I am very blessed to live in an ancient city, one of the four holy citys in Israel, that is packed with inspiration, natural beauty, and loads of really important history, loads and loads. My town also happened to become one of the well known artist colonies after israel became a country in 1948, and it is no wonder, with the fresh mountain air and great light! After living here for almost ten years, with another five year stint before I was married, I have at long last come to the conclusion that simply photographing all this beauty is not enough. I have become inspired to paint! So I'm gathering up all my experience as an interior architect and designer, as a knits designer, as an art director in advertising, together with my varied education in the fields previously stated, and my last ten years or so of serious crafting, and I'm entering the world of fine art. Because if you know me, I'm always up for a challenge, and I guess I was in need of one, a great big one!
I don't exactly know where this messy journey with oil paints and canvases and palette knives is taking me, but hopefully to some results that I can share with you someday. I am dreaming of large semi abstract canvases that somehow communicate what I see, a joy that I can not explain in words but that I hope to share with others. So now you know why there haven't been a huge amount of craft posts in the last few weeks, I've been busy putting paint to canvas!
Oh, and as far as the title of this post, I took these photos as reference for paintings, not focusing at all on taking good photos, but I just had to share them with you. At the moment everything looks like a potential painting to me, as do these photographs! So enjoy a little glimpse of the inspiration I have right outside my door, and stop by for a visit sometime! Oh, and of course, if your backyard doesn't quite look like mine, that doesn't mean that you aren't surrounded by inspiration, as truly there is inspiration everywhere, you just have to look.
Look at those mountains, the sequence of them as they recede in the distance, amazing!
And yet a closer look.
Those flat rooftops are calling to my palette knife to form them on canvas, what can I say?