Taking A Break - An Original 5 x 7 Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Taking A Break  ©

5x7 inches   Oil

George De Chiara

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 Several years ago my wife and I took vacation to the Wichita Mountains (Oklahoma) for a few days. We spent our time hiking and sight seeing. I even managed to take a bunch of reference pictures along the way, which , believe it or not, I'm still working my way through. The reference for this painting came during a break we took along one of the many trails we hiked. For most of this trail, we were up on the valley walls looking down on the river, but about two-thirds of the way along the trail it descended to the river. When we got the water we were treated with a few nice large, flat rocks to rest on. That's when I noticed this little scene with the fallen tree and took a few pictures of it.

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Boathouse - An Original 5 x 7 Plein Air Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Boathouse ©

5x7 inches  Oil

George De Chiara

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I painted this during a recent trip to Dallas. I was in town dropping off a few paintings for an upcoming show and stopped by White Rock Lake to do a little painting. The lake was very still and had a strong, glass-like reflection to it. Occasionally, a small breeze would blow by and give just the slightest disturbance to the water breaking up the reflections. I  loved the way this boathouse and dock reflected into the water and carried across the lake.

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Mineral Wells - An Original 12 x 16 Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Mineral Wells ©

12x16 inches   Oil

George De Chiara

 This is one of three paintings I'll have in the 5th annual Artists of Texas Dallas Show at the Dutch Art Gallery. The show runs from November 2nd - January 11, 2014 with an artists reception on November 2nd from 11 am - 6 pm. The exhibition, entitled, "No Where But Texas" will showcase 80 artists featuring 150 works of art. If you are in the DFW area be sure to stop by and say Hi during the reception.

"Mineral Wells" was inspired from a plein air piece I did at Mineral Well State Park last year. While I love the smaller plein air piece I did, after spending a year looking at hanging in our dinning room, I felt I wanted to work it up to a larger piece. One of my goals while doing this was to still try to retain that freshness and spontaneity of a plein air pieces. While at the same time making some adjustments to the arrangements of my shapes and colors to make a more appealing images. In other words, I didn't want to just make a copy of what I had already done. One of the ways I tried to accomplish this task was to work on large areas at a time and not each object. For instance, I worked on the large gathering of rocks at the same time and only worked on individual rocks at the end. I did the same thing for the background and water. As much as I could, I brought these areas to a sense of completion together.

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Ten Four Good Buddy - An Original 7 x 5 Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Ten Four Good Buddy ©

7x5 inches  Oil

George De Chiara

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 Every once in a while, I'm just in the mood to paint something completely different. The problem is I don't always know what that different thing is. It usually takes me hours to figure it out. First, I'll run though a mental list of any plein air locations I've wanted to visit or revisit to paint at. Then I'll look through all of my still life props. If, at this point, I still don't find that "different" thing, I may look around the house for a while to find something interesting. If that fails, then it's off to the file cabinet full of photo reference and or the hard drive full of digital images. It's there that I found the image that inspired today's painting. I must have taken the photo over fifteen years ago. I can't recall where we were going, but I remember being struck by this truck in front of us. I loved the way the light was hitting it and the pattern of lights and darks it made. I can't believe it took me this long to getting around to painting this one. I wonder what other old photographs I have that I haven't painted yet?

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Rembrandt in Bloom - An Original 6 x 6 Plein Air Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Rembrandt in Bloom © 

6x6 inches  Oil

George De Chiara

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 You may recall a few days ago I mentioned painting lily pads at the Fort Worth Botanical Garden; well, I just couldn't stay away from them. I went back and did this study of one of the flowers in full bloom. I was lucky to catch it a time when the sun was shining down on it. I love the color changes in this flower, especially in the inner bloom. After I finished painting this I leaned over towards the name plate to see what this lily plant was called and...well, can you guess it's nickname? I'll give you a hint, it's in the title.

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H3 Ranch - An Original 5 x 7 Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

H3 Ranch ©

7x5 inches  OIl

George De Chiara

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 Recently I went painting with a group of friends at the Fort Worth Stockyards. This area is chuck-full of great painting opportunities and it's sometimes hard to settle on a subject matter, but on this day I was in the mood to do something a little different. Well, different for me anyway, and that meant looking for something I normally wouldn't paint. I wanted to try to paint one of the many large signs advertising the various restaurants, gift stores and western stores lining the streets. I choose this view of the H3 Ranch sign because I liked the way it was partly in shadow. This painting is actually a studio painting based on the plein air study I did that day.

