House Plan: A Garden Cottage (#200) by John Tee – Great studio space!

A Garden Cottage (plan 200) by John Tee

This is the Garden Cottage (#200)  plan by architect John Tee. What a great studio, spare bedroom or quiet getaway would this be? It oozes charm. This plan is 220 square feet with 1 bathroom and a studio space.

A Garden Cottage (plan 200) by John Tee

This Garden Cottage is a simple yet efficient plan. There is plenty of room for using it either as a studio to paint or as a place to put a bed for when you have an extra guest. 220 feet is small, yes, but it’s also perfect! Click on the link above to see an actual photo of this plan built. Stunning!

Catch you back here tomorrow!

Life the way it should be… not “perfect Maine”, just life, the way it should be…

mom hiking monhegan w stick 2009

Monhegan. Maine. Can’t get either place (Monhegan… or Maine) off of my mind. Of course I say that only being there in the fall. Never in the summer or winter… so, that’s like visiting Charleston when it’s not hot, humid and packed with people. I know that. But have you ever had a feeling that you were supposed to be somewhere? Where it was so hard to leave that it just didn’t feel right? That’s Maine for us. But our short time there gets us through. We aren’t talking “perfect Maine” that you see all over town, just real life Maine…  We feel fortunate to be able to keep in touch with the rest of our extended family that all feels the same way!

I have family that also feels that way. They love Maine just as much as we do. This is a photo of my mom hiking in Cathedral Woods (Monhegan) years ago. I love this photo! Well… today is my mom’s birthday, so HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! Hop on a plane and come to Charleston, hee hee… we can celebrate! Have the best birthday ever!

Do you have a place that pulls you back time after time? Let me know!

Catch you back here tomorrow!

Stamps from the machine at the post office… Yay USPS!

IMG_3772

I wrote a post several years ago about the stamps I purchased from the machine inside the post office. Wow, have things ever changed.

These are recent stamps from that very same machine. They don’t look like they’ve been printed in someone’s basement, ha ha… these look more like REAL stamps! Woohoo! Thought that post deserved an update ;)

On another note, can you believe it’s already October? Wow, time flies!

Catch you back here tomorrow!

Sunset chasers…

Pemaquid area of Maine IMG_4646

When Fred and I were in Maine we saw some spectacular sunsets. Our last night we took a drive to Pemaquid Point area, saw the sky light up near the beach, BUT the sunset was around the bend…

So, we hopped in the car and off we went until we found it!

You’ve heard of STORM CHASERS, right? Those people that chase dangerous storms so they can video/photograph? Well, this is the watered down version… Fred and I are sunset chasers, ha ha… there is just nothing like a good sunset!

Catch you back here tomorrow!

Featured Artist: Kenny Harris!

Threshold by Kenny Harris

Threshold by Kenny Harris  54×48″  Oil

Kenny Harris. He is one well-traveled artist! Kenny has had the opportunity to study at some pretty amazing places. His website shows his paintings grouped by area. It fascinating to see the different locations, having never been there. You will notice a great sense of light and shadow in his paintings, which make them really come alive.

This painting, Threshold is from the China series. I love the blue going up the stairway and the view into the next room. Look at how the floor shows the light, amazing!

 

Istanbul Balcony by Kenny Harris kdratelier.com

Istanbul Balcony by Kenny Harris  8×6″  Oil

Is this a stunning painting or what? Just look at the light on these floors. Check out the wonderful view (I would like to be here right now!), and that little pop of red that brings this all together and makes you say… WOW!

Read a bit about Kenny, from his website:

Kenny Harris was born in 1974 and is currently living and painting in Venice, CA.

Raised in the SF Bay Area, he received his B.A. in Fine Art from Colorado College in Colorado Springs. During his junior year abroad, he studied in Florence, Italy, immersing himself in Renaissance Art History, and classical figure drawing at the atelier of Charles Cecil. After living and painting in San Francisco, he moved to New York, where he studied under Frank Mason at Art Students’ League.

In the spring of 2001 he left New York for Central America, painting through Honduras, Guatemala and the Yucatan. He then landed in Venice Beach, where he has been ever since. Travel has continued to influence his painting; his experiences around the world inspiring bodies of work. Central and South America, Europe, Cuba, Istanbul and China have been recent subjects. He also draws inspiration from his environs in Venice, California.

Kenny combines his classical training with the energetic, gestural use of line and color from the latter half of the 20th century. His oils walk the line between calm, naturalistic light studies and boldly defined color fields, with brilliant light and reflections. They define a place and a mood, charging spaces and cityscapes with personality and resonance.

