Watch for it! 30 in 30 in January!

Soon, I am going to participate in my second 30 paintings in 30 days challenge!

Here's September's collage of 30 paintings:

I will be also posting on my Facebook page, facebook.com/BonnieFergusonButler, so please go "Like" it now.

Ciao and Happy New Year!

20% off at Workhouse Arts Center this weekend

Run, don't walk, to the Workhouse Building W-9 this weekend! We're having a 20% reduction off on artwork sales over $100. I have many suggestions, if you need any. Plenty of my miniatures, crocheted scarves, photography, and fine art are just waiting on you and your last minute holiday gifting.

Rt 123 at Lorton Road

9518 Workhouse Way
Lorton, VA 22079

Building 9 Hours 
Wednesday - Saturday: 11:00am - 6:00pm
Sunday: 12:00 - 5:00pm

“Westpunt, Curaçao” wins a People's Choice award

“Westpunt, Curaçao” is a pastel painting by Bonnie Ferguson Butler of the westernmost community of this Dutch Antilles island near Venezuela. It won a People's Choice award in December at Workhouse Building W-9. Based on a photograph taken by the artist in Summer 2014, this piece depicts a colorful jumble of architecture across Westpuntbaai, which is an expanse of turquoise water dotted with fishing boats. These buildings cling to the edge of an eroding cliff over the Caribbean Sea with an uplifting Caribbean flair that can only be found in this region. “Westpunt, Curaçao” is 12x16".

Bonnie Ferguson Butler is an award-winning painter and photographer, who exhibits in W-9 at the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton and in many other regional exhibits. Her primary loves are painting outdoors and travel photography; she is Founder and President of the Pastel Society of Virginia. Butler's painting style is representational expressive, which is simultaneously loose and painterly. Keep up with her art activities and view her online gallery at bfbutler.blogspot.com. 

Workhouse Building W-9 has all your shopping needs covered!

The Associates in Building W-9 have a group Featured Artist exhibit with its theme, "Festive Lights."

 

See the Christmas Tree and our Small Works alcove for reasonably priced gifts - for your friends, your family, or yourself!

Our Gallery 902 exhibit shows our larger artwork and photography.

Our Second Saturday Opening Reception is December 13 from 6-9pm.

(Please click to enlarge the images. Thanks to Kathy Strauss for the photos.)

Online Workhouse Gallery : Bonnie Ferguson Butler

See my updated Workhouse Artist Page here!

Westpunt, Curacao

My trip to Curacao over the summer will provide endless painting material over the winter, which won't be a bad thing at all.

This painting is based on a photo I took at Westpunt, which is Westpoint in Dutch. I was located at a restaurant across this bay, where a popular past time is jumping off a cliff into the blue water, below. (No, I didn't do it!)

Westpunt, Curacao
pastel on prepared pumice surface
12x16

Black Friday at the Workhouse

Spend your Black Friday at the Workhouse Arts Center in Building W-9 from 10am to 7pm. We will have live dulcimer music in the afternoon. The museum will be open all day, too. We will have small works and ornaments, plus snacks and hot cider.

Vienna Arts Society Treasury of Art

From the Vienna Arts Society webpage: Juror Deborah Ellis will select 150 – 200 original works of art, and hundreds of bin pieces will be for sale.  Over $1,700 in cash and merchandise will be awarded on Friday, November 21.  On Saturday, November 22, the Difficult Run String Band will perform.

Vienna Community Center
120 Cherry Street
Vienna, Virginia 22180

SHOW SCHEDULE
Friday, November 21, 2014 10:00am–9:00pm
Awards Reception: Friday, November 21, 7:00pm–9:00pm
Saturday, November 22, 2014 10:00am–7:00pm
Sunday, November 23, 2014 12:00pm–4:00pm

 I have one painting juried into this highly selective exhibit:

Poppies on Black 
soft pastel on black Canson
8x10
SOLD

Two Umbrellas Passing, Times Square

Sometimes when you're stuck in Times Square in a surprise deluge, harboring beneath construction platforms with the crowds, the liveliness of the night, water, and reflections provide great material for a camera hungry for color.

With many of the sidewalks cleared, only the wise carrying umbrellas ventured into the street, passing each other, not aware they would be memorialized by photo and pastel.

Two Umbrellas Passing, Times Square
soft pastel
9x12

Alan Flattmann Workshop with the Pastel Society of Virginia

Over the weekend, I arranged and attended an Alan Flattmann workshop with the Pastel Society of Virginia. It was fun changing up underpaintings on sanded paper using workable fixative and charcoal instead of watercolor, which I often use.

My paintings are on the far right: Times Square after a rain and a Curacao village on a cliff over the Caribbean Sea, both requiring a bit more work, plus there's a third behind them of a Curacao inland house, which needs a lot more work. The brilliant one of Times Square will appear in our Building 9 Featured Artist Group Exhibit, "Festive Lights," at the Workhouse during December and January.

