Art of the Week- " 'Til the Cows Come Home" and "Summer Preserved"

"Til the Cows Come Home" oil on canvas Kaitlyn R. Nelson

Hello, hello...no I didn't fall down a hole or give up on blogging.  I just had a very busy summer with very little internet access.  I'm currently working on writing up a longer explanation for my absence, but for now, here's a little of what I was up to this summer.  I'm even throwing in an extra!  This first oil painting is one that I've been meaning to do for quite awhile.  My sister took a picture of the cows returning from pasture one evening when she was home on leave from the Air Force.  It was somewhat of a grainy photo, but it looked neat with all the layers of color.  It already looked like a painting, and of course I thought 'easy!'.  Was I wrong.  I started it towards the end of June with hopes of finishing it before the county fair.  I decided that I was going to paint it the way I wanted to, and not how the voices of my professors in my head were telling me to paint.  I got about two good days of work, and then I didn't touch it until the end of August when I suddenly realized the fair was less than a week away.  I've always been better under pressure, I just wish that translated into my studio work as well.  Still, I agonized over it, totally reworked areas, took things out, but stuff in, and so on.  Several times, I threw down my brushes and called it quits.  I didn't want to send it to the fair because I didn't like it, it was bad, not at all how I wanted it.  Then I'd step back from it and think, hmmm, maybe if I just did this quick...  Before I knew it, I had a tag on it and it was set very carefully into the car with the jars of tomatoes, bags of hay samples and 3x3 inch brownie squares...

"Summer Preserved" acrylic on canvas Kaitlyn R. Nelson

This second painting in an acrylic still-life.  You see, fair entries are usually due at the beginning of August and   sitting down with the book is a lot like going shopping without a list.  You see all these wonderful things and think, I could get that done by fair.  Well, sometimes the entry list get a little carried away. Every year, I thumb through my stack of entry tags, I asked myself, why the heck did I enter that?  This painting was one of those.  I started this around two in the afternoon on the Tuesday before the fair, and finished it the next day before I left for the evening milking at four.  I don't know how it turned out so well, but it did all things considered.

As I said, I almost didn't take this cow painting.  Thankfully, my mother convinced me otherwise because I am now the only person so far to have won the Dorothy McNeill Art Award three times.  I was up against some professional, established artists and both these paintings, as well as my oil pastel drawing, were all considered for the top award.  So, just goes to show that you can never count something out...