tight
Asleep, she can no longer control where her mind wanders
Asleep, she must go where her dreams take her
Not where she dreams to be taken
She would prefer to walk deep into the night garden
Eyes wide open
Aspirations
This is a mixed media diptych on wood.
The sides are 1″ deep and are turquoise.
SOLD
Painting, painting, painting….eating it, breathing it, living it …. these are my aspirations…but they are tiring.
The Roots of Wallpaper and Patterns
Crow With Art Deco Wallpaper
6″x24″
mixed media on clayboard (sides are painted red)
I have written before about my love of wallpaper. I think that it stems from the 17 room B & B hotel that my parents run in Victoria.
I was seven when we first moved into what we call the Guesthouse. There were many rooms in this three story 1913 Arts and Crafts house and most were wallpapered. My dad refreshed many of these rooms with new wallpaper (remember, this was the seventies so wallpaper was very popular). There were different textures, patterns and colours, all of which I was fascinated by.
The front hallway of the guest house has an amazing floral print with black background. It reminds me very much of the Art deco wallpaper I have painted in the above piece.
Once again, I can not help but return to the ghosts of my past. The stuff that fills our senses at such a young age, that stuff sticks with us and forms who we are with out our even realizing. The problem for me now is that I realize that and every time something happens to Imogen or Scarlett I think “How is that going to shape them? What will that do them as a forty year old woman? What will they be remembering?”
Wallpaper, back to the wall paper.
My dad wallpapered my entire room in baroque pink. It was an attic room so he even did the ceiling!
He was/is good at wallpaper. He taught me how. One winter we wallpapered all the bathrooms in the guesthouse in various stripes. It was fun and I got pretty good at it. Another time we wallpapered the ceiling of the front room with embossed wallpaper; NOT so fun.
I remember, on a trip to Orcas Island when I was around twelve, lying on my bed at The Outlook Inn, drawing the wallpaper. It was raining so hard that we had to stay in. I think that it rained all that weekend but I did have a full colour representation of our hotel room’s wallpaper by the end of it.
It is funny because I am not much for prints or patterns on my clothing. I like solids.
In my paintings, however, I love patterns. People will tell me it reminds them of Matisse. And as much as I love Matisse, and I do, it is my mother who has blessed me with my fascination of prints. Her style can only be described as eclectic. She manages to put together a hundred different prints in one room and make it looks fabulous. She loves it, so it goes. It is as pure as that. No swatches to match this with that at the fabric store. She decorates with her heart and her rooms reflect that. They are as comfortable and warm as being wrapped up in her arms, pressed so close to her bosom that you can hear her heart beat.
Six- SOLD
Imogen is six.
Six is kind of goofy but sometime very mature (actually).
Six is exasperating but there is something about six. I remember being six and I was ME. I was who I am today. I haven’t really changed the way I think or the way I approach a problem.
Take it as you like, it can be both good and bad …
This is a new 24″x24″ mixed media painting on wood. It is $500 + Shipping.
IF ‘Instinct’ Little Red Riding Hood
Little red riding hood knew she shouldn’t have strayed from the path. Her mother had told her not to. It was just that she wanted her grandmother to feel better and knew that the sight of wild flowers would put a smile on her face. But now, it was getting dark and she had the strangest feeling. You know that feeling. Like she was no longer alone. Like someone was watching her.
Little red riding hood stopped picking flowers and stood up straight. Standing silently she listened for movement in the dark woods surrounding her. She moved the freshly picked flowers up toward her face. ‘Maybe their sweet smell would calm her’, she thought to herself, but this feeble gesture did nothing to ease her increasing feeling of dread. The harder she tried to listen, the louder her heartbeat pounded in her ears. She was all at once being taken over by a horrible sense of foreboding. Like she was being devoured, body and soul, by fear itself.
Scarlett and The Blue Hydrangeas
This is a new painting of Scarlett in Nanny and Grandpa’s backyard. Kind of reminds me of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, which really, when you think about it, describes Victoria perfectly. It truly is a wonderland.
This is a 16″x16″ mixed media painting on a 1″ deep wood stretcher. The sides are painted red.
Circus Girl and The Newsprint Flowers
Here is a new Circus Girl painting. This one is large, I really felt like painting a larger version of her … she is almost life size.
This piece is a 24″x30″ mixed media painting on wood.
SOLD
Jacob – Portrait?
This is Jacob, my nephew. I did this a while ago but just realized that I never posted it because it was a surprise Christmas present.
Portraits … they are a love hate thing for me. I love painting children but portraits, not so much. To me, this is more of a painting, though it does look just like him, it catches something more. His gentle, compassionate side. His shyness, his intensity, his kindness. He is a wonderful boy, he is so caring with Imogen and Scarlett, not to mention his two younger brothers.
AND he is my biggest fan! (Hi Jacob!)
Leopard Print and Tiger Lilies
Another new mixed media painting. I have to admit, leopard print is one of my guilty pleasures. I know to some it is condisdered tacky but I just can’t help it! I kind of shy away from wearing it myself (most but not all of the time) but I have no problem dressing my kids up in it. No problem at all!
Oh, and is it ever FUN to paint!
SOLD
