it's that time of year, again

Every year the desire to paint something Christmassy will over take me. Its all the sparkly-shiny 'Oh So Specialness' of the season. I go to great lengths trying to capture a small part of what I enjoy about this time of year. This means dragging out the collection of seasonal bling I've been collecting. This year I have 3 trees. The main tree is one from my childhood, it was my next door neighbor's tree. I was always fascinated by Mrs Grace's tree, bazaarly silver in color compared to the traditionally green tree in my home. I also remember there being orange balls and striped balls on this tree. So there is always orange and striped balls on mine. We never had orange on our tree.

This year my silver tree has an excessive amount of glass beaded garland, every strand in my collection is on this tree. There are somewhere over 50 strands of beads on here. This collection go back to my childhood memories. I recall the beads we had when I was a child, it had double beads of mixed color, the beads shaped as the number 8 strung end to end. This year I found two strands of that garland, one in it's original box. That garland is shown in this painting along with a variety of other styles, including many strands of clear glass beads. This is an 10"x8" painting, oil on board.

Last year my silver tree was set up in a mid century house in Palm Springs, in this 8"x8" panel I try to capture the balls hanging among the tinsel branches. Reflective bits of light in a chaotic pattern make up the branches. The rotating colors of the spotlight only add to the challenge of capturing the look of the tree.

This 8"x8" painting of a small blue tree on a chartreuse enameled dish with green glass beaded garland and a tiny snow globe. Here I was enjoying the play of color. The tree was blue after all.

This one is my all time favorite of my Christmas paintings. It is the upper section of the 12' tall tree, the last I had in my home in Laguna Beach. The view of the coastline behind the tree brings me back to some of my best holiday seasons. This painting is 30"x24", oil on canvas.