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Lily Pad - An Original 5 x 7 Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Lily Pad © 

5x7 inches  Oil

George De Chiara

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 Last week I went to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens to paint some of the lily pads they have there. In two large shallow pools, they have about 20 different varieties. It's very interesting to see the differences in them first hand like this. Some are in full bloom, while others are either just starting to flower or seem to be done for the season. I painted a view similar to this one while there, but when I got it home and had some time to look it over I realized that most of my values on that study were very flat (similar) and some of the color got a little muddy. I wasn't sure whether to try to fix it or just scrape the painting so it sat in my studio for a few days. Finally I decided to just paint the scene over using my plein air study and my memory. This one I'm much happier with.

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Koi Pond - An Original 5 x 7 Plein Air Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Koi Pond ©

5x7 inches  Oil

George De Chiara

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 Every once in a while when I'm at the Botanical Gardens in Fort Worth, I get the urge to head over to the Koi pond they have to try my luck at painting these fish while they swim around looking for food. If I was able to feed them, I might have better luck getting them to stay close to me, but they have a strict no feeding policy there, so I have to try to catch glimpses of them as they pass by. This makes for a very interesting day of painting. Most of my time is spent staring into the pond observing how the fish move and look. I try to focus on just one at a time, but if that fish doesn't come by for a while I may use another as a substitute model. Then I attempt to capture what I just saw on my canvas. I know someone out there is thinking why not just take a photograph and paint from that? Well, I may just do that for my next attempt at this, but to me, this experience is invaluable at filling in the gaps that the photograph will surely leave out. Besides, it's kind of fun staring at the fish for a few hours!

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Pie Pumpkin - An Original 7 x 5 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Pie Pumpkin ©

7x5 inches   Oil

George De Chiara

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 I mentioned yesterday that we recently took our girls to a pumpkin farm  to pick out pumpkins for Halloween. Well, shortly after arriving, our 2-year-old picked out this one as hers after posing with her sister in a patch of pie pumpkins. From that point on she carried it with her all over the farm while we continued to looked and play. It took me a good thirty minutes to convince her to let me hold it for her while she played in the hay maze and slides. I'm not entirely sure, but I think she thought I might not give it back to her once she gave it up.

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Minies - An Original 5 x 7 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Minies ©

5x7 inches   Oil

George De Chiara

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 Over the weekend, we took our daughters to their first pumpkin patch at Hall's Farm in Grapevine. You have never seen such delight on little faces, so we will be doing that again. They had a great time looking at all the pumpkins and playing on the antique tractors and trucks and jumping in the hay. After running around, gravely examining probably a hundred pumpkins, our girls picked theirs out. Then, I picked mine... these little mini pumpkins. I enjoy painting these because the form on them is usually more defined then on the larger pumpkins. This was the first year I've seen the white ones in miniature form so I had to get  a couple of them too.

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Another View Of Autumn - An Original 5x7 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Another View Of Autumn ©

5x7 inches   Oil

George De Chiara

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 The last time my daughter and I went to the park to play, she found a large white feather and asked if we could keep it. Thinking that it might make an interesting subject in a still life painting I said yes and we took it home with us. A few days later while playing in the yard we found another smaller feather and added it to our collection. Then, just the other day, I found another interesting feather laying on the side-walk and add it to our growing collection of feathers. Since it rained most of the day today, I was stuck in the studio to paint. I had thought about what I could do with the feathers, so I pulled them out and started to play around with different arrangements of them. After a lot of trail and error, I finally came up with something I felt was a nice composition and got to painting. I have to admit that the feathers turned out to be great fun to paint. I just might have to use them again real soon!

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Lemons and Ribbons - An Original 5 x 7 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Lemon and Ribbon

5x7 inches  Oil on Linen Panel

George De Chiara

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Occasionally, the inspiration for a still life painting is sometimes relegated to a minor role when the arrangement of objects is finally settled upon. That was the case with this painting. The original inspiration for this still life was a rather neat copper pot I bought at a garage sale months ago. I actually sort of forgot I had it since it was sitting inside a larger ceramic pot, but when I noticed it I knew I wanted to finally paint it. Then, in the course of deciding what should go with it and rearranging the whole thing many, many times, the thing that started everything found its self as a background object, there to lend interest to the starring objects, but most definitely a supporting member of the cast. Well, maybe next time my poor little copper pot will get the attention it deserves. Until then, I hope you enjoy it in its first appearance.

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