Love Respect Compassion

I really struggled with this angel. I should have stopped and taken pictures while I was working on the painting, but I was too focused on the task at hand.

This is my 4th angel painting and the theme we were working on for this one, in the Spirit Wings online course, was Angel of Sacred Ordinariness.  I chose to use bits of envelopes and postage stamps in the background collage and the blue-patterned lining of security envelopes for her dress, because they are fairly ordinary items.

And though a postage stamp on an envelope isn’t that extraordinary, a letter or card from a friend is pretty sacred and special . Several of the stamps I used are from mail sent by friends and one is from an old letter postmarked 1925 I found in a vintage and antiques shop.

But what about the struggle, you may ask? Well, we were painting our angel faces on bare wood for the canvas or background. I found this very challenging and my angel’s face went through many iterations before I created something I was ok with.  The wood was much less forgiving than the gessoed canvases I’d first worked with. The original face had a shorter chin and longer nose and blonde hair.  She looked kind of snarky.

In fact, I was calling her the Snarky Angel for a little while, but I was able to soften her expression, lengthen her chin a little and shorten her nose a bit.  Now she looks more like she has something mischievous in mind.

For this painting, I didn’t have a certain person in mind and I didn’t have a mantra when I started.  But this is what came to me when I was ready to add the words.  Barely any of the wood grain still shows in the painting. What you can see on the painting – the layers of color in her face (trying to improve on the proportion and expression) meant I covered the grain. But it does show around the words.

Thank you for your visit and for the lovely comments about this series of angel paintings.

 

 

 

 

 

Olive Tapenade Tart Soleil

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I love Smitten Kitchen. It is my favorite food blog and is as much a pleasure to visit for the writing as it is for the recipes. When I wanted to make something special to bring to the memorial for my sister-in-law, this is where I looked.

I didn’t follow the filling recipe, though it looks tasty. I used an olive tapenade recipe I’ve served on little toasted French bread rounds. The recipe made a lot more filling than needed for the tart, so I’ve scaled it down here.

If you have leftover filling you can spread in a sandwich or add it to a salad.  As Deb Perelman mentions in Smitten Kitchen, you could try other savory fillings, such as pesto or something with sharp cheese, or try a sweet version with Nutella.

Olive Tapenade Tart Soleil with Lemon Feta Dip

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Tart Ingredients:

2 packages puff pastry (thawed overnight in fridge)

1 clove garlic, peeled

leaves from a sprig of fresh rosemary, finely chopped

1 can (7.5 oz.) ripe olives, drained
1/4 cup pitted kalamata olives

1/4 oil-packed sun dried tomatoes (I was out so used a few tablespoons of tomato paste)

about 1/4 cup olive oil

1 egg yolk

water

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

Dip Ingredients
6 ounces feta, crumbled (Trader Joe’s sells Pastures of Eden brand feta. It is creamy and a little less salty than some – I love it)
2 ounces cream cheese
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice or more to taste

Directions:

Make the filling: Blend all the ingredients except the olive oil in a food processor with the chopping blade until finely chopped. With motor running, slowly pour in olive oil until smooth and spreadable. Set aside.

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Assemble the tart: Roll one package  of puff pastry flat and cut a 12-inch circle; use a 12-inch round platter (I have a mesh screen splatter guard that worked well) for a guide or cut a pattern from parchment paper. Repeat with second dough, setting one aside in the fridge until needed.

Put first round on parchment paper on a baking sheet. Spread filling on dough, leaving 1 inch margin around the edge. Dab edges with water and place second round on top.

Set a small glass (about 2.5 inches across) upside down in the middle of the tart. Using scissors, carefully cut through both layers of dough and the filling, cutting it into four sections. Leave the center, under the glass, intact.

Now cut each section in half, making 8 pieces, and again, making 16 strips and finally one last round ending with 32 strips of pastry.

Remove the glass and twist each strip of pastry carefully.

Beat the egg yolk in a small bowl with 1 teaspoon of water and brush over pastry dough, and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until golden brown all over.

While tart is baking, make Lemon Feta dip. Combine all dip ingredients in the bowl of a food processor with a chopping blade and process until smooth. Place in bowl for dipping.

Remove tart from oven, let cool on baking sheet for 10 minutes then transfer to a serving platter.

I’d barely gotten it onto the buffet table when my youngest brother sampled it, twisting off a spiraled ray of pastry and olive. Before I could take a picture, he had another on his plate.  I cropped the photo to show the rest of the tart.

Thanks for the visit.

 

Love People, Feed Them Tasty Food

Love People, Feed Them Tasty Food.

