BARN-a-MANIA!

Buck County, Pennsylvania Barn to left & Ohio Mail Pouch Barn below

My specialty --- "Maudlin" sunsets.... meaning '''overly sentimental!''' Enough said.

A couple of weeks ago, I threatened to post a bazillion old barn paintings I'd done over the last 20 years. Fortunately for us blog-aholics, I only found a few of them.

The barns at the top are the most recent, probably done within the last eight years as something I taught in an intermediate class lesson. The farther down this

post you look, the older the paintings are.

The gray barn with the two white silos and fence posts was done as a result of reading an excellent, inspiring book by Valfred Thelin regarding pouring on paint and letting it run. Somone's since borrowed my book... the price I pay for loaning them out..... I still have hopes of seeing it again.

There's an old mail pouch barn near us that HAD to be painted, of course, (see 2nd painting.) The late evening sunset was done before they moved the barn and put it on a concrete block base - looks ugly now, but it surely is a relic from the past.

Some of the barns came out of my imagination while some are from photos I took. The weird (and profitable) thing is that all barn pictures sell well here in the midwest. And there are lots of them, some much better than others.

Talk to an artist who's been painting a while, and they will roll their eyes about painting barns. I will too, probably, because I realize now that it's not the barn that should be painted, but the feelings we have about 'old' things like barns that need to be expressed in our paintings. I've done a couple of more modern, abstracted barn paintings that were fun to do. They took the longest to sell.

Fortunately, I'm not counting on sales to survive, so I no longer care to paint the things that I think might sell the best. I can paint what I want to paint, what interests and challenges me. And seldom is it barns anymore.

Back when I got excited about getting commissions to paint, a woman asked me to paint her grandparent's old homestead, the one here with the big white house, oak tree, garish green pines, and two distant barns. After it was done, her siblings all wanted a copy.

Now days, with the giclee' process, that would've been easy to do. But seventeen years ago, I had to repaint the same picture, with a few minor 'memory' adjustments, for all four of her siblings. GROAN... or so I thought. I found out the value of challenging myself to make it a better painting every time. Each painting was a full 22x30" sheet of paper, and I charged $129 each. YIKES. What was I thinking? But, maybe I got the best end of the deal, too, considering the lack of mature composition, garish green trees, awkward oaks...

Enough about barns. And thank goodness, they're are all sold.

Big barn above with mountains was done when I attended my first workshop in Estes Park, Colorado with Tony Couch. What a great week with gorgeous surroundings. And as he explained, we can't really paint barns. We can only paint shapes, textures, colors, lines, values, sizes, and direction.

Left barn is a scene I usually teach in my beginner's classes.

This was painted about 8 weeks after I started a beginners class with Suzanne Mayes Wentzell in Kokomo, Indiana. Nice fog but what pathetic trees:-(

THE END! (Transparent Watercolor used in all these barn paintings.)

FREEZING COLD

There's an unwritten rule somewhere that proclaims, "All artists must paint a specific quantity of barns and lighthouses early in their art journey." I certainly followed the rule well. Going through old photos of my paintings, I found way too many barn paintings. And some lighthouses, too. Since I don't keep the best records of all my paintings, I'm certain there are even more out there. GROAN!


It was VERY cold at 7 am this morning when I left to take my husband to the airport, and the painting below portrays how frigid it is here. It is one of those obligatory barns that had to be painted but was done quickly - a twenty minute painting.

Out of the dozens of barns that I've surely painted, this is my favorite one, and I did it the year I started taking watercolor lessons. The style and technique are typical watercolor. Twenty years later, I am still attracted to the shapes and angles that barns present, still photographing them frequently.

I grew up with barns in my neighborhood, and I like them. I like the openings, the darks and lights, the textures, the varied edges, the sag of the roof and rafters, the muted colors, the patterns created by the various windows and door, and all the shapes of junk and weeds that exist in abundance around most old barns. I just may have to paint another one soon. Until then, look out.... there's a remote possibilty of my making (and posting here) a slide show of all the barn paintings I've ever painted! Scary thought.


"ARTHUR'S PLACE" Transparent Watercolor on Arches 140#CP 12 x 8" SOLD