Brenda Stichter, artist

Beauty of Holiness part a Now available at Art Gallery 317 Well, here is some exciting news, and you are the first to know! A new gallery, Art Gallery 317, is opening in Bryan, OH, and I am happy to be one of ten artists who will have work there. The gallery is in a gorgeous old house with high arched doors, curved staircases, and beautiful wood floors. The grand opening will be November 29 & 30. I hope to be there one or both of those days, and would love to see you there.  For the opening, the gallery owners chose eight of my paintings to display. I was so pleased about that, because they originally thought they would only want four pieces from me to start out. My Beloved Husband and I drove to Bryan with a car full of paintings, thinking that they could see my work in person, and choose from a large selection of work. It made my day when they chose so many pieces! As I probably mentioned before, these last couple of months have been full of family situations, travel, and adm...

Arms Wide Open It started with the word pure. That was the first thing on my canvas, and I was reacting to the idea of purity the whole time I worked on this painting. I found that, in my mind, purity and hot pink don’t typically share much common ground. Interesting. When I started working on this project, I had just finished a calligraphy grouping to be exhibited where we attend church based on Philippians 4:8. “… whatever is pure… let your mind dwell on these things…” I found myself thinking that we don’t often speak of the idea of purity in our culture, unless it is talking about spring water. Do we no longer value purity? What immediately comes to your mind when you hear that word? $1950.00 plus shipping and handling 36" x 36" Painted with artist quality heavy-body acrylic paint on 1.5” deep gallery wrapped canvas Edges painted black Click here to view or purchase on my website. When it came time to choose a color palette that would tie together the idea of purity with t...

New Every Morning #47 One more leaf painting for this autumn - unless I get another chance to find more inspiration and get into the studio! I did see a bright yellow pile of gingko leaves that tempted me to grab a few, but that was before it started raining. (Hurray for rain!)  $100.00 plus shipping and handling 6" x 6" Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on acid-free, heavy weight Fabriano watercolor paper Ready to frame Click here to view or purchase on my website. After a phone call this morning with a loved one, it is another high stress day here at my house, but I am actively trusting God for grace and peace, (1 Peter 1:2) and His mercies that are always new.  Lamentations 3:22-23 22 Because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish, for His mercies never end. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness! So I am off to try to meet today's new challenges. May the Lord's grace and peace be with you today, too! Coram Deo.

New Every Morning #46 This morning, we had heavy, blue-gray clouds bringing much needed rain to our area, and I thought it would be a perfect background for my next leaf painting. What an interesting new thing to be painting! It is kind of a still life, and kind of a floral, and whichever of those you might consider the painting to be, it is sure not my normal abstract painting.  $100.00 plus shipping and handling 6" x 6" Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on acid-free, heavy weight Fabriano watercolor paper Ready to frame Click here to view or purchase on my website. Mostly painted with a brush, I think this leaf is a pretty good companion to yesterday's palette knife leaf painting, partly because I used the same group of colors on both. I just hope the colors look right on your screen, because they are vibrant.  This weekend we are expecting a lot of hours in the vehicles as we shuffle paintings from place to place. While I wouldn't necessarily...

New Every Morning #45 New Every Morning was the title for a series I started several years ago, and I had thought I was finished with this series, but today I chose to start working on the same series again. This time, though, I have started adding more representational work to the series. The earlier part of the series is almost all abstract paintings.  $100.00 plus shipping and handling 6" x 6" Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on acid-free, heavy weight Fabriano watercolor paper Ready to frame Click here to view or purchase on my website. I walked in the woods today, and the gorgeous leaves kept me paying close attention! I brought several up to the house. The sky this morning was an amazing pink color, so I wanted to represent that as I worked on this palette knife painting of one of the leaves I brought home, too.  Lamentations 3:22-23 22 Because of the Lord’s faithful love  we do not perish,  for His mercies never end.  They are new ...

  Weight of Glory It has been absolutely too long since I have been able to release a new painting, so it brings me GREAT excitement to finally have a new one to share with you! But as usual, I wish you could see it in person.  2 Corinthians 4:17 For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory .  $1300.00 plus shipping and handling 48" x 18" Painted with artist quality heavy-body acrylic paint on 1.5” deep gallery wrapped canvas, composition gold leaf Edges painted black Click here to view or purchase on my website. I started working on this painting probably in August, and it was finished in early October. I loved painting the full earlier layers using limited colors that I seldom paint with. I had packed all of my regular colors to take a workshop, so I chose to start this one with less familiar colors. A pleasing but complex pattern began taking shape, and I wanted to tame it while still allowing the beauty to s...

The Power of Hope, 2023. In a corporate collection Well, I have so many things to tell you! I have been busy, though I have only gotten back to painting in the last couple of days. I have one on the easel that I love, and I can hardly wait to finish it and show it to you. (And then, on to a whole bunch more that are already under way.) This month the Artists Magazine special edition featuring the Best of Acrylic winners (also known as AcrylicWorks 11) is in the bookstores, and I visited Barnes & Noble to look for it, because I have a painting that was chosen! Do you  remember The Power of Hope from the Hope Project that I worked on last year for a local hospital? It sure made my day to find the magazine there, and to find my painting inside! Fear Not Little Flock As you might remember from way back in August, my painting Fear Not Little Flock was juried into the International Acrylic Biennial Exhibition. I feel so honored to have this piece in that show, and it will hang in ...

