I am once again co-hosting a MAY FLORAL CHALLENGE !!!!!

with  Kirsten Katz  and also  Janine Brewster 

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The theme is “Rainbow of Flowers… 31 days of Beautiful Flowers”

Here’s how it works… 

1. We will provide a color way each week and a list of possible flowers for inspiration.

2. You can create each day or once/twice a week… however inspired you are!!

3. You can select a flower or flowers from our prompt list (or pick your own in the color way of each week.)

4. Use WHATEVER MEDIUM you love to create gorgeous floral art or craft

5. Post what you create at the #rainbowflowers2023

At the end of the month… three esteemed judges will be looking at the work posted and awarding prizes to their favorites!!!

They are…

 Jo Packham… Co-founder of Made Tv Network 

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 Julia Veenstra…contemporary Artist, founder of The Square Foot Show, Galleriest and Art Coach. 

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 Wayne Hueners ….Cofounder CEO and Creative Director of Werkshoppe 

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I CANNOT WAIT to see the rainbow of gorgeous floral images in May!!!

Help us to SPREAD THE WORD!!! The more the merrier!!

XO

About the March Challenge

This is the tenth and final prompt for #coloritree, part of the ongoing #coloricombo 2023 challenge. Use the colour prompts along with optional dark and neutral light colours to create something in your own way, regardless of media or theme.

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It’s the last Thursday of the month and that means this is the final #coloritree colour prompt. To end this March Challenge, Esté has chosen a work by the French artist, Séraphine Louis.

In the Renaissance style, she was known as Séraphine de Senlis after the village where she worked, or simply as Séraphine

Séraphine (1864-1942) was a self-taught artist. Born in Arsy, her parents died when she was young and she worked as a shepherdess and as a domestic worker, first at the La Charité de la Providence convent then as a housekeeper for wealthy families in Senlis.

Her work was discovered by the German art collector and dealer Wilhelm Uhde. who was amazed by her untrained talent and became her patron, encouraging her to produce a body of work now celebrated as a key example of naïve art.

Séraphine was inspired by her religious faith, by stained-glass church windows and other religious art. She painted floral motifs on household items, canvases and boards and her painting are notable for their use of unconventional materials like glue and household enamel paint and often for their scale (the painting featured below is almost 2m tall). She created her own colours and pigments and her painted surfaces have a matte, waxy appearance.

In 1929 Uhde organized an exhibition, Painters of the Sacred Heart, that included Seraphine’s art and launched her brief career. In 1932 she was committed for chronic psychosis and remained hospitalised until her death.

Her worked continued to be exhibited, including at The Popular Masters of Reality which showed in Paris, Zurich, and New York at the Museum of Modern Art.

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Colour Combination

The colours for this weeks prompt are Racing Green, Neon Blue, Deep Orange and Bright Yellow.

For this March Challenge, please add the tag #coloritree along with the usual #coloricombo and @estemacleod and @lorisiebert.studio when posting on Instagram. You are also welcome to post on the private Facebook group Creative Prompts with Esté MacLeod.

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You have all made GORGEOUS WORK THIS MONTH!!

XO

About the March Challenge

This is the ninth prompt for #coloritree, part of the ongoing #coloricombo 2023 challenge. There will be ten posts in total, all linked to artworks featuring trees by female artists from the past. These will be released on Monday and Thursday until the end of March. Use the colour prompts along with optional dark and neutral light colours to create something in your own way, regardless of media or theme.

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Today’s post is the penultimate one for March’s #coloritree challenge and Esté has chosen colours from a painting by the fantastic Irish artist Mary Swanzy.

Swanzy (1882-1978) was an Irish painter, born in Dublin. She was a pioneering modernist artist who explored many different styles and mediums over her long career. Swanzy studied at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art and later at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. She was greatly influenced by the Cubist movement and the work of Pablo Picasso, and this is evident in many of her paintings.

In 1920 during the Irish War of Independence, she left Ireland, traveling first through Eastern Europe and then onwards to Hawaii and Samoa.

