Finished My Painting!
Today I finished the painting I’ve been working on for awhile and it was nice to finally be done. The limited edition prints will be available soon on rosearizmendi.com
The Awakening – Combined Media – 11 X 14 inches
August is here!
I can hardly believe August is already here! During this time of the year the local farmer’s offer a plethora of fresh vegetables and sun ripened fruit, and who can resist the sweet and succulent taste of ripe strawberries and plums. Yum!
September is right around the corner, and soon enough the leaves will begin to turn and fall. Until then enjoy the wonderful bounty that the last month of summer has to offer.
Happy Lughnasadh everyone!
Autumn Spirit – Combined Medium – 4 X 5 inches
“August creates as she slumbers, replete and satisfied.” – Joseph Wood Krutch
“Then let us toast John Barleycorn
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne’er fail in old Scotland!” – Traditional Scottish poem
Treasures
This little sketch/painting started as an idea for an ATC card which quickly turned into a much bigger project than expected. I ran into problems when giving the book a title.
It suddenly dawned on me that the artist trading cards are so small you would never be able to read the title of the book. Time for me to put this aside for awhile so I can decide where I am going with this.
Treasures – Combined Media – 7 X 8 inches
“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” – Walt Disney
Raven Woman
I’ve been working on this painting for a week or so and it’s almost done. The woman here represents a shape-changer, a being which has the power to alter form and bring about great changes in people’s lives.
In her human form she enters an ecstatic state in order to travel away from this reality into the invisible realms which are dream like, flowing, fluid worlds, where time ceases to exist. A place where every nuance, thought, and transformation takes place in the blink of an eye.
The spirit of the raven watches over her, protecting and guiding her through this place between heaven and earth, teaching her various ways to heal her people, as well as how to see through false forms, lies, and tricks of others. Mostly the raven teaches her how to appreciate the humor in life.
Raven – Combined Medium – 8 X 10 inches
“She perches upon the threshold of the worlds, both flesh and spirit” … – Brenna Gwyn
Another Hot Day
We are having another hot day, along with a lot of smoke from the fires burning here in Northern California. My heart and prayers go out to all those people affected by these fires.
Whispering Wings – Combined Media – 6 X 10 inches
Sorry the image doesn’t show the detail of the hummingbird very well.
“Long ago the trees thought they were people. Long ago the mountains thought they were people. Long ago the animals thought they were people. Someday they will say… long ago the humans thought they were people.”
– Native story teller.
Pomegranate Creatures
Over the weekend I came up with this idea of painting pomegranate creatures. Sound weird? It all started as I was washing dishes. On the kitchen windowsill were these dried pomegranates I had picked from our tree last year.
The more I observed them the more they looked like the wizened faces of some magical tree creatures.The tree is around 75 years old, and in the summertime I spend a great deal of time daydreaming beneath it’s branches.
So I thought what a wonderful idea, pomegranate creatures which live in the trees and once a year they leave their home to walk among humans.
I ended up writing two fantasy short stories about pomegranate trees. They came to me completely fleshed out as if I were watching a movie. It was a very strange and wonderfully unexpected experience!
Pomegranate Creature # 1 – Combined Media – 12 X 12 inches
Musings For The Day
It was a very hot and lazy summer day, and I spent most of it doing some research on Celtic Folklore, and lazing around in a comfy chair reading some great poetry.
Have a great 4th of July weekend!
Stone Of Destiny – Combined Media
CONVERSATION WITH A STONE
I knock at the stone’s front door.
“It’s only me, let me come in.
I want to enter your insides,
have a look round,
breathe my fill of you.”
“Go away,” says the stone.
“I’m shut tight.
Even if you break me to pieces,
we’ll all still be closed.
You can grind us to sand,
we still won’t let you in.”
I knock at the stone’s front door.
“It’s only me, let me come in.
I’ve come out of pure curiosity.
Only life can quench it.
