Painting for a Fine Art Festival

Something new has been happening in my studio this Summer.

For the first time, I'm building an entire body of work specifically for a fine art festival.

I'll be bringing my paintings to the Long's Park Art Festival September 4-6, and that deadline has given me a very good excuse to finish some paintings that have been living in my head, on my easel, and in various stages of completion around the studio.

There's something different about making work for a show like this. Instead of simply painting whatever catches my attention that week, I'm thinking about how all of these pieces will live together. What stories do I want to tell? What parts of the natural world do I want people to encounter when they walk into my booth?

Here are four of the paintings that will be making the trip with me:

Catbird in the Spiceberry Bush

The Gray Catbird is one of those birds that can be easily overlooked.

They're not flashy like a Blue Jay or an American Goldfinch. They're a soft gray and often disappear into the shadows as they move through the garden.

But once you start paying attention, you'll notice them everywhere.

I wanted to capture that feeling of finding a Catbird tucked into the middle of a tangle of branches and berries. The Spiceberry Bush gives this painting so much movement and texture, while the bird itself is almost hiding in plain sight.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtails on Joe Pye Weed

If there is one thing I love about summer, it's watching the insects find the flowers.

Joe Pye Weed is one of those plants that seems to become a little ecosystem all by itself. Once it blooms, suddenly the flowers are covered in creatures.

For this painting, I wanted to capture that moment with Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterflies moving between the blossoms.

The more I study these relationships, the more I realize how interconnected everything in a landscape really is.

Bees Visit the Spring Ephemerals

This painting actually began with my growing interest in Spring Ephemeral flowers.

Earlier this year, I visited Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve on a rainy Spring day and found myself completely in love with the tiny woodland flowers carpeting the forest floor.

I had never really considered myself someone who studied flowers... give me a bird, a butterfly, a mushroom, or a patch of moss and I'm happy! But I think Spring Ephemerals may have changed that.

These flowers have such a short window of time to grow, bloom, and set seed before the forest canopy fills in and blocks their access to sunlight. And while I was looking closely at the flowers, I started noticing all of the tiny visitors moving among them.

That became the inspiration for this painting.

It's a painting about flowers, but it's also about the small, busy world that exists around them if you take the time to look closely.

American Goldfinch and the Thistles

Last but certainly not least, there's the American Goldfinch.

If you've been following my work for a while, you probably already know how much I love birds. Goldfinches are especially hard to resist.

Their bright yellow feathers are beautiful, and I love seeing that flash of yellow perched beside the alien-purple thistles and other wild plants.

I wanted this painting to feel like a little glimpse into a wild summer field rather than a perfectly manicured garden. The kind of place where everything is growing into everything else, birds are moving through the stems, and the flowers are attracting all sorts of tiny creatures.

It's a little messy.

And that's exactly what I like about it.

Building a Body of Work

One of the things I'm learning through this whole process is that preparing for a fine art festival is very different from simply making paintings.

I'm not just thinking about one canvas at a time anymore. I'm thinking about how these paintings talk to each other.

They're all different, but they're all connected by the same thing that keeps pulling me outside: the incredible relationships happening everywhere in the natural world.

I'll be bringing these paintings, along with many others, to the Long's Park Art Festival September 4-6.

If you're near Lancaster, PA, I'd absolutely love for you to come see them in person. And if you can't make it, I'll be sharing more of the process here and in my emails as the festival gets closer.

This is only the beginning of this particular chapter in the studio, and I'm really excited to bring you along.

Looking for more nature inspiration?

🌿 Check out the prints I make on sustainably-sourced bamboo and cotton papers. They're archival, beautiful, and created with the planet in mind. Browse Art Prints →

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