During this time, she experimented with a variety of styles, including Surrealism, Expressionism and Cubism, and her work became more abstract. She was also interested in the art of other cultures, particularly the Arab and Indian art she encountered on her travels.

By 1946 she was included in exhibitions with Chagall, William Scott and Henry Moore but after this time her work fell into obscurity, possibly because of her gender and her non-traditional approach to painting. She is now recognized as one of Ireland’s most important modernist painters. Her paintings are held in many public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Ireland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

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Colour Combination

The colours for this weeks prompt are Granny Smith, Sea Green, Acid Yellow, Grass Green and Deep Green.

For this March Challenge, please add the tag #coloritree along with the usual #coloricombo and @estemacleod and @lorisiebert.studio when posting on Instagram. You are also welcome to post on the private Facebook group Creative Prompts with Esté MacLeod.

Adventures in Mixed Media Collage with Lori Siebert

Join me from 23rd – 30th August 2024 on a week-long Art Retreat in Central Italy

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In this adventurous workshop, I will help you to foster your childlike curiosity and the joy of discovery. As we explore the medieval villages, take in the beautiful countryside and local wildlife, shop at the local markets… I will assign fun creative challenges that will bring these magical experiences into your work.

This workshop is perfect for everyone from beginners to advanced artists. Lori loves to encourage and foster creativity in everyone!

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Awaken your creativity whilst experiencing the people and the flavours of day-to-day life in truly authentic, unspoilt Italy

Retreat Centre & Small Luxury Boutique Hotel In Le Marche, Italy

Imagine staying in an historic palazzo nestled on the edge of a picture-postcard medieval, hilltop village in the heart of Le Marche. Sitting elegantly between the Sibillini Mountains and the Adriatic Coast is Hotel Leone, a luxury boutique hotel with 10 bedrooms, that specialises in small, intimate boutique retreats. Each individually curated, giving you the freedom, space and inspiration to nourish you and your creativity.

Le Marche, in Central Italy, what the Italians themselves refer to as ‘all of Italy in one region’ remains one of the very few places which has escaped mass tourism despite its beauty and diversity: medieval hill-top towns full of art and culture, amazing coastline with hidden beaches, patchwork quilt countryside, stunning mountain ranges and much more – it really is a secret slice of Italy.

Combine your love of creativity with exploring new places and meeting like-minded people where you can sit back and relax knowing everything is taken care of for you.

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SPACES ARE VERY LIMITED AND FILLING FAST!!!

Hope you can join me!!! It’s going to be dreamy!!!

XO

About the March Challenge

This is the seventh prompt for #coloritree, part of the ongoing #coloricombo 2023 challenge. There will be ten posts in total, all linked to artworks featuring trees by female artists from the past. These will be released on Monday and Thursday until the end of March. Use the colour prompts along with optional dark and neutral light colours to create something in your own way, regardless of media or theme.

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“Art is art, nature is nature, you cannot improve upon it . . . Pictures should be inspired by nature, but made in the soul of the artist; it is the soul of the individual that counts.” – Emily Carr

Emily Carr (1871-1945) was a Canadian artist and writer whose inspiration was the coastal environment of the Pacific Northwest where she lived, it’s landscapes and the First Nations who inhabit it. Although she is regarded as one of Canada’s most famous and important artists with her Modernist and Post-Impressionist style, she was in her late fifties before she started to receive the recognition deserved.

Carr was born in Victoria, British Columbia in 1871 (the year that British Columbia joined Canada) the second youngest of nine children. Her parents encouraged her artistic ambitions but it was only after their deaths during her teenage years that she began to pursue art seriously with education in San Francisco and London.

After her first trip to a First Nation settlement in 1898, Carr became deeply interested in the people of British Columbia and their cultures and she spent much of her career painting their totem poles, villages, and landscapes. Her work is notable for its vivid use of colour and her ability to capture the spirit and energy of the places she painted.

