9 Things to Love about Texas. The Texas Landscape Series.

Texas Landscape Series
4x4 inches each, approximately 20x20 inches overall size
palette knife oil paintings  on Arches 140# cp paper

The Texas Landscape Series and Nine Things to Love about Texas:

(left to right - row 1, 2 and 3)

1. Plains
2. Sunsets
3. Piney Woods
4. Hill Country
5. Texas Sauce Art Life
6. Summertime
7. Bluebonnets
8. Indian Paintbrushes
9. Dog Days of Summer

This collection of 4x4 oil paintings makes a nice 9-square set matted and framed together in a single frame.  My TXsauce logo is featured in the center of the set as I have shown it. The painting you receive will not have the text over any of the paintings but will have my signature. 

The red dot on #7 Bluebonnets indicates SOLD. I had not intended to break this set. I did only because the collector indicated she would be back for the other paintings one-by-one. She was not able to purchase the others, but I can repaint the Bluebonnets and complete the set.


Thanks for following my Texas Sauce Art Life blog.
V. Bridges Hoyt

Warm Memories, Expressionist Oil Painting

*Expressionism is defined as a style of painting, music, or drama in which the artist or writer seeks to express emotional experience rather than impressions of the external world.

Click on image to view detail or purchase this painting. 

Texas Landscape #8: Warm Memories. 
Oil on Arches 140# cp paper, 4x4 inches.
© Vernita Bridges Hoyt 2012. 

As I uploaded this image, I glanced at the blog sidebar with a beginning date of January 2005. My mind jumped to December 29, 2005. I quickly realized that my blog post of Happy Birthday to my mother in June of that year was to be my last birthday wish to her. A sudden sadness of grief flooded my heart, my throat and my eyes.

We never know when last moments will come. We need to make all the moments good enough to become warm memories. 

*Expressionists characteristically reject traditional ideas of beauty or harmony and use distortion, exaggeration, and other nonnaturalistic devices in order to emphasize and express the inner world of emotion. The paintings of El Greco and Grünewald exemplify expressionism in this broad sense, but the term is also used of a late 19th and 20th century European and specifically German movement tracing its origins to Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James Ensor, which insisted on the primacy of the artist's feelings and mood, often incorporating violence and the grotesque.

Thanks for following my Texas Sauce Art Life ramblings.
V. Bridges Hoyt

Blue Sky over Wildflowers

Wednesday night I got back to the small daily painting. This is #7 of my Texas Landscape series. Each miniature piece of this series is oil painted with a palette knife on Arches 140# cp paper, and each painting is 100% out of my imagination or memory, therefore they are all painted in an expressionist or impressionist style. When you purchase one of my paintings, you are collecting a piece of my soul.

Texas Landscape #7: Blue Sky over Wildflowers.
© V. Bridges Hoyt 2012.

In times of stress, an artist can find herself blocked. The muse runs away and hides.  I think even in a block I would never forget how to paint as that is a part of me (maybe that is me), but I do become time-challenged because I think that I am Woman and can do it all. I take on more responsibility than any one person should ever try to carry. Did I mention that I am Capricorn who tries to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders? Hmmm ... Capricorn ... I am Woman ... No wonder I can't find enough studio time. 

This is my solution. When I am experiencing low studio energy/time, I focus on small daily paintings from my heart. It matters not what they look like, just that they are paint on paper or canvas. In those times I try to paint freely, looser with no preconceived plan or idea. This practice expands an hour into a timeless zone of space and replenishes my soul energy. I have no deadlines. No constraints. No requirements. The painting then is more like play. So for those of you who think you forgot how or never knew how to paint, just go play with paints for fun today. Let the colors wash over your soul. In times of stress, painting wildly from imagination can be freeing. 

Thanks for following my Texas Sauce Art Life blog.
V. Bridges Hoyt

Texas Landscape #6: Live Oak and Bluebonnets

Daily Painting.  RESERVED on layaway for CP.