From 2002-12 he has participated as an exhibitor in the prestigious Venice Art Walk. He exhibits on both coasts, and teaches undergraduate and graduate level painting at Laguna College of Art and Design.

He currently shows at Koplin Del Rio in Culver City and George Billis in New York.

All images via Kenny-Harris.com, used with permission…

Catch you back here tomorrow!

House Plan: 244 Tall Oak Road by Our Town Plans!

244 Tall Oak Road by Our Town Plans

The 244 Tall Oak Drive house plan by Our Town Plans. This plan is 2,810 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. What a stunning and elegant plan this is. It features plentiful porch space (front and back). Tell me… is there anything better than a wonderful porch? The front porch is deep and inviting, the back porch is deep AND screened. Would I ever be in the house? Well, this house, probably so!

244 Tall Oak Road by Our Town Plans

The main floor has a wonderful layout. 244 Tall Oak Drive is an elegant plan with open living spaces. The large front and back porches add so much living to this already generous space!

244 Tall Oak Road by Our Town Plans

The upstairs has two bedrooms with private bathrooms and a studio area. It’s so nice to have privacy and a place to get away when you really want to!

I love that Our Town Plans also shows real photos… It helps so much. Check it out. Your jaw will drop!

All images via OurTownPlans.com, used with permission…

Catch you back here tomorrow!

Featured Artist: Tina Ingraham!

Islanders Breakfast by Tina Ingraham

Islanders Breakfast by Tina Ingraham  20×24″ Oil

Tina Ingraham. A unique style with soft brushstrokes, wonderful color palette, and charming subject matter. Tina also mentors (coaches) students, so if you’re interested, be sure to check out her website.

The Islanders Breakfast. Lovely painting. Happy colors. There is depth to Tina’s paintings and it really makes them stand out! Nice soft edges and fabulous light in this painting!

Open Door II by Tina Ingraham

Open Door II by Tina Ingraham  12×18″  Oil

Another wonderful painting (It wasn’t easy to pick two images!) – I love the light on this building and all the layers underneath. Fabulous! Tina leaves out the details which makes the overall painting so much stronger. The sky, clouds and utility pole just add more charm. Both of these paintings are available at Sylvan Gallery in Wiscasset, Maine!

Read a bit about Carol from the Sylvan Gallery Website:

Tina Ingraham was born in Kenton, Ohio and received her Bachelor of Science in Design from the University of Cincinnati and MFA in Painting from Brooklyn College of CUNY where she received a Graduate Teaching Fellowship and The Charles G. Shaw Memorial Award for Scholarship and Art. As a life-long painter she has painted professionally for thirty-eight years, while incorporating periods of teaching at Bowdoin College and Maine College of Art in Maine, International School of Art in Italy, Stephens College in Missouri, and Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She now mentors painters privately by coaching artists, and teaching her originally designed process of building a painting and teaching color theory in paint: “It’s on the Palette.” Ms. Ingraham received a Fellowship from The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 1999, followed by a grant from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation for research in Painting. She was the recipient of The Sally and Milton Avery Fellowship in 1998 which funded her two-month residence at MacDowell Colony prior to her Guggenheim Fellowship year in Italy. While living and working in Italy from 1999 to 2002, she exhibited one-person shows of her still life, figure and landscape paintings in Germany, Italy and New York City and participated in an exhibition with the Association of Munich and German Artists at Haus der Kunst, in Munich. Ms. Ingraham relocated to the United States in 2003 and resides and works from her studios in Bath, Maine. Ms. Ingraham’s paintings hang internationally in private and public collections, including the portrait of Joshua Chamberlain commissioned by Bowdoin College. 

Images via TinaIngraham.com, used with permission…

Catch you back here tomorrow!

When TOAST is not “just” toast! This is a treat!

Toast at Park Cafe

Toast at Park Cafe, Charleston, SC

Park Cafe. A cool place with a fabulous lunch menu (haven’t been there for dinner yet). We stopped in for breakfast one day, and Fred ordered the almond butter toast (with almond butter, sliced grapes, wildflower honey and nuts). I ordered the avocado toast (avocado, lemon, olive oil and chili flakes), then we split :)

WOW. Something as simple as toast taken to a new level! Good stuff!

Catch you back here tomorrow!

Featured Artist: Bo Bartlett!