In 1910 Carr travelled to France where she was greatly influenced by both the Post-Impressionists and the Fauvists she encountered. She returned to Vancouver, opened a studio and gave classes which were apparently unpopular due to her smoking and cursing. Losing students, she moved back to Victoria and ran a boarding house for the next fifteen years.

Aged fifty seven in 1927, her work caught the attention of The Group of Seven, Canada’s most recognised modern painters who recognised her talent and embraced her as an equal. This led to one of her most prolific periods and the creation of many of her most notable works.

Carr suffered from poor health from the late 1930s and after a number of heart attacks and a stroke, with her ability to travel impaired, her focus shifted to writing. She published several books about her experiences in British Columbia, including “Klee Wyck,” (her adopted Indigenous name) which won the Governor General’s Award for non-fiction in 1941. She died in Victoria in 1945

In 1952 her works were shown at the Venice Bienalle and in 1978 she was posthumously was awarded the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Medal. Today there’s a statue of her close to the provincial legislature and a university named after her, the Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver.

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Colour Combination

The colours for this weeks prompt are Kiwi, Jade, Navy and Van Dyke Brown.

For this March Challenge, please add the tag #coloritree along with the usual #coloricombo, @lorisiebert.studio and @estemacleod when posting on Instagram. You are also welcome to post on the private Facebook group Creative Prompts with Esté MacLeod.

About the March Challenge

This is the sixth prompt for #coloritree, part of the ongoing #coloricombo 2023 challenge. There will be ten posts in total, all linked to artworks featuring trees by female artists from the past. These will be released on Monday and Thursday until the end of March. Use the colour prompts along with optional dark and neutral light colours to create something in your own way, regardless of media or theme.

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Today it’s over to the island of Ireland for the sixth artist to be featured in #coloritree, Norah McGuinness.

McGuinness (1901-1980) was an Irish artist known for her colourful and lively works in a variety of mediums, including painting, printmaking, and tapestry. She was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, and began her artistic career in 1921 at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art where she studied under Patrick Tuohy, Oswald Reeves and Harry Clarke. Her first freelance work was as an illustrator, which remained an important source of income throughout her life.

From Dublin, McGuinness moved to London to study at the Chelsea Polytechnic where she began exhibiting her work in group shows. Her time in London exposed her to the work of modernist artists who greatly influenced her own artistic style. After working as a set designer in Dublin’s theatres, McGuinness moved to Paris in 1929 where she worked with André Lhôte (who I mentioned previously in connection with Dorrit Black) for nearly two years and was influenced by the work of Braque, Lurçat, Dufy and Vlaminck.

In the 1930s, McGuinness became involved in the British art world and joined the influential London Group, which included artists such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. She also began working as a freelance designer, creating book covers and illustrations for publishers such as Faber & Faber and the Hogarth Press. In 1937 McGuinness returned once more to Ireland where she was involved in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, taking over it’s presidency in 1944 (a position she held for almost thirty years).

She represented Ireland in the 1950 Venice Biennale (the first year that Ireland had taken part) and her work was exhibited in numerous solo and group shows, including a retrospective at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2002.

McGuinness’s work is characterized by its bold use of colour, strong geometric shapes, and playful compositions. She executed vivid, highly coloured, flattened landscape paintings, still lifes and portraits in a spontaneous style showing both Fauvist and the Cubist influences of Lhôte.

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Colour Combination

The colours for this weeks prompt are Fandango Pink, Duck Egg, Warm Brown, Straw and Cobalt Blue.

For this March Challenge, please add the tag #coloritree along with the usual #coloricombo and @estemacleod and @lorisiebert.studio when posting on Instagram. You are also welcome to post on the private Facebook group Creative Prompts with Esté MacLeod.

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I need to get on making some challenge art now that I’m back from Alt Summit!!

XO

Sorry, I’m a day late on this next prompt. I’m away at the amazing Alt Summit in Palm Springs!!

Here is the next beautiful palette!