Texas Landscape #6: Live Oak and Bluebonnets
© V. Bridges Hoyt 2012
oil on paper, 4x4 inches

This scene is engraved on my mind as I have driven through this pasture many times with my dad. The lone Live Oak Tree by the distant fence row is our landmark. My color palette includes Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Yellow Light and Ultramarine Blue all mixed with a teeny bit of Permalba White.

Painting from imagination agrees with me in this stage of my life. I am actually letting the muse do ALL of the work. When I go to my easel and pick up the palette knife, I have no idea what I will paint or the colors I will use in the painting. When I paint early mornings, the muse takes over. I am back into the pure "daily painting" mode that I discovered in 2006, and I love it!

Small works painted quickly with an ala prima technique.

Thanks for following Texas Sauce Art Life.

Texas Landscape #4: West Thru East Texas

Texas Landscape #4: West Thru East Texas
© V. Bridges Hoyt 2012
oil on paper, 4x4 inches

I have driven many a road through the hills and forests of East Texas with a red-orange sunset glowing ahead in the West. This series consists of memories made on drives to visit my dad at the farm in East Texas. As I pull memories from my mind and paint them on paper or canvas, my head fills with visions ... too many to count.

Thanks for following Texas Sauce Art Life.

Texas Landscape #3: Forest

I am continuing the "out-of-mind Texas landscape series" with my recollection of the abundant forests where I grew up in East Texas. Tall pines and hardwoods towered above a tangle of underbrush and vines. Click on the image to view painting description and detail.

TEXAS LANDSCAPE #3: Forest
© V. Bridges Hoyt 2012
oil on paper, 4x4 inches

The Big Thicket — Before settlers and lumberjacks and boomtowns moved in, the Thicket boasted 3.5 million acres of Lone Star wilderness. Today, less than one-tenth of the original, primitive big Thicket still stands. The immensely diverse region displays 1,000 species of wildflowers, and almost 200 species of shrubs and trees. Two stretches of wild river run through it, and eight major ecological systems flow together.  —http://texas-on-line.com/graphic/forest.htm

Learn more about the Texas Forest Trail as it winds through the areas of Tyler, Mineola, Quitman, Pittsburg, Daingerfield, Jefferson, Marshal, Longview, Kilgore, Nacogdoches, San Augustine, Lufkin, Woodville, Camden, Moscow, Livingston, Coldspring, Conroe, Montgomery, Huntsville, Crockett, and Palestine.

If you like the painting above, click to view more Trees and Prairie art.

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Contact txsauce@txsauce.net

SACRED HEART, Palestine, Texas

"Teach your children to choose the right path, and when they are older, they will remain upon it." --Proverbs 22:6

SACRED HEART  •  Palestine, Texas

ART. SACRED HEART, clad in a white envelope, towers toward a blue sky and appears as direct contrast to the Sanctuary painting with the red and pink background.  One painting complements the other. One painting is filled with energy; the other is peaceful and serene. Both are Spirit filled.  This painting was inspired by the historic Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Palestine, Texas.

SACRED HEART is a larger church placed on a larger  canvas of 12x16 inches, oil paint applied with a palette knife in impasto (thick texture). For more information, eMail me.

Next up--the historical Addicks-Bear Creek Methodist. Check back in a day or two.  The historical church series will be featured in my upcoming show August 28, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m, at the Garden of the Dragonfly Gallery in Old Town Spring, Texas. Click on the "EVENTS" tab above for information.
LIFE. A little rain yesterday brought cloud cover and the sense of cooler days although the thermometer and heat index still run high. With a break in the heat, I feel more at peace. I am working my plan but not as worried that I won't meet deadlines. Monday and Tuesday were filled with paperwork and quotes. Last night I painted until 2:00 a.m. Today I am shipping and will paint again  tonight.

Rare Weather. Snow in East Texas.

LIFE.  What a gift! Snow started to fall in East Texas on Dad's birthday. 

(above) Snow started to cover the ground on the evening of February 10, 2010. 

The back yard light almost looks like a star in the sky.

