California Gold

This is one of my paintings that is now hanging at the Bass Concert Hall. These sunflowers were in Arroyo Grande, Ca., and I have painted them several times. This painting is in acrylic, 30 x 30. You may recall that I am very new to acrylics, so I’m pretty pleased with my results. I can hardly wait to paint another big canvas!

Windows on the World

Now, I will begin to post some of my paintings. I chose this one to be first because I named my blog, “Nikki Atkinson’s Windows on the World of Art And Life”. This painting is from my trip to Italy with Judi Betts, 3 years ago. It was just one of the gorgeous windows at our residence, a 500+ yr. old farm house named Selva, outside of Lucca. The flowers there were incredible. What a wonderful trip. I’ll never forget it.

I’d like to do this again, larger. I would probably darken the inside of the room to make the flowers pop some more.

Have a great day!

My studio @ Austin Art Space Gallery

These are the first pictures of my studio since Brad and I rehung everything. (Austin ArtSpace Gallery is a co-op gallery in Austin, Texas. We have 10 resident artists and have been open since Nov., 2008.) Since my blog is so new, I plan to gradually show you many of these paintings, along with new work, or works in progress. I hope you will come back many times to see them.
I spent considerable time this week, perusing the blogs of other artists, to learn what I want for my own. The up-shot of that time spent is that I am so inspired by the talents of so many of the bloggers I visited, and the sense of community I found among them, I now aspire to achieve new heights in my own art. I could hardly sleep for the excitement it instilled in me. What an amazing resource this blogosphere is! I will continue my blog searches and add many of these awesome artists to my list, here.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Day 7

Today turned out to be glorious after all. Eight ladies and one intrepid gentleman, out for a day of painting in Gruene, Texas. I set up next to the Gruene River (a favorite for river rafting) and spent the morning listening to the roar of the rapids and the birds singing.

We’ve had lots of rain lately, after several years of drought, so this is the most water I’ve seen in the river for a long time. I’ve painted here when there was only a trickle, so this was exciting and encouraging to see. After painting for several hours, we all gathered at The Gristmill for a late lunch before heading back to Austin. What a great day.