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About the March Challenge

This is the fifth prompt for #coloritree, part of the ongoing #coloricombo 2023 challenge. There will be ten posts in total, all linked to artworks featuring trees by female artists from the past. These will be released on Monday and Thursday until the end of March. Use the colour prompts along with optional dark and neutral light colours to create something in your own way, regardless of media or theme.

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The fifth artist we are featuring during this March Challenge is another amazing woman from Australia.

Dorrit Black (1891-1951) was a painter and printmaker and is now regarded as one of Australia’s most important modern artists, instrumental in bringing Cubism to the continent from Europe.

Black was born in Adelaide and studied in London and Paris during the 1920s where she worked with some of the leading modern art teachers of the time, such as the British linocut printmaker Claude Flight and the French cubists André Lhote and Albert Gleizes.

On her return she became the first female gallery owner in Australia when her European experiences inspired her to establish the Modern Art Centre in Sydney in 1931.

She returned to Adelaide in 1933 and was an influential artist, both as a teacher and a pioneer of Australian modernism. Unfortunately she never achieved the widespread recognition that she deserved in her lifetime. Black died aged fifty nine when she was involved in a car accident whilst driving her blue Fiat convertible in Norwood, a suburb of Adelaide.

Black’s art is characterised by its bold and dynamic compositions, strong lines, and striking use of colour. She was known for her work in a range of mediums, including painting, printmaking, and sculpture. Black was also an advocate for the recognition of Aboriginal art and culture.

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Colour Combination

The colours for this weeks prompt are Salmon Mousse, Sand, Warm Sage, Seaweed.

For this March Challenge, please add the tag #coloritree along with the usual #coloricombo and @estemacleod and @lorisiebert.studio when posting on Instagram. You are also welcome to post on the private Facebook group Creative Prompts with Esté MacLeod.

March Challenge

This is the fourth prompt for #coloritree, part of the ongoing #coloricombo 2023 challenge. There will be ten posts in total, all linked to artworks featuring trees by female artists from the past. These will be released on Monday and Thursday until the end of March.

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“One could pick almost any painting of a doorway or window that Dodd did between 1971 and 1997, a stretch of more than twenty-five years, and quickly discern the following; all of them establish a palpable relationship between subject matter and picture plane”

-John Yau

With the research Este is doing for this March Challenge, a focus on female artists who created paintings featuring trees, she has discovered some wonderful artists that were not known to her before and she is so pleased to have discovered Lois Dodd.

Dodd (b. 1927) is an American artist who’s known for her vibrant paintings of landscapes and still lifes. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, she attended Cooper Union in New York straight after the Second World War. There she studied textile design but she painted throughout and eventually abandoned textiles altogether after graduation. She also attended the Skowhegan School in Maine then later taught at the Brooklyn College and the Skowhegan School.

In 1951, Dodd moved to Italy with the sculptor William King. When they returned to New York, they were involved in the Tanager Gallery. It remained open until 1962 and was the most influential of the cooperative galleries based around Tenth Street, attracting artists like Alex Katz, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston and Helen Frankenthaler.

Dodd’s paintings are defined by their bold use of colour and composition and they evoke a sense of joy, often due to their simplicity. She depicts everyday scenes including still lives, views from her studio and buildings and windows all whilst working quickly, often sketching a scene before the light changes. Dodd is an observational artist who worked at the time (and place) when both Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art were dominant.

Dodd has exhibited her work in numerous institutions across the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In 2012, she was the subject of a retrospective entitled Catching the Light. Dodd still paints and lives between houses in New York City and Maine.

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Colour Combination

The colours for this weeks prompt are Pale Heather, Raisin, Apple Green and Soft Mint.

For this March Challenge, please add the tag #coloritree along with the usual #coloricombo and @estemacleod and @lorisiebert.studio when posting on Instagram. You are also welcome to post on the private Facebook group Creative Prompts with Esté MacLeod.

Four Seasons

A little treat coming up, when #coloritree finishes there will be a mini-course offered in April through Este. Four Seasons is a five day course linked to the topic of trees and will run from 1-5 April with free access during the month of April. More information about this course will be released on 13 March.

We are loving all of your works.

XO