Brenda Stichter, artist

  A Real, Live Tree A Real, Live Tree is the fifth in a five painting series which tells of Christmas and of mankind at the same time. It surely falls short of this huge ideal, but the colors and techniques in each of the paintings can help to share this story.  Part of the Wordless Book piece 5 each  7" x 5" paintings mounted and framed Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on acid-free, heavy weight Fabriano watercolor paper Click here to view on my website. A week or two ago, our son invited my Beloved Husband and me to go with him to cut down a tree at a Christmas tree farm. Our family had done this for years, bringing the beautiful, fragrant tree into our home to celebrate Christmas, and he still loves this tradition. It was such a treat to be invited to go with him to find the perfect tree for his home. Walking through the lumpy field through many different varieties of evergreen trees in the cold is invigorating, and I really miss it when we don'...

All That Glitters It is said that 'All that glitters is not gold', and it seems that this saying in various forms has been around for a very long time, even predating Shakespeare. Certainly our Christmas celebrations are a good illustration of that point! I love the gold ornaments, beads, garlands and lights of Christmas decorations, and I recognize the tie to the gifts that were given to the Christ Child by the Magi - gold, frankincense, and myrrh. In fact, I think I would like to bring in more of these three elements as part of my Christmas decorating. (Though I am not sure what frankincense smells like - I wonder whether we would like it!) Part of the Wordless Book piece 5 each  7" x 5" paintings mounted and framed Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on acid-free, heavy weight Fabriano watercolor paper Click here to view on my website. In the story of the saving of humanity, that people began to see at the first Christmas, the color gold repres...

Snowy White  I have started a small Christmas series of paintings which so far includes A Lump of Coal  and Christmas Red .  Today's addition is Snowy White.  Several years ago, while I was homeschooling my kids, we started looking into photos of snowflakes taken under microscopes. Have you ever seen those photos? You should definitely google these images of incredible beauty and diversity! I am not one who would claim to love the snow, but I am always - or at least almost always - enthralled by its beauty! (It is a lot tougher to focus on the beauty of snow when travel is being hampered, I have to say...)  Part of the Wordless Book piece 5 each  7" x 5" paintings mounted and framed Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on acid-free, heavy weight Fabriano watercolor paper Click here to view on my website. In this collection of paintings about the story of Christmas / mankind, the white painting represents cleanness - the innocence that is...

Christmas Red This year I am finding the traditional Christmas colors more appealing than I do many years. I mentioned earlier this season that un usual decorations and colors are often more appealing to me, but this year seems different. Yesterday I began releasing a new series of paintings that tell the story of mankind, and the Christmas story of man's redemption. Today's painting is Christmas Red. There are so many ideas of why red has become a traditional Christmas color, but for my series, red represents the gift of redemption given by Jesus through His shed blood. One Christmas tradition that I find beautifully meaningful is that of the candy cane. The story of this tradition that I find so delightful is that of a candy maker who shaped the canes into a J shape to represent Jesus (or, alternatively, a hook to remind of the shepherds who came to see the baby Jesus) and added the red stripes to correspond to the blood He shed for us. For every person.  Part of the Wordless...

A Lump of Coal Working on a series of paintings today, I realized that the theme was the story of Christmas, and more broadly, that of mankind. I had painted a similar series in 2014, but am excited to be finding new techniques and language to express the same things. According to some stories, naughty children used to receive coal for Christmas. I tried (briefly) to look up this lore, and found that the legendary gift giver of Holland, Sinterklass (built around the image of St. Nicholas, 270-343) is said to give gifts to nice children, and his counterpart, Black Pete gives black lumps of coal to the naughty ones. Wouldn't it be interesting to learn more of this tradition? The first painting in the series is depicting man's hopelessness and load of sin. I chose to use black as my main color, and an unbalanced composition to show the feeling of weight and menace. The overpowering heaviness of the textured black brings the eye to the focal point where iridescent gold represents G...

Promise Tree  It would seem that daily prompt art challenges have come into their own in 2020. It used to be that people hadn't heard of a daily art challenge, and I participated in a bunch of them when I was first 'getting serious' about painting. Now it is not uncommon to know of someone who is producing art daily in response to prompts. It is a great way to increase skill, and to get into the habit of doing something creative every day. I keep thinking I will participate, but life and my other art pursuits keep getting in the way.  However, I saw a group of prompts lately that make me want to try again - at least to reference them now and then. The collection is called #adventwords2020 and yesterday's prompt was the word promise.  Sold 3" x 4" Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on acid-free, heavy weight Fabriano watercolor paper Ready to frame It had been quite a while since I walked in our woods, but I went this morning. It was crisp...