Suresa Dundes had that on a bumper sticker on her car and it was the basic concept for an open house celebrating her life. Suresa, my sister-in-law, died in August after an 11 year battle with cancer.

Suresa and Michael on their wedding day. Michael is the oldest of my five siblings.

Suresa with her girls; Leah and Miriam (the one with the spoon). Clearly loving people and feeding them tasty food has been a life long practice.

Suresa, Michael, Leah, and her boyfriend Robert, Miriam, and her boyfriend Nick.

Miriam and Nick’s wedding celebration, moved up so Suresa could be there.

Rest in peace, Suresa.

You Are Loved

This angel painting came together pretty quickly. I had a person in mind while I worked on it, and I even had a tiny photo of my friend which I used for inspiration. I don’t think I’m a skilled enough artist to create a realistic portrait, but I tried to capture some characteristics of this person.

I started with a collage background, using sheet music (she’s a singer) and lots of flowers. This was following another lesson in the Kelly Rae Roberts angel painting ecourse I’m taking, Spirit Wings.

In each project, we’ve learned about different mediums to create the face. For this one, we used Faber-Castell Gelatos but the set I purchased didn’t have quite the range of color I wanted, so I also used Pitt pens.

I didn’t really get step-by-step photos, but here you can see the rough sketch of the face. I used a brown Stabilo All, which works on the kind of plastic surface of the dried gel medium covering the sheet music. It also blends in later when I added color to the face.

Another layer of collage added more pink roses and other flowers. The words are lyrics from a song we sing in Threshold Choir.

I had the honor of visiting my friend at home and presenting my painting to her. She was delighted. I could not have asked for a better response.

Thank you for visiting, please come back again.

 

Shine

Shine, so we can light up each others lives.

This is my second angel painting. I’m really delighted how she turned out.

I was inspired to paint her for one of my friends and colleagues who recently achieved tenure. The words were ones she had written on her Facebook page and they seemed so wise and perfect to use in this painting.

Dayna is an Geography instructor so I used bits of old maps in her dress, including ones from England, Italy, Japan and several state maps in the US: Colorado and North Carolina.

The statement certainly seems true of Dayna, who shines and lights up lives around her.

I was so excited about giving it to her but I had to be patient because at the start of the summer she was participating in a Field Study course at Yellowstone, then had a bad cold, then took a week off to enjoy a stay in the Sierras.

The painting, which I was calling “Saint Dayna”, stayed on a shelf in my office, waiting for the real Dayna to come and get her. I liked having her there but was even more excited to give her to Dayna.

This is from her Facebook page after I gave her the piece. She was really pleased.

Taking Kelly Rae Roberts Spirit Wings e-course has been such a pleasure. I haven’t completed it yet, but I have got two more angels painted and ready to share. Well, one done and one almost done.

Thanks for stopping by.

A Colorful Weekend

Colordash, Monday, July 4

Friday: From the Sunset Test Gardens at  Cornerstone Sonoma with Rem:

Sunday: Marin Farmer’s with Ariel:

Monday: Colordash Fun Run (and walk) with Sarah, Ariel, Kathleen & Caitlin.

Caitlin stayed relatively clean because she is suffering a cold and veered off the course for some hot tea.

I also fit in crafting, cooking and walking.

I hope you had a good weekend. Thank you for stopping by.

 

Listen to My Heart Song

I’ve started my second e-course by Kelly Rae Roberts; this one is called Spirit Wings. This was the first angel I painted and I did it during our vacation. Every evening at the B&B or motel, I would get out my carefully-packed bag of art supplies and spend half an hour or 45 minutes immersing myself in the process of creating. It was wonderful!

This uses the same combination of collage and painting that we did in the first course, Hello Soul, Hello Mantra, and once again my primary tools are my fingers, so I really get into it: ripping, smearing, scraping, and smoothing.

I followed along and it felt like a little magic to do shading and come out with a face that looks like a face.

I am imitating and following the style of the artist and teacher, Kelly Rae Roberts but I will start to explore and develop my own style.

As I worked on her swirly hairdo and rosy cheeks, I knew who I wanted to give the painting to: my friend, Irene. She and I sing in the Threshold Choir and the pair of us sing together for clients every Saturday, singing at bedsides in care facilities.

 

Irene is a poet and songwriter and we sing some of her songs in the choir. I thought I would use one of her song. The lyrics are: “In the quiet of this moment, I am at peace, all is well.” But every single time I worked on the angel, this other song was in my head.

I know Irene loves angels and decided I’d better listen and use the words I was hearing.

Irene loved the painting, and I was delighted to have the opportunity to see it on the wall of her apartment, a cozy place with many, many angels, and now home to one more.

Thanks for stopping by.