FUNDRAISER

The auction fundraiser held at East Colony Fine Art was a huge success! We had several local artists who donated paintings (6x6), pottery, mono-prints and more! Also, there was wine and hors d'oeuvres, music and best of all...lots of fans for both Don and the arts! Everyone was pleased with the turnout and the unbelievable support! Here is an image of the walls before the show. We ended up with about 170 pieces of art that were donated and about 140 sold at this auction style event.

Guitar

Guitar  6x6  by Dee Lessard

 Please join us at East Colony Fine Art to help support a friend in need! Auction style fundraiser of over 100 6x6 original paintings. What a great way for EVERYONE to win! You get to go home with an original piece of art work at an extremely affordable price and help relieve some health related expenses! Come to our auction called
"A Little Help From My Friends".
When: Friday night 5:00-8:00pm. Preview as early as 11:00AM!
Where: East Colony Fine Art~ 55 So. Commercial St, Manchester, NH

The painting above will be one of the paintings available at the auction!

Lemons

Lemons   6x6   by Dee Lessard

I am a partner in a co-op gallery downtown ~ East Colony Fine Art. We are having a fund raising event this Friday, 11/5/10 to help support one of our gallery members who recently has been in poor health. ALL proceeds will go to him! 

The event is called "A Little Help From My Friends".

We will have about 150 panels  (size 6x6) for sale at $45 each at an auction style format. Starting at 11:00 on Friday all panels will be up for preview and you are able to buy your "dots" to hold on to until the event begins. You buy however may dots ($45 each) as you want ...then that evening between 5:00-8:00pm  they will call numbers - drawn out of a hat -for you to go in and place your dots on the panels that are available. 

There will be food and wine at this event too. This should be a fun evening. If you love art, this is a great way to help out our friend & get an original piece of art an an extremely affordable price!

Hope to see you there!!!

The painting above is one of the panels that is available on Friday evenings event!

Teas cups–WIP step 2

tea cups - step 2  by Dee Lessard
Today I put color into the foreground and background and brought up my white in the cups. As you can see the painting is starting to take shape now that I am beginning to add color and to bring up these lights. My husband can’t understand why I paint these things….I can’t always give an answer, but for this one, I find the shapes (both positive and negative shapes) interesting! I particularly  like the negative shapes around the handle.

New design to my blog

As you can see, I've made changes to the design and layout to this blog. I've been looking to have it look and feel a little more like my website....for more continuity. This is as close as I've gotten. The background (in case you can't tell) is a picture of a pallet with blobs of paint on it. The same as the home page of my web site.  Tell me what you think! More than likely I will continue to tweak it in the next couple of weeks.

Tea cups- WIP step 1

I have never really posted a work in progress (WIP). Part of the reason is because I wanted all the steps to go together as a continuation. I don't think I'll be able to do that unless I keep on the the same project and my very next posting is the next step. (this messes with my organizational side of my brain!) I have come to realize through this process of blogging that I like to jump around from project to project. But for now, I will try to stay on task with this one.
Sometimes it's fun to work in series and I have wanted to do one with tea cups. Although I'm not sure it will become a series, here is the first tea cup painting. This is what I do as an under-painting. It is a monochromatic painting with a mix of raw umber, burnt umber and white.

Another project I am working on is a fund raiser for a fellow artist....I will post more on that SOON!

Pink & Lace

Pink & Lace 8x10  oil   by   Dee Lessard

I have been wanting to do a painting with ballet slippers for a while now. The Gallery I am in has a theme show a couple of times a year. We have one starting on Thursday night called "Poetry & Art". Because I was determined to do this painting I went on a search for a poem to match it. Unfortunately, I was not happy with my results. So, I was telling a friend of mine (who happens to write poetry) and she came up with this beautiful poem!

Apple Cider

                                                   Apple Cider  oil by Dee Lessard

  I did a lot of work this year learning about how to do things on the computer with things like this blog, my website and an online store called Etsy. (Etsy is an ebay of sorts...but  ONLY hand made artisan goods)It has been interesting and tiring at the same time!

  Recently, I have gotten notices that this painting (rather, a print of this painting) has been included in a "treasury" on Etsy.  All this is so new.... but you'll have to check these out. It's neat to be included in a store with other artisans wares! Below are links to MY Etsy store where I have prints of this painting (and others) and also to the treasury's I am included in: 

Hot Apple Cider Treasury

Print being Featured (My ETSY store)

APPLE HARVEST

Apple Harvest  oil   by  Dee Lessard      SOLD

I Love the smell of fall. Now that it's here the apples have been delightfully crisp and sweet! Now we can smell them baking in the oven as apple crisp! YUM!!! One of my fav's! So it feels appropriate to post my apple paintings! Here is one that was recently sold. A classic old master style....this one has been one of my favorite paintings. It's going to a wonderful home that I can visit and see it gracing their walls!!! (do I sound like I get  attached?...haha. Well, there's a part of an artist that is in their paintings..... So much time and energy is invested)

Shakers

I've been tweaking the "Celebrate the Bloom" painting (still).  Thanks for the honest feedback from many of you. Mostly the feedback was positive with a few suggestions. I appreciate that! So, I'll post the tweaking later. For today I wanted to post a small painting I did. I love working on the smaller stuff because it forces me to focus on the ONE thing and doing the most I can with it.

 Shakers     5x7     oil   by Dee Lessard  

If interested in this painting  Contact me here

"Celebrate the Bloom" -Before & After

As a kid, I loved the Highlights magazine and one part of it had a "Check...and Double Check" cartoon where they made changes and you had to see how many changes you could find. It helps with your observation skills for sure! See what you can find that I changed in the painting below.

I did this painting about 9 months ago and kind of hurried through it for a show I planned to exhibit it in. But I was not 100% happy with it. Sometimes we artists have to "sit on" our paintings for a while or as one friend says  "live with it for a time". While in this place, we usually have it hanging around where we can glance at it occasionally to see if we can figure out how to improve it. Well, this was one such painting and I decided finally on a plan of attack and got to working on it this past month. So below you will see a before and after.

Tell me what YOU think? (there are no wrong opinions here! ...and I don't expect you to count the changes!)

Celebrate The Bloom   (BEFORE)  by Dee Lessard

Celebrate The Bloom  (AFTER)  by Dee Lessard

If interested in this painting please contact me here.

PERSIAN APPLES (PEACHES)

I've been so busy this summer...So many changes! My daughter moved back home after living far away (about 18 hours drive) for the last 4 years! And she moved back with an additional dog....Bella! Our little Rosie (a mini schnauzer)  is loving having a permanent resident canine friend! 

We have had the hottest summer that I can ever remember. All of this has made it difficult to get back into painting gear. But it will start to shift soon. And dust from the changes is already starting to settle.

Outdoor shows are winding down and I'm already planning out my next few paintings! I hope to post a few WIP (works in progress) so you can see how some of my work develops in stages. I hope you all had a wonderful summer and that we all get to see a spectacular fall!

Persian Apples (peaches)       11x14     oil by Dee Lessard