I mean to stroll through your palace,
then go calling on a leaf, a drop of water.
I don’t have much time.
My mortality should touch you.”
“I’m made of stone,” says the stone,
“and must therefore keep a straight face.
Go away.
I don’t have the muscles to laugh.”
I knock at the stone’s front door.
“It’s only me, let me come in.
I hear you have great empty halls inside you,
unseen, their beauty in vain,
soundless, not echoing anyone’s steps.
Admit you don’t know them well yourself.”
“Great and empty, true enough,” says the stone,
“but there isn’t any room.
Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste
of your poor senses.
You may get to know me, but you’ll never know me through.
My whole surface is turned toward you,
all my insides turned away.”
I knock at the stone’s front door.
“It’s only me, let me come in.
I don’t seek refuge for eternity.
I’m not unhappy.
I’m not homeless.
My world is worth returning to.
I’ll enter and exit empty-handed.
And my proof I was there
will be only words,
which no one will believe.”
“You shall not enter,” says the stone.
“You lack the sense of taking part.
No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.
Even sight heightened to become all-seeing
will do you no good without a sense of taking part.
You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense should be,
only its seed, imagination.”
I knock at the stone’s front door.
“It’s only me, let me come in.
I haven’t got two thousand centuries,
so let me come under your roof.”
“If you don’t believe me,” says the stone,
“just ask the leaf, it will tell you the same.
Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said.
And , finally, ask a hair from your own head.
I am bursting with laughter, yes, laughter, vast laughter,
although I don’t know how to laugh.”
I knock at the stone’s front door.
“It’s only me, let me come in.”
“I don’t have a door,” says the stone.
-Wislawa Szymborska
Summer Solstice
It promises to be a very hot day, but it’s still cool enough to get some work done in the studio. Have a great weekend!
Faerie Forest – Combined Media – 11 X 14 inches
“When the quiet ring of pearl shall wed the earth, and the scarlet berries burn dark by the stars in the pool; Oh, it’s lost and deep I’ll be amid the Danaan mirth, while the heart of the earth is full.” – George Russell
“We all need to have a creative outlet, a window or space,
so we don’t lose track of ourselves.” -Norman Fischer
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were.
But without it we go nowhere. ” -Carl Sagan
Painting all Day
This morning I awoke to the sound of the soft cooing of the mourning dove. Such a sweet, yet mournful voice, a sound to stir one’s soul. I finally got up and grabbed a cup of coffee and began my day.
I started painting and sketching, and after much deliberation of which of the swan sketches to use in my painting “The Swan Maiden,” I finally made my choice and began adding them to the canvas. All and all it was a good day!
Daybreak– Combined Media on Canvas – 11 X 14 inches
Lady Of The Lake
The Lady of the Lake painting is finally finished. I used Painter IX, the only program on the market that can simulate what traditional painting mediums can do.
First I used a customized pencil to draw the woman and sword with scabbard. Then I created a new layer and began laying in color, working on this layer allowed me to preserve my original sketch. Once I liked what I saw, I then flattened the image and began painting directly onto the original canvas.
At this point using customized soft charcoal, pastel, and oil brushes, I painted the woman and background. Then I finished the piece by adding detail and highlights
This painting took me somewhere between 20 to 35 hours to complete.
Lady of the Lake – Combined Media – 11 X 14 inches
Lady of the Lake’s Sword with Scabbard
The lady of the lake is an archetypal figure in the Arthurian legend, and known as Vivian, Nimue, Niniane, and sometimes as Morgan le Fay. She was also Merlin’s lover and rival and was credited with bewitching him.
The lady of the lake is best known for gifting the sword Excalibur to Arthur. Excalibur’s scabbard was said to have magical powers of it’s own, and was stolen by Morgan le Fay and thrown into a lake, never to be found again.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, described the sword in his poem “Morte d’Arthur”, later written as “The Passing of Arthur”, one of the Idylls of the king.