Sailboat at Dusk

Sailboat at Dusk
soft pastel
5x7 on Uart Board

Sailboat at Dawn

Sailboat at Dawn

5x7

Uart Board

Raise funds for Hayfield Secondary for free by doing a test drive!

Come out to Hayfield Secondary School on Sunday as a fundraiser for the PSTA. All you have to do is test drive a Ford. Easy peasy.

There are many vendors for a festival atmosphere.

Look for my treats, large and small...

Buttercream Cupcake
soft pastel
4x6 on Uart Board

Please follow my artist page on Facebook

If I show you something pretty, will you see and like my new artist page on Facebook?

Ok, here's a collage I put together of some of my favorite sky creations over the last decade.

Now will you see and like my new artist page on Facebook? Please and thank you.

30 in 30 Finale!

 

I am so happy to have completed this challenge and will do it again when it rolls around in 2015. Most paintings are available for sale. Many will be holiday items at the Workhouse Arts Center in Building W-9. Woo!

Begonias from my 30 in 30

The remaining unposted paintings from the 30 in 30 days challenge are more florals!

They are from a day of painting at McCrillis Gardens in Bethesda, Maryland. I was fascinated by the late season begonias, in particular, but also wanted to focus on geometry and large shapes. They are 2.5x3.5"and 8x10". They were nearly finished on site and all have watercolor underpaintings. The smaller is on mounted Uart and the larger two on Pastelbord.

Begonias Mini

Late Summer Begonias

McCrillis Gardens

30 in 30 Rounding Home

I have finished my 30 paintings for this month! And it only took 25 days! If I am able to work on some larger ones next week, I won't stop at 30. I am really enjoying how loose these miniatures are. It'd be fun to translate them larger.

(My plans for the weekend preclude painting, so I actually got them done in advance. Woo! for the artist with little sense of time!)

(I spent the day as the desk jockey at my gallery today in Building W-9 at the Workhouse and had to do something!)

So here ya go. They will be gradually uploaded to the challenge site as the days open up for posting.

All are 2.5x3.5" in soft pastel.

  

 

From Natty Bo to CamdenYards

Baltimore is a world unto itself and I love it. As a small child, my now teenaged son, who had easy access to the wonders of Washington DC, would exclaim, "Baltimore is my favorite city in the whole world!" He was highly motivated to make the one hour drive in order to visit the B&O Railroad Museum as well as the features of the Inner Harbor, like the National Aquarium, Constellation historic ship, Coast Guard vessel, WWII submarine, and water taxis. Delicious crab cakes from Fells Point made our stomachs happy, too.

This painting is from an image I took from the eastern edge of Baltimore near Dundalk, back toward the winking, red neon, National Bohemian beer sign to the glow of Camden Yards in the distance. It was during the second home game of the season this year. The sky was celebrating in Orioles orange.

From Natty Bo to Camden Yards
soft pastel
9x12 on black Canson
(Private Collection)

More in my 30x30 Quest

I am still successfully working on 30 paintings in 30 days. In part, I am taking the time to work on miniature art for the holidays. I am also adapting some work I'd put to the side and giving them new life.

Today's post is all about the miniature. I have reused a 9x12 piece of Uart that had an underpainting done in watercolor plein air a while back. I didn't feel that the piece was worth developing once I got home and I moved on to other projects. For this challenge, I have taken that paper out and divided it into space for nine miniatures.The old watercolor underpainting has been handy, even as I find new applications for it.

So far, I have the under the sea series, additional sea turtles, sunsets, and these, which are from photos I took as the sun was setting on my first day in Curacao in June. I strolled the resort's property on the southern edge of the island at Piscadera Bay. I am very happy to have kept up with the 30 paintings in 30 days challenge, because I am not usually a daily painter. My goal is to be more prolific, even if it means doing miniatures, which are their own genre unto themselves.

Each pastel is 2.5x3.5".

Curacao Beach Sunset

Sunset over Piscadera

Lights Coming On, Curacao

Lilac

Lilac
pastel on Wallis Belgian Mist
8x10
Private Collection

Curacao's Southern Coast

Curacao's Southern Coast
Pen, Ink, and Watercolor
5x7

30 x 30 Under the Sea

 

soft pastel on Uart 500 with watercolor underpainting

2.5x3.5"

30 in 30

 



Imagine little wooden 1.5" gallery frames in black and a tiny bit larger, filled with these little ditties:

     

 

    

 

That's what I'm doing with myself as I prepare for the holiday season. See the 30 Paintings in 30 Days phenomenon here. I only hope to keep up, as I am not usually a daily painter. And, hey, if I only wind up with 29 paintings, large or small, then all is certainly not lost!

Zinnia

soft pastel on Pastelbord
11x14

Slaughter Beach

Slaughter Beach
soft pastel on mounted white Wallis
11x14