Student Spotlight - Women Who Art

 Student Spotlight ~ Mary Pat Harris

For an artist who has just discovered her hidden talent, Mary Pat continues to dazzle us as she produces one amazing painting after another.  Thus far, each work of art has been created using different techniques as Mary Pat explores various brushstrokes and methods of painting.  With each new painting Mary Pat is realizing the joy of art is all about the exploration of color, texture, and style.

Beach Side Window Box

Mary Pat paints the first layer and draws graph lines onto her canvas and photo image.  Her golden-yellow toned undercoat will eventually add warmth to the houses brown shingles.

Working through a painting can often be a struggle of mind over matter.  Here, Mary Pat contemplates color and shadow as she creates the appearance of depth within the shingles, window box and flowers.

Her painting develops with hues of brown, pink, yellow, green and blue all of which help produce an illusion of sunlight and shadow.  This illusion has been captured beautifully in the window panes and siding.

The happy artist with her painting ~ sealed, signed and ready to hang.

View from the Deck

For her next painting Mary Pat chose to combine two different images of the water view from her families' vacation home deck.  Through the artistic process she worked on perspective, the impression of sand hills heading down toward the water, various textures of grass and high noon shadows.

Mary Pat created the appearance of grass by using a combination of very stiff and fan brushes for texture and a mixture of greens, browns and yellows for color. Depth was given to the trees leaves by dabbing on a combination of green and burnt sienna paint.

Mary Pat skillfully created a wonderful effect of wood, sunlight and shadow on the families deck railing.

And...Mary Pat with another astonishing piece of art to add to her growing base of knowledge and to her home art gallery.