It is common for me to blast color on paper, edge to edge with twisting and twirling images. Sometimes though, I paint art for children. The showcase piece today is called “Becoming Me”. Two other pieces are included in this entry as children’s art. Continue reading “Becoming Me – Lullaby Collection”
Category: Innocence Gallery
The compliment
What is the best compliment you’ve ever gotten about your work?
I purchased your art for an unborn child. It’s her first art piece.
It gave me shivers and touched me deeply enough to make tears fall. Someone thought well enough of my art to make it a present for a child unborn. Does it get better than that? I’m not sure it does.
incredible image! so good its frightening!
That’s the kind of comment that tells me others speak my language. I said in color what I needed to say, and the viewer heard me.
Faith
The Wanderer – On Fallen Trees
The Wanderer is a nature scene of a young black boy sitting on a tree stump. His shirt is the same color as the roots of the trees that continued to grow the day I wandered into the woods through a host of fallen trees. I couldn’t believe the color. I’d never seen anything like it, such a beautiful and vibrant orange roots coming right out of rich, black earth. WOW!
This scene with the African American boy is based on that moment, the moment when I wandered into the woods.
The boy is sitting on the stump in his orange shirt and navy blue jeans with a tiny button. Beside him is a small red bird (cardinal). The bird is also hand sculpted without a cast. Meticulously placed are curly twigs from grape vines and blackberry vines. As in the real life wooded area, large flowers stand nearly frozen in time, as if dried in a flash. Yellow flowers, two white bushes, small hand picked rocks as well as tiny hand painted flowers have been added to a carpet of reindeer moss. The scene is stationed on a ceramic tile with a felt bottom. Continue reading “The Wanderer – On Fallen Trees”
Iesha – She who lives
In a village or town somewhat far from here lives a mother and father who work hard and feed their family with food sufficient for each day. They go about sweeping, sewing, mending and patching, etching out life. They scurry here and there, rushing this one, readjusting that one, forgetting another. In this village or town far away from here there are the higher ups and those low on socially carved totem poles. Somewhere in the middle, growing up with sisters but no brothers is a little girl named Iesha.
I used my hands to work the oil pastel then added ink details. About 90% of this is a finger painting in oil pastels. Continue reading “Iesha – She who lives”
Sunflowers Bless My Home
Sunflowers Bless My Home was super fun. She’s bright and beautiful, dreamy and just fun! A young girl stands with her arm out stretched with a large sunflower winding around her arm until it comes to an arch over the house of music. Green leaves touch the deep blue and purple sky. The white moon shares the purple and blue.
You can see the young woman with black hair in the red dress, breath the night air in as she stands in the grass by the rocky walkway home. It is a magical, fantasy and cheerful collage that would do well in any home or business office such as children’s dentistry or the bedroom of your young child whose imagination will be indulged. Continue reading “Sunflowers Bless My Home”
It’s a Good Day
This painting was even more simple before it’s final brush strokes. The 
young woman at first stood at the top of a hill and with courage looked down at what could be if only she had the courage to take the first few steps. This version, the final, shows her at the bottom of the hill in a flowery meadow, walking about the landscape of a Grand Artist.
When I first tried to upload the painting, the original version, I had the hardest time in the world getting the colors to translate. The grass was never yellow, there wasn’t that much white in the sky and there was more blue for certain. I couldn’t get it the colors to translate. I liked the painting though so I sat it aside. Continue reading “It’s a Good Day”
Present
Present and accounted for. I am here.
Painting details: She is coming of age and realizing her value. She is made of every fine gem and precious metal hue. Her hair stands tall like that of a sunflower, her eyes look straight ahead into the now and the future.
Dripping from her ears are strikes of green meeting cobalt blue and royal purple. Her dress is orange and red with a design that puts an x right over her heart. Her very skin is shades of growing into who she is now: layers of beauty, vibrancy and strength. Around the young princess girl in her glory is a white fog or mist, or maybe just the clouds that honor her presence in a frame. Continue reading “Present”
Sweet Anna Bell – Ugly Girl
She’s been a long time coming. I don’t know why it took so long to finish her but, here she is. I present to you, ‘Sweet Anna Bell – Ugly Girl.’
Scribbled on the back of the paper she’s painted on dated June 10, 2013, I wrote:
She’s tall, skinny and lanky. She’s wearing second hand clothes and second hand shoes. She knows she’s ugly. She doesn’t need to be reminded, yet they do, as if somehow it’ll change things. Sweet Anna Bell – Ugly Girl.
Verbal abuse is what that is and what this sweet child holds the bruises of. But notice this, her eyes look up, not down in shame. If you look at them closer you’ll notice hope shining. She holds her head up. She hopes. The edges of her mouth turn up in a slight smile. She hopes. Continue reading “Sweet Anna Bell – Ugly Girl”
That Young Girl
Title: That Young Girl
Art by: F. Magdalene Austin
6×8 canvas board, acrylic and ink painting, original SOLD
She’s washed in color, draped in it. Her sad eyes look out at the viewer not for assistance but to offer it, to offer and explanation. This painting is in expression of life with Lupus and Fibromyalgia. Continue reading “That Young Girl”
Petunia
There’s a little egg shaped child, with big brown eyes, dressed in purple, standing by sunflowers. She calls herself Petunia.
