Getting Back in the Groove

European Escape #1
6 x 8 Oil Painting
by Pat Fiorello
$100

Well this has been a crazy month. I've been working on 6 commissions and then spent a couple of weeks in France teaching a workshop, so I have gotten out of my normal rhythm of working on my own body of work. Every once in awhile when I feel like I'm starting to drift, it's time to reel myself back in and regain focus.

 As the month is wrapping up and I'm looking to the remaining 5 months of the year, it's a good time to clear the decks and refocus on what I want to paint in the coming months.  I have lots of still life ideas (and even more  new still life "props" I picked up during "brocanting" which is a kind of combination antiquing/garage sale that's big in France). I also got to see some inspiring work by Chardin and  Henri Fantin-Latour while in Paris so  I'm excited to get back to my floral/still life series. But I  realized during the workshop that I've been away from landscapes for several months and now have lots of new inspiration from the France trip so I want to get back to more landscapes as well. So many things to paint, so little time!

My solution to "getting back in the groove" is to continue to work on the still life series but add to that a  new short term project  "50 European Escapes" which will be a series of small paintings ( 6 x 6 or 6 x 8) based on my new France reference materials as well as some Italy inspiration in preparation for my upcoming workshop in October. These can be some quicker studies to keep my landscape skills fresh and to possibly be translated into larger works later on while not taking away too much time and attention away from the more complex, larger still life pieces that I want to pursue.

Well that's the plan for now. We'll see how that works. Today's post is the first in the  "European Escapes" series which I painted yesterday. Stay tuned for more to come.