(above) The fence row out back of the farm house at daybreak February 11, 2010. 

You can see the old dead tree that has been featured in several of my paintings (center of photo). 

You can be sure it will show up again.

(above) Mid-morning February 11, 2010. 

Looking across the back pasture beyond with dog tracks in the snow.

(above) Approximately noon February 11, 2010.

Dad cutting the ropes off a round bale of hay so he can feed his cows.

Neither rain nor hail nor sleet nor snow (nor age 94) will keep a good man from taking care of his cattle.

I expect you will see snow in some of my paintings this year. 

(above) Short video of dad (now officially 94 yrs. old) cutting the ropes off the hay bale. 

And on with my reading of Proverbs below.  Follow along if you want. More coming soon (Chapter 5: sex in the Bible).

Pay attention, my child, to what I say. Listen carefully. Don't lose sight of my words. Let them penetrate deep within your heart, for they [Solomon's words] bring life and radiant health to anyone who discovers their meaning.  --Proverbs 4:20-22

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THE GATHERING, oil painting of Texas Beefmaster Cattle Herd landscape

ART.   vbh-10004, THE GATHERING.  Texas Beefmaster cattle herd landscape, oil on 9x12x1.5 inch canvas, gallery-wrap with painted sides.  $350

My inspiration and subject for THE GATHERING was a trip to the farm and a few of my dad's cattle grazing in their East Texas pasture. 

detail of THE GATHERING oil painting

at The Dutch Art Gallery in Dallas, TX

April 10 - May 15, 2010

214-348-7350

Click here for more information. 

LIFE.  There is no better way to appreciate God's glory than to spend time in the country where the skies are wide open and blue. My favorite way to start the day at the farm

Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Grass is Always Greener, oil painting

© Vernita Bridges-Hoyt 2009

"The Grass is Always Greener"

Three Billy Goats Gruff

oil on gallery wrap canvas with painted sides

ART.  You saw the reference photograph, and yesterday you saw the start to the painting. Today I show you the finish. I painted this one with a palette knife in my Texas Impressionist style. I always enjoy painting, but this one also presented challenges and took a little more time than I expected. One still has to think about proportion and body type when painting animals. No matter how small or impressionist they may be, I want them to look like the animal they are. In this case, they had to look like goats. I think I succeeded. I hope you'll think so, too. I have posted a larger detail to show the white goat and landscape beyond. If you click on the images, they should enlarge a little more.

LIFE.  As I painted the "three billy goats gruff," a title came to me:  The Grass is Always Greener. It sometimes seems as though a painting and title come to give me a life lesson just when I most need it. Painting, for me, is communing with God. 

There was so much quality fine art at the Dutch Art Gallery show in Dallas and so many excellent artists that I felt a bit incompetent, that maybe I need to approach painting differently, i.e. all one subject, all one style, all one medium. The grass began to look greener outside my own pasture. 

Upon return home, I came back to the photo of the goats who had gone through the fence and escaped their pasture to graze on the green grass by the farm-to-market roadside. It wasn't a busy highway, and it boasted greener grass. As the goats grazed, an occasional car drove by on the highway (a little too close for comfort from the goats' perspective), and the three goats began to look for a way back through the fence into their own pasture which had the right grass and tall shade trees and a barn for protection from storms and cars. They appeared to have forgotten their way back through the fence, but I suspect their master found them and brought them back into the fold. 

As I painted the goats, I realized that I need not doubt myself. I have been given the gift of versatility to paint what I want and the ability to paint how I want. I realized that since most of my paintings have sold, they speak to people other than myself. I realized that there is a higher purpose at work here and decided to follow the Master's lead and continue painting this collage of my life. There is a story to be told. There is much work to be done. The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence, but it isn't necessarily so. I will appreciate the gifts that are within my own reach.

Today's Blessing: Versatility!

V. Bridges-Hoyt

"Painting the Sauce of Texas"

animals • flowers • people • places

email
artist@vbridgeshoyt.com