"Victorian Cat Lady"

6x6 inches, acrylic on watercolor paper, varnished.

Shipping: USA free. Canada $15

Borrowed a lady from Tintoretto, changed her attire, and added cats. 

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Anna's Cats

Title: "Anna's Cats"
Medium: Acrylic on panel
Size: 5x7 inches
Genre: figurative

Started from live model, finished from photos. Her pensive expression gave me the idea of providing her with some company.

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Meow

Title: Meow
Medium: Acrylic on panel
Size: 10x8 inches
Genre: Animals

Fun cute fluffy kitty cat with iridescent gold background and iridescent border.

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Happy Dragon

Title: Happy Dragon

Medium: Acrylic

Genre: Fantasy

Size: 6x8 inches

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Miniature acrylic painting on wood panel. Whimsical, cute, happy dragon sitting on a stone, with a cat, a bird, and a butterfly. Also a column and an anthropomorphic tree. Signature in upper left, on column.

Encounter with a Magic Bird

"Encounter with a Magic Bird"
Acrylic on linen panel, 8x8 inches
Genre: Fantasy

©Theresa Taylor Bayer, 2015

I almost painted over this one, but the painting spoke to me and I revised it instead. In the previous version the Bird was decidedly unfriendly. I decided to make him friendlier, and he came out looking sort of neutral, and I really like that. I also redid the color to give it a more oldfashioned feel.

In the earlier version the Bird symbolized the Inner Critic, but he has morphed into the power of Creativity, which is neutral, and can be used for both constructive and destructive purposes. If the Bird is befriended, beautiful things can happen.

Green Fairy

"Green Fairy" 9x12 acrylic on Raymar panel.
© Theresa Taylor Bayer 2015

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Witch Pumpkin

"Witch Pumpkin" 5x7 ink, colored pencil, and gouache, on ivory toned bristol paper (acid free, lignin free). 

Below is an older version from years ago in acrylic. I wanted to make the new version more lively and full of fun characters. 

Both versions ©Theresa Taylor Bayer

"Witch Pumpkin" ACEO acrylic on illustraiton board, sold.

Fairy & Friends

Title: "Fairy & Friends"
Artist: Theresa Taylor Bayer
Medium: Acrylic on Raymar panel
Size: 24x18 inches
Genre: Fantasy

©Theresa Taylor Bayer

A very sedate Fairy with a group of goofy friends.  I wanted to make her wings look like they are actually growing out of her back. For reference I used a photo taken of a model in my art group, plus other photos I've taken of peacocks, butterflies, cats, and trees. The frog was one of my collection of plastic animals.

The Pumpkin Lady

Title: The Pumpkin Lady

Medium: Acrylic on panel

Size: 7x5 inches

Genre: Fantasy

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This year, I'm getting an early start on Autumn. Used to be I'd wait till Thanksgiving. This one is part of my "Ladies in Funny Hats" series, only she's got a cat and no hat. It's based on an old ACEO I did several years ago, see below.  One more thing: Can you find the heart hidden in the composition?

 "Kitty Feather" ACEO

Watercolor on paper 

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Dragon & Friends

"Dragon & Friends" size: 7x5 inches medium: acrylic & acrylic ink on stretched canvas.
Genre: Fantasy. Getting faster at this. If it keeps up I may consider going back into illustration as an additional venue.

Halloween Ghosts

"Ectoplasmic Touch"
Size: 7x5 inches
Medium: Acrylic
Support: Stretched canvas
Genre: Fantasy
SOLD

An old theme, revisited. A few years ago I did an ACEO of this one, below. I'm not sure if trying to repeat the past is such a good idea; still there are things about the newer version that I like. In the end, it comes down to getting out the old sketchbook and coming up with a good initial design, which certainly could reinterpret past elements in a new way.




Here's the older version:

"A tangle of ectoplasm" ink and watercolor ACEO. Sold.

Schrodinger's Cat Always Lives, experiment # 3

 #"Schrodinger's Cat Always Lives," 6x4 inches, acrylic on panel, genre: fantasy. SOLD.
The cat is holding an infinity loop, meaning that cats always survive experimental boxes. This box is very experimental indeed, with a face, and topped by an owl. A dragon lurks in the background. The cat dangles a key from his tail.

This piece started out as an experiment with ink on the panel but it didn't work. The painting wanted to be a normal painting, and you have to respect what it wants. Conclusion: ink is for paper, at least for me, and I will be doing some more ink/paper collages on canvas.

Backyard Fantasy Grisaille underpainting

"Back Yard Fantasy" 8x8 acrylics on wood.

