ACEO Canary Print

I'm now offering some of my bird paintings in aceo print format for a limited time. Available on Etsy starting today. I will be listing these each day until they're all up. Collect them all!! Twice.

Display

The nice lady that purchased my Canary and Butterfly painting sent me this photo showing how she is displaying it. It answers the question in the painting; "what are they looking at that is more interesting than the butterfly at their feet?". Now we know!!

Bzzzzy Beeez

8" x 24" Oil on Canvas: Sold

Sometimes the end result to an inspired conception can be anything but what you pictured. Such is the case with this painting. I'd pictured two paintings, each featuring 7 canaries. The first was the "Canary and Butterfly" (shown at the bottom of this post) It worked out just as I'd imagined it.

The second painting was to be 7 canaries with striped shadows running across them. They would be like the bees in a subtle way. When the painting was almost finished my husband came to look at it and didn't understand what it was. I realized I hadn't made it work. I'd struggled with it for weeks, stopping and starting. It was his viewing of it that made me realize what I already knew deep down. It worked in my mind but not in the outer. So I had to reinvent this idea into something else, which I'm pleased to say was a good thing.

In making changes to this painting I ended up using much more vibrant color and texture. I think it makes for a nice contrast to the first painting.

These little guys are actually quite a bit larger than life size. It's hard to express that in photos and ads.

Challenge: Not a Dirty Word

"Canary & Butterfly" Oil on Canvas available on my website. http://www.maryhughesstudio.com.

I used to work with merchandisers for a large national retailer, and one of our jobs was to allocate the number of individual products to each store for the year. "you get 12 lawnmowers", etc. and it was decided by how many the store sold the year before. I can tell you I got an ear full from store managers when they got the news that they wouldn't get the opportunity to sell even one more than the year before. Their best hope was to do only as well.

A public school art teacher drilled into our class not to paint anything we didn't know. If you live in a corn field, paint that. Don't try to paint the sea if you don't know the sea. While that sounds like common sense and maybe even a good recipe for better than average art it leaves out a lot of things. Fantasy for instance or experimentation, inspirations. It's limiting, just like the limited allocations.


In each case challenge was outlawed. There was no opportunity to move forward, go higher, do better. It's safe. Safe is ..... safe, boring, it's living the same day over and over again. What's the point unless your goal is to just see how long you can survive and stay sane in sameness. But sameness is also a sort of insanity.