Small-Art Compendium

Violet 4" x 4" Oil on panel It's pretty, yet I'm looking for interesting . Or, maybe I'm too close to these and they are already interesting. Dunno. I really like them though. I sense I need to let loose, get more abstract with them and perhaps more brushwork. Onwards.

Pale Bloom 4" x 4" Oil on panel Another step on the floral journey. A little more 3D thanks to a heavier paint application and more obvious palette knife work.

Yellow Wisps 4" x 4" Oil on panel They seem so fragile, delicate. The blue/green wash in the background of this series of floral paintings feels luscious -- as was the paint used to make it. It's a tube of phthalo blue/green by Rembrandt and is juicy, slick and transparent. Very nice to work with.

Flowers of Sancerre 6" x 9" Oil on panel SOLD A few years ago, I was invited to study with artist and now friend, Jeff Legg in France. This little piece was created standing in a field of flowers outside the town of Sancerre in the Loire Valley. What a gorgeous day of plein air painting!

Scarlet Buds 6" x 6" Oil on panel SOLD Over the past few years, I get in the mood to paint flowers in the spring and summer. I keep experimenting with different techniques, styles, mediums, formats, etc.-- all in the search to find my voice in the world of painted flowers. I don't feel I've fully found that voice, yet I really like the experiments in their own right. What I like about this is that it feels more like a portrait. I like the gestural quality of the "pose", if you will. It says something more to me than just the flower -- so that's a positive step forward on the floral journey. It's definitely more on the realism side than previous floral attempts, yet it still has that loose palette-knife quality I love so much (the background is done with a brush). Most of my older floral paintings were heavy impasto, so the thinness of this one is intriguing to me. I did a series of these that I'll post over the next while. The search continues....

Another collage still life. I love the fiddling, the piecing of things together with collage. In painting, it's the freedom and movement that engages me, so I'm fascinated that I find the opposite so much fun too.

Winter Farm 8" x 8" Oil on canvas SOLD Recently, one of my galleries asked if I would consider doing paintings of barns (or rather, landscapes with barns in them) and I happily said yes. "Winter Farm" was the first one I did for a December Small Paintings Show a few years ago and it sold the first night. Ever since, I've been wanting to paint more. And now, I have a great opportunity to explore what I want to say in all things "Barn." I'm excited!

I LOVE mixed-media works and collage. I fool around with them when I'm not painting, and in those times where I just want to work with something other than paint. On this piece, I used hand-painted roofing paper with acrylics and watercolor paint to accent. It's on an Ampersand multimedia panel and sealed with acrylic medium. I am definitely no great collage artist, but I have the bug! I will continue to experiment. To view some truly great collages, check out the following links: Randel Plowman's, A Collage A Day Collage Artists List Cecil Touchon

Fields Beyond 6" x 8" Oil on linen panel $500 This little painting certainly falls into one of my enduring motifs: a huge sky over a vast area of land or water. I love the grandeur of a big sky, the sense of awe and I strive to make the viewer feel like they are on the edge of that vista, taking it all in. For that to be effective, because the subject itself is so big, I like to keep the painting simple. My personal aesthetic leans towards minimalism and simplicity in art -- and well, everything really. And everything includes poetry. Another of my passions is writing tiny, minimal poems that I post on my blog, Noodle . "Fields Beyond" inspired the following little poem: blue paint against the whole sky words are puny

Storm Over Taos 10" x 10" Oil on canvas One of my favorite places on the planet and a continual source of inspiration is northern New Mexico, specifically Taos. Wes (my husband) and I travel to Taos & Santa Fe fairly regularly to paint and visit with other artist friends and we always come back with a trunk filled with wet paintings.

This painting was one of those that just fly off the knife -- spontaneous, fun, energetic. It is now sold and awaiting a coat of varnish before it gets sent off to its new owner. City Rain 3" x 5" Oil on panel SOLD

Like most artists, I dislike being pigeon-holed, but I have to admit that I am primarily known as a palette-knife oil painter. They are my favorite tool by far and oil is my favorite medium...but, I enjoy working in other ways too. Here's me slinging paint with a knife at a demo last month at Abend Gallery . I successfully managed to NOT get paint all over the gallery or anyone watching -- which I usually do as I'm a messy painter -- and the painting is now in Abend Gallery's current annual landscape show. The finished piece, "Nocturne in Green" can be seen on my main website here . It was a fun day and I wish I had my new cute haircut by then (oh well). I'll be doing another demo there sometime in August. Once I nail down the date, I'll post it here.

My main portfolio site, Nicole Hyde Fine Art has finite image space that I use for my larger works, so I needed a place where I could post more images and to share my experience with individual paintings, process, inspirations, or techniques. My other site is a whiz-bang professional portfolio website hosted by Fine Art Studio Online (which I highly recommend), and I feel like that's the big-girl place -- here, I want to let loose a little. Some know that I have had (and still do) several blogs, so I'm comfortable with this format. What I'm not totally comfortable with is writing about painting. Over the years, I have tended to just post images and leave it at that. It's certainly minimal, which I favor, but not very interactive. Already I'm twitching at the number of "I's" in this post. This is a new part of my journey and I'm actually quite nervous about it. Over the next while, I'll be tinkering with templates, so the look may change unex...