"My Serenity Garden", 12x12, oil on wrapped canvas, by Maryanne Jacobsen, paintings of sunflowers, wine, romantic gardens, impressionist landscapes

"My Serenity Garden", 12x12, oil on wrapped canvas, by Maryanne Jacobsen

This painting evolved slowly over this past week. Whew!

I am definitely not used to working on the same painting for days on end! I am more of an alla prima painter, but this one was hard for me to paint for some reason. Perhaps because it was actually a self-portrait, with yours truly becoming the subject of my painting.

Self-portraits are tricky. One always wants to bring out the best in one’s own appearance while still staying true to the design and subject matter! Sigh.

“Paint what you see!”

That’s what all the experts say, and since I have been reading Richard Schmidt’s wonderful book, “Alla Prima” since I came back from the Portrait Society of America’s conference last week, I decided to take his advice to heart.

Unfortunately, I have very bad eyesight and so painting what I see is not always very clear for either me or the viewer. I try not to think about my eyesight very much or I’ll get depressed.

I feel very grateful that I have had so many wonderful opportunities to engage my passions over the years. Just recently, in addition to receiving a fabulous scholarship to attend the PSOA conference in Atlanta, I also won a first place ribbon last month in an exhibit, and just received representation at the drop dead beautiful Gallerie Unique in the exclusive Bell Tower Mall! So I am definitely not complaining!

My husband snapped this photo of me in our garden a few weeks ago. Actually he snapped a number of photos of me in the garden that day. His photos that day proved to be paint worthy.

I painted this little guy quickly- without thinking too much about the result. In the end, I loved the expressive result and the painting was quickly acquired by a repeat collector. So I decided to try a different pose from the same batch of photos.

This one I’m much less sure of. In wanting to make it Right, perhaps I made it Wrong.

At any rate, I may work on it some more in upcoming days , or maybe I won’t. At any rate, it is not for sale at this time, but please tell me what you think about it!

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