My fascination with wildlife has always been strong and I am now tapping into it and using my love to create  new paintings and inspire my art students who love to paint and draw animals. We are planning a trip to the Los Angeles Zoo to study animal anatomy and observe the animals in real life. I love teaching art students at Carter Sexton Art Gallery in North Hollywood.  They are a terrific art supply store and offer both adult and student art classes at their location.

My younger brother Dr. Robert Pappert and his wife own a home in Montana and the painting below was inspired from one of his nature photos -

"Montana Max" - American Bison or Buffalo

My own art education is continuing with master artist Kate Sammons.  I have joined Kate’s atelier in Echo Park, California.  Kate - an award winning artist is one of the finest artists in the country and I am excited to be one of her students. You can see her work by clicking onto this link: 

http://www.katesammons.com/

I am continuing studying and working with artist Otto Sturcke who has an amazing collection of Frida Kahlo paintings. I have been lucky to observe his paintings at various working stages. Otto has shared many of his painting techniques and art philosophy with me.  If you are a Frida Fan as I am - you will want to visit his website:

http://www.sturckestudio.com/

Finally, I  am happy to have finished my shell painting:

Shell with Butterfly - Oil on panel

I hope you are having a wonderful, fun-filled and creative summer!  Please drop me a line and let me know how you are doing and if you have any questions about my art work or the processes that I use in creating it. 

Peace,

Margie Murray

 

This past Wednesday, I went with painting pals Ignat Ignatov, Otto Sturcke and Terry Romero Paul to the poppy fields in Lancaster, California.  The intense color and glow of the glorious wildflowers makes this destination a true painter's paradise.  If you plan on going you might want to first check the Desert Wildflower Report which will gives reports on the current weather conditions and best places to view the spring flowers.  There are numerous hiking trails at the actual poppy reserves along with a visitor's center and sign ups for guided tours by the park rangers. We found our painting spots off of Highway 138 just west of the actual poppy reserves.

Terry, Ignat and Otto (above) after a day painting in Lancaster. We were wind blown but extremely happy with our paintings and the chance to go plein-aire painting together.  Spring is a time of renewal and regrowth for artists and a time to look forward to picnics and hikes with family and friends.

I continue to teach children classes at Carter-Sexton Art Gallery enjoying the children as well as the staff at Carter-Sexton.  I am now teaching two new talented students Valentina and Sam (age 5) in addition to teaching my middle school students. Their talents and artistic points of view are exciting to see developing and growing.


Toucan by Sam - age 5




In my next blog, I will be adding photos from my talented  middle school artists.  Also, listed in the events category of my website, I have listed two local art shows where I have work in the current exhibitions. 

Thank you and if you would like to know more about my paintings - drop me a note....

Walk in beauty,
Margie

Desert Diamond is a new work that I created based on my trip to the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena with painting pal Otto Sturcke.  We both took our cameras and arrived back at the studio with a treasure trove of photos and ideas for a floral series which we have both been working on in the last two months. 

I decided to take a chance and enter this painting in the California Art Club 18th Annual Juried Associate Artist exhibition, Precious Gifts, at the Historic Blinn House in Pasadena.  Today, I received a letter informing me that it had been juried into the show.  The exhibition dates will be from December 5, 2009 - April 14, 2010

"I am following Nature without being able to grasp her...I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers."
Claude Monet



Otto at the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena

Nils draws Jack Skellington

My students bring me great joy as I watch their skills grow by leaps and bounds.  It is sometimes difficult to get them focused after a long day at school.  Nils, whose work is shown above, is a budding cartoonist with an intense drive to create. He runs into class each week with a sketch book full of ideas and cartoon characters many of which are his own creations.  My entire class loves Tim Burton and his characters so in our last class we took black paper and using white pastel pencils paid homage to his brilliant "Nightmare before Christmas." The use of white on black caused us to reverse our thinking and step outside of our artistic comfort zones. I  marveled at their inventiveness and compositions.  I went home feeling fulfilled and excited to have played a positive role in their artistic development. 


Here they are working away. Thank you Tim Burton for inspiring a whole new group of young artists.

I am busy this spring teaching and enjoying plein aire landscape painting.  Hopefully, I will be posting some finished work in the next couple of months.

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”  - Thomas Merton

Have a wonderful spring and thank you for viewing my site!

Sincerely,

Margie

One of the true pleasures in my life is to teach children the joys of art.
A recent project for them was to paint a sea creature of their choice. I was beaming
with pride at their working sketches for their paintings.
Below is a photo of my student Carlos with his sketch! He did a wonderful job and later
drew a detailed sketch of a race car which before the "do the large shapes" lecture,
he would have never attempted. 


Carlos with sketch of his shark

Lately, I have been working in acrylic and studying with  master painter and teacher Joe Cibere.
I have started a small series of ocean and sky paintings which I hope to share with  you.



The bold approach and quick results are a rewarding change from my more methodical and detailed slow glazed oil paintings.
Please keep in touch and let me know what is new with you.

Walk in beauty,
Margie

Thank you for supporting me in my artistic endeavors. 

"MY HEART LEAPS UP"

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

The Child is father of the Man;

I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

Wordsworth    1802.

I'm only trying to do what I can't do." (Lucian Freud)

I love this quote from Lucian Freud.  This seems to be my journey in art as I struggle with complex subject matter and new materials.  The struggle makes the journey exciting and satisfying when a painting and drawing is successful.

This past week, my student Carlos brought to class an action figure and with his mother's encouragement a model car for the background.  He decided that the car would be too difficult.  After coaxing him to try to draw it, he did a magnificent job.  I would have a picture to share but he ran out class to quickly to show his mother that indeed he could draw the car!  I will take some shots of student work to put in a future blog.  Carlos reminded me not to play it safe and to rise to the challenge.  The rewards are sweet.

The image above is a detail from a painting that I am determined to finish this week.

Have a wonderfully happy summer.

Peace,

Margie