Winter Blues!

This winter I am busy painting in the studio now that I am back in NY.
It is too cold for me to paint outside so when possible I use plein air
studies as a reference.  I usually have winter blues but I think this year I found
a way to combat this.  Paint with lots of summer blue!!!

Here is the painting that I have been working on
from my memory and experience. It is quite liberating to have painted
a subject so much that it can be done from the mind and heart without a
reference photo or even a sketch in front of me.

Preparing for Martha's Vineyard Exhibit
 at the Nikki Sedacca Gallery opening May 22nd.

My aim when painting landscapes is to engage not only your mind as you recognize
the subject matter but include the feeling of being in the warm air. I want you to feel as if you were there in the moment.  If you do, then I believe I achieved my objective.

I feel my way through the
painting. If a color is too bright, it looks garish and feels weird in my belly. If it is too dull, it feels like a weight to me and looks
more like a photograph which is flat.





Sure, sometimes paintings "look like a photograph" and amaze us. I
look for something more...  the sun warming the space, the light dancing across the canvas, the good feeling inside we have when we are in nature. I attempt to not only capture what I see but how great I feel when on location.


Tips for capturing a feeling of warmth and sunlight when painting...

 Use warm colors in the light- the yellows, reds and oranges.
Add cool colors to shadows. Which ones, it depends on the time of day
 (more on this another time.)
If you are an artist, practice with color blocks in sunlight.

My oil painting of colored boxes in the sunlight.

See how the colors play on a  the white box?Have you ever noticed how a white sheet in the sun and shadow looks?

Practice, practice, practice. Seeing color is a gift for me yet, you can learn. It has come to me naturally.

You can learn.  Look at one color. Isolate it by making a circle with your fingers.

Look through your fingers and see the color all by itself.

What color does it resemble?

Now look around at your scene.



Let's say you said green. Where else in the scene in front of you do you see green?
Which green is warmer ?  The first one you selected or the second?
Which green is cooler? Not sure what this means?
Consider a workshop to learn. Join me in Sarasota, Fl March 21& 22nd.
Beginners are welcome.  More info click here.

Memory and Experience

Today after pulling out a barely started canvas from years ago, I saw that the photograph I used as a reference was missing. This is probably why it remained unfinished. I'd rather use a plein air sketch, painted on location, as a reference anyway.  A photo alone gives incomplete and often a flattened view. The camera doesn't see as the human eye does.  A plein air sketch gives me the colors that I personally see, the subtle nuances that will give life to the piece and is not cluttered with anything unnecessary.

I've painted or sketched the Hudson River at least a hundred times and have studied it nearly a thousand  times.  There is a remarkable view from my classroom window at the college where I teach art.  Today relying only

Photo from my classroom at SUNY Orange in Newburgh, NY where I teach one
day a week as an adjunct art professor. (This summer I'll be teaching online
so that I may be in Italy conducting a workshop as well. )

on my memory and experience I began working on this piece again with surprising ease.

                         Pastel, sold, painted from the college's open air garage during a storm.

Pastel or Oil Painting.. Which do you prefer?

Two paintings of the same place.
One is in pastel...
the other a rendition created in the studio in oil.

Which do you prefer?  Or both?

                                                Pastel Painting en plein air (on location)

Oil Painting created in the studio

 looking at the sky out of the window

and using the pastel study for reference.

These paintings are in my studio currently.

I expect them to be in the exhibit on Martha's Vineyard

at the Nikki Sedacca Gallery 

starting Friday May 22nd

10 am- 10pm. 

23 Winter Street

Edgartown, MA

508 - 627-5373

L. Richichi studio 

845 527-1146

Call to purchase

or to commission a work of art.

Beating the Blues!

When you are in the flow,
living your passion life works. Right?

How do you know when you are
in sync?  I wake up energized,
excited and enthused.

Recently, we bought a condo
in Sarasota, FL. Everyday I felt
all three adjectives, even on a rainy day.
After spending time furnishing
our place in preparation for renters, I still
had the energy to paint.  As a matter of fact,
I painted one large, one medium and two small
works in a short period of time.

Today I am back in the Northeast.
It is raining, cloudy and gray.
It is not where I belong. When I lived
in South Florida it felt like paradise.
Even when working at something that
was not my passion, I still felt like I was
in heaven on most days. Until I can live there
full time, how shall I cope?

After a decade of experimenting with art to
raise the vibration, mood, state of being for
the viewer and myself coupled with years
of training from a shaman,
Eileen O'Hare in Beacon, NY, I learned
how to deal with thoughts, emotions, moods
that want to get the best of us.  Today
it is a real challenge to even want to push
the bad feeling away. I am mourning,
missing my new southern home.
I am a southern girl at heart.

So I am setting an intention to make the best
of being up north in the winter.
I'll be putting that training to the test.
Would you care to see the results of my efforts in
the studio when it is the last place I want to go?

Here goes.....

Just as there are colors when painting that help
create a high energy piece of work, there are tools to elevate the
state of being. Today I'll work with color in my studio
to help me conquer "the blues". Funny we should call our
low feelings "the blues".
For me being around the some blue makes me feel blue and
yet that is the most popular color in America. Blue is a calming
color. Certain shades of blue effect us differently.
What color blue is your favorite?

On a day as gray as today, a grayed blue would only
bring me down further. I need a little light yellow
or bright orange perhaps. Yet, my body says that is untrue.
I feel blue!  I could just go with the blues and stay in a funk for
awhile longer and see what
the other side of that looks like.  Feel it and find the root cause
of this blue.. but I already know the root.

I want to be warm, free to go barefoot and drink up the sun, go
for a walk without a coat and stop outside to paint! Outside in
the open air where the light is present, the energy of nature
if felt deep within and this can be translated to the canvas.

Ok..... I'll have to do the best with the window however, it is
not the rainy gray day that I like capturing... I need to capture the
light breaking through at least. If I didn't have an exhibit
coming up in Martha's Vineyard I'd say ... tomorrow, when the sun
is shining. No, today I will battle this down mood and
defeat it because it will not get the best of me. So off to the studio,
I've procrastinated enough. I'll post what colors I choose to
work in.  I "accidentally" left all my paints in Florida so
on the way home we stopped in Washington, DC to buy more oils.
I choose a new set by Gamblin so now I am actually getting excited to
play with colors that I don't usually use. Radiant Blue- a premixed light
blue- how fitting the title is.

This summer I played with just the primary colors: red, yellow and
blue (plus white and payne's gray). Today I'll paint with a variety
of grays. I will look outside and see how many grays I can find.
See that... already my mood is lifted by the challenge. Find something
that is a challenge and focus on that. One way to shift from blah
to aha!

                                           The gray day sky and water
                                           with a touch of sun shining painted
                                           from a plein air study.