Oregon Wine Month

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“Trailing Vines”  36″ x 48″ oil and metal leaf on canvas – $4,300

May is Oregon Wine Month and I have just completed my sixth painting of grapevines for the occasion.  One of them will be in the Portland Art Museum Rental Sales Gallery spring show opening May 19 and the others will be at the Lawrence gallery in Sheridan, Oregon.

I am not very knowledgeable about wine and my sole consumption of it has been a half glass of white wine at a gallery opening, the choice based on past experience of arm jostling in a crowd.  So, it is a surprise to me that I’m suddenly painting a lot of grapes and even more grape leaves and being fascinated by the whole process of the grapevine development and changing colors of the leaves and clusters of grapes.

Lawrence Gallery is situated in what has been declared as the best wine country in the world and every trip to the gallery has been through several locations of vineyards.  I enjoyed the view of the regimented rows, but was never tempted to paint them, although I love the vineyard paintings of Shannon Ray, another artist with the Lawrence.  My inspiration came from a single plant in a private garden and each painting leads me to do another one with a different composition of leaves and colors.

The painting above is one of those to be delivered to the Lawrence next week.  Recently I have become inspired for future paintings, not only with the leaves, but with the twisted and gnarled trunks, with strips of bark hanging down, for a more abstracted view of the plants.

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