This is another of Daily Paintworks challenges: the view out your window. There is a big, beautiful pecan tree in our back yard and plenty of squirrels & cats, so that part of the picture is accurate. The rest, well, who's to say what else someone might see in their yard besides ordinary reality?

This is an underpainting done in violet oxide and will be glazed over in various colors. Hooker's green for sure, maybe also magenta and transparent yellow oxide. We'll see.

Cat and Mouse DPW challenge

"Cat and Mouse" 6x6 on canvas, acrylics. Done for Daily Paintworks Challenge. I used 2 colors, magenta and transparent yellow oxide, plus black and white, and glazed over a black/white underpainting. Soft body or Flow acrylics glaze very well, and also take a little longer to dry.

GIFTED

Finished Painting of Profile (oil, glazes, Lady, cat, heron, fish)

"3 Keys to the Loch", 12 x 12 oil on canvas.

I finished the fish & the background, added in the keys, and now it's done. The water in the background looks like a lake, or loch, hence the title. The fish has a lock in its eye, and the other characters in the painting all have a key. Originally I was going to have just one key dangling off the lady's hat, but once I put the lock into the fish, I realized all three of the other characters had to have a key.

I entered this painting into a juried show AVAA 32nd Anniversary (Austin Visual Arts Association). 

WIP Stage two: True to my vision despite similarities

WIP stage two. Acrylic on 12x12 canvas. No title for this piece as of yet.

There are several images I've used consistently throughout the years such as a checkerboard, a fish, and figures in weird hats. Checkerboards, fish, and figures with strange headgear are also used extensively by an artist whose work I greatly admire. I mulled this over a lot and finally decided that since I was already using these images in clay and in watercolor over many years, and since my full intent is to create my own original vision, that it was OK to continue with them in paintings. So I put all three in this painting to challenge myself to use them and still present my own vision. I think I have succeeded. By the way, the fish has something the cat and heron both want--besides a nice fillet!

Keeper of the Keys

"Keeper of the Keys" oil  on 12x12 inch canvas.

This started out as a regular figure painting, but I redid it in monochrome, keeping the original pose.  The underpainting is done in violet oxide acrylic, with oil glazes over it. I learned a lot glazing the painting. Also had lots of fun with the owl and the cat.  It still needs to dry for several months; then I will put a varnish on it.

EFT and the Curse of the Mummy

Illustration Friday: Wrapped

"Mummy" acrylic on 9x12 canvas

When I was a kid I had a mummy phobia as a result of seeing some unwrapped mummies in a museum. Although it faded when I grew up, there has always been a little bit of it left, so I decided to use Emotional Freedom Techniques to see if I could completely resolve it. EFT is a combination of psychology and acupressure. Very thorough instructions are available as a free download from their website. Very interesting process; I've used it on several other issues and I'm very impressed with it.

Anyways I tapped through several rounds of EFT to work on dissolving this phobia. To test it, I googled Mummies and spent an hour or two finding out all about them from little baby mummies to bog people to unravelled pharaohs. Didn't feel a thing! And afterwards forgot about it. Didn't dream about it that night. Hey, this worked pretty good.

Then I started this painting. I purposely gave it a face more in line with mummy portraits than a real mummy because my genre is whimsy, not horror. Anyways I like the irony of a pretty face painted on the top of the whole bundle. Once I finished the painting, I started to scan it, and my face began breaking out with a bright red rash. So once more, I did several rounds of EFT tapping and took the rash down to where my face looked normal again. Couldn't help but wonder if this was some sort of coincidental body memory involved with the mummy phobia, so I factored that into my EFT tapping rounds. Turned out I remembered how embarrassed I was to be afraid of mummies. Mortified, if you'll pardon the pun. I guess the embarrassment must be gone because otherwise I wouldn't be telling the world all about this.

About the painting: it is on a very fine grained all media canvas. I glued some regular canvas on it; you can see where it's got some collage pieces glued on--the Mummy itself and the staff it is holding plus a few others. I've got one more painting underway where I glued a cutout piece canvas over it, and then no more of that. Too hard to paint it, because I tend to change my mind in the course of the painting.

I did an underpainting with violet oxide and glazed over it with pthalo turquoise, cadmium red light, and yellow ocher. When I wanted to add white I used zinc white, because it is translucent and makes a good glaze white. I'm pretty satisfied with the color harmony of this painting. And I might even do more Mummy themed paintings.

The Knot

Earlier this year I did a watercolor ACEO of this same composition. (see below) Here it is in acrylic, on a raymar panel, 8x10.
"The Knot". The idea came from people arguing. The cat, well, I have a couple cats and they make great studio models.

The head is from a clay figure I did; the hands/arms are from a photo of me holding a knotted rope --looks pretty silly as a photo, but makes a good painting subject!

Here's the watercolor ACEO version: