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Hello Everyone! It's that time again when my Holiday Studio/Auction Sale happens. This year I am offering paintings directly off my website at a special rate. I am also offering the smaller works on e-Bay as a live auction under my eBay handle: www.ebay.com/usr/michaeleartspirit2 online. Each day I will feature new works and will be posting them until the end of the Holiday eBay auction and Holiday Studio Sale which ends on January 1st, 2024. I will be donating 10% of all of the sales of these paintings to the Penobscot Nation Youth Council's U.N.I.T.Y. https://unityinc.org/national-conference

(United Nations Inter Tribal Youth) Conference in Portland, Oregon in 2024.

eBay Holiday Auction Painting of the Day: 

Upper Smalls Falls after a Summer Rain, Maine

I painted this scenic plein air oil painting at upper Smalls Falls last summer just after a heavy rain storm the day before. The Sandy River was swollen with powerful water as it forcefully plunged down the gorge. Located in Franklin County, Maine, this colorful gorge hosts a 3-foot waterfall that cascades into a 20-foot wide circular pool. It is followed by a 14-foot fanning horsetail with a deep, oblong pool. Further up you will find a 25-foot segmented waterfall, with a plunge on the left, all equally crystal clear water. The upper pool just before this plunge is what I depicted in this painting. All four of these falls are located just south of the town of Rangeley and offer the most colorful and beautiful gorge rock in the region. There are plenty of spectacular places to paint from direct observation. these colorful gorges with forceful waterfalls display exciting beiges, orange, greens, blacks, rich browns, golds, and ivory colors. Definitely one of my favorite and most challenging waterfalls to paint in all New England.

I paint in an impasto style using a loaded brush and palette knife mixing Venetian Black Oil Wax medium to his oil paint to increase its viscosity and improve the color to a brighter velvety glow. This painting medium also increases the transparency of the oil paint, giving it a semi-transparent sheen. The paint, is smooth and thick as peanut butter, and is painted on a tracheal gypsum gessoed wood cradled panel. This painting is high quality all the way down to the hand made Williamsburg and Old Holland oil paint used to paint it.

I am intrigued with the timelessness in change in my paintings. I want them to show a love of color and light with emphasis on the expressive painterly mark and form, which evokes for me a recognizable feeling, a nostalgic memory, or even emotional qualities such as the smell balsam in the morning forest air. In this composition I demonstrated how to establish the moving falls as the center of interest in an oil painting as it cascades through the colorful rock canyon.

This is a watercolor figure painting I did of Wolastoqiyik elder Charles Solomon, Wabanaki Medicine Man. Known as "Wimpy" he was a very wise friend of mine who agreed to pose for me and my students as he share some of his traditional stories. He was dresses in genuine buckskin regalia that he told me was handed down to him from his ancestors, being 100 years old or more. Here he is depicted as a story teller who is holding an eagle feather and speaking the truth as in a talking circle.

I am intrigued with the timelessness in change in my paintings and my subjects. I want them to show a love of color and light with emphasis on the expressive painterly mark and form, which evokes for me a recognizable feeling, a nostalgic memory, or even emotional qualities such as feeling of being in the presence of this genteel and wise medicine man. In this composition I chose to depict him with front light coming from behind the artist. This caused a greater emphasis on the bright patterns found in the headdress, beadwork, and rich tomes of the surface of the buckskin leather shirt. I will always remember this man who never had a bad word to say about anyone and who always spoke the truth me.