Galilee by Bo Bartlett

Galilee by Bo Bartlett  88×120″  oil/linen

Galilee, just another of Bo Bartlett’s masterpieces! Bo grew up drawing (in Columbus, GA), and his paintings have become iconic. Once you see them, you’ll know why. Each one is stunning. Each masterfully tells a story. You can tell with a quick glimpse that these paintings are different, in an out-of-this-world way. I love the stories they tell! Be sure to check out Bo’s website, there is so much wonderful reading and great videos to watch – you will be floored!

DO NOT MISS the Videos, they are outstanding. Bo and his family are just so very interesting.

Bo’s Messages come straight from the heart, and I think he has such a wonderful attitude about life and all that goes with it. Do not miss these! There is so much more, just spend some time on his website. These paintings are stunning! We’ve seen his work in person at Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockland, Maine, and WOW. You can look at them forever! I have to agree with Bo… It’s a magic world, and I think his paintings add that magic!

Read a bit about Bo, from his website:

“Bo Bartlett is an American realist with a modernist vision. His paintings are well within the tradition of American realism as defined by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Andrew Wyeth. Like these artists, Bartlett looks at America’s heart—its land and its people—and describes the beauty he finds in everyday life. His paintings celebrate the underlying epic nature of the commonplace and the personal significance of the extraordinary.
“Bartlett was educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where realist principles must be grasped before modernist ventures are encouraged. He pushes the boundaries of the realist tradition with his multilayered imagery. Life, death, passage, memory, and confrontation coexist easily in his world. Family and friends are the cast of characters that appear in his dreamlike narrative works. Although the scenes are set around his childhood home in Georgia, his island summer home in Maine, his home in Pennsylvania or the surroundings of his studio and residence in Washington state, they represent a deeper, mythical concept of the archetypal, universal home.”
– Tom Butler, excerpt from the book Bo Bartlett, Heartland
Be sure to read about the Bo Bartlett Center at The College of Arts at Columbus State University!

All images via BoBarlett.com, used with permission…

Catch you back here tomorrow!

Featured Artist: Cathleen Windham!

Cathleen Windham | Morning Deliveries | ArtFoodHome.com

Morning Deliveries by Cathleen Windham  12 x 9″ Oil

I love how Cathleen chose such an everyday scene to paint. Most of us wouldn’t think much about painting a delivery area full of trash cans, old trucks and buildings… BUT just look at the interest that there is. Those trash cans are so cool, as is the dumpster. The yellow on the side wall guides your eye to it, and (to me) that subtle mark at the top right brings your eye towards the upper center where the various lines take it across, down to the trashcans, and back up again. I love the bright strokes in the truck window. Very nice!

Read a bit about Cathleen, from her website:

Cathleen Windham is an American artist who works in oils. Windham’s paintings are characterized by the use of every day scenes and settings in an atmosphere where recognition plays an important role. By addressing daily life as subject matter, every day objects undergo transubstantiation. 

In search for new methods to “read the city”, she seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of daily events. Her works are an investigation into representations of (seemingly) concrete ages, often providing a backdrop to recapture an abandoned memory. 

Through her interpretation, Windham’s nocturnes in particular evoke a sensation of mystery within a familiar theater. Composed principally in plein-air, these portraits of refulgent light in contradiction against the piceous ambiance of the dark, entice the viewer towards palpitation of intimacy and immense intrigue. Cathleen Windham currently lives and works in Nashville, TN.

All images via WindhamStudio.net, used with permission…

Catch you back here tomorrow!

House Plan: Taylor Creek by John Tee!

Taylor Creek Plan by John Tee

This is the Taylor Creek Plan by John Tee. This plan is 2,890 square feet, with 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. It also includes two fireplaces, ahhh! I love how you can customize these plans. The outside is just as fabulous as the inside. Be sure to check out their website, because John shows you real images, not only of the outside of this plan, but the interior as well! His renderings are fabulous. This is quite a house!

There is a fabulous front porch, but there is also a very nice side porch! Nice and private, and it expands the living space, especially on those nice days… I would be out there most of the time!

Taylor Creek Plan by John Tee

 

It’s an open plan with Great Room, Dining Room downstairs, as well as a powder room, and the aforementioned side porch! I would screen the side porch so you could leave windows or french doors open to catch a breeze!

Taylor Creek Plan by John Tee

Upstairs is the Master Bedroom/Bathroom on one end with a separate entrance onto the porch area. There is also a Flex Room, that can be used for just about anything. Add to that, two more bedrooms with bathrooms and you have yourself one heck of a house!

All images via JohnTee.com, used with permission…

Catch you back here tomorrow!