Offering, 2016 Will be available in my upcoming solo exhibit "The best-laid schemes of mice and men Go oft awry," This quote from the Robert Burns poem  "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November, 1785" sure seems apt for this summer! How has your summer gone? Have things gone as expected for you? But I will return to that conversation in a few minutes. First, I want to share that I have been invited to have a solo exhibit in the Indianapolis area for the month of October, and I would love to have you see it. The announcement on my website  can be seen here, and I have also made a Facebook event for those who follow my social media. There will be a r eception on Friday,  October 11 from  6:00 - 8:00 at the Off Broadway Gallery, South Side Art League, 299 E Broadway, Greenwood, Indiana 46143 Substance of Things Hoped For, 2018 The exhibit will feature both older and newer paintings, many of them award winning works, and sizes from 2.5"...

My Boyfriend's Back My Boyfriend's Back (and You're Gonna Be in Trouble)  Do you remember this song from the Chiffons? I think it was from the 50s or the 60s. I chose this unlikely title because (drum roll please)  Finally! My Beloved Husband is home from a week and a half in Paraguay, South America, and I am so glad he's home! My plan was to be very productive in the studio while he was away, but alas, I think the Muse went to South America with him. I was productive in the sense of putting gesso on canvases, studying art from other artists, rearranging and organizing tools and studio space... But while I did have studio time every day, and I now have probably 10 starts on paintings, I could not bring anything to the point where I was even kind of happy with my progress.  160.00 plus shipping and handling 8" x 10" Painted with artist quality heavy-body acrylic paint on acid-free, heavy weight Fabriano watercolor paper Ready to frame Click here to view or purc...

Trying to Get All My Ducks in a Row This coming week I am planning to do an artist residency, of sorts, which will be a little like a "stay-cation". I am hoping for minimal cooking, cleaning, and computer time, and a LOT of painting. $2000.00 plus shipping and handling 36" x 36" Painted with artist quality heavy-body acrylic paint on 1.5” deep gallery wrapped canvas Edges painted black Click here to view or purchase on my website. When I texted a photo of this painting to one of my art mentors (kind of), he said, "... too many little squares..." , and when someone saw it in person, they said, "I love the little squares!" Clearly, art is subjective!  Psalm 91:12  Teach us to number our days carefully  so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts. This painting is so different from most of my work, and I really like how it came out - so much so that I have already "painted" a companion piece for it in my head. Now I just need to get myself...

Some Glad Morning On one of my morning walks, I took a photo of this wild rose with a few tightly closed buds. I loved the darker foreground with the brightly lit distant view. I decided I wanted to try to paint the scene using a palette knife on a wood panel, and I loved playing with the design of the painting. $240.00 plus shipping and handling 12" x 9" Painted with artist quality heavy-body acrylic paint on wood panel Black floater frame Click here to view or purchase on my website. Maybe you recognize where the title for this work comes from. There is a joy-filled hymn (or gospel song) called I'll Fly Away, and these are the opening words. It is a song that many love to sing, and it has such delightful harmonies, but it is a song with a message that may surprise some.  Here are the full lyrics: Some Glad Morning When This Life Is O'er, I’ll Fly Away; To A Home On God’s Celestial Shore, I’ll Fly Away. Chorus: I’ll Fly Away, O Glory, I’ll Fly Away; When I Die, Hall...

This Little Light of Mine I started This Little Light of Mine as a demo for a recent workshop I taught. It has changed dramatically, which is not uncommon for my paintings as I build layer upon layer.  $290.00 plus shipping and handling 12" x 12" Painted with artist quality heavy-body acrylic paint on 1.5” deep gallery wrapped canvas Edges painted black Click here to view or purchase on my website.  As you can see, the composition of the painting includes so many similar shapes that overlap and interfere with one another. My intent was to make each shape interesting with color, marks, occasional sparkle, and interaction with other shapes. At the same time, I wanted to direct the eye of the viewer to one area more than the others – the focal point of the painting. In this area of the painting, there is a combination of the purest colors as well as the highest level of contrast between bright and dark. In my opinion, the focal area of the painting draws the eye from a distance,...

Showers & Fireflies This week, I have had several rejections to art competitions. I don’t usually tell about that, but this time something surprising happened. In a local competition, my two abstract works were rejected, and the small plein air painting of a barn was accepted! This is just WAY outside of normal for me. So I have decided to share one of the paintings that was not accepted, called Showers & Fireflies. It is actually a painting that I really like, so it is even more difficult for me to accept that it didn’t make it into the exhibit. Click here for the original blog post about it. $1400.00 plus shipping and handling 36" x 24" Painted with artist quality heavy-body acrylic paint on canvas, framed in a floater frame Click here to view or purchase on my website. Also this week I have been working on several paintings, including the one I did as a demo in my abstract workshop a week or two ago. I wanted to try to keep it so that it was obviously the same work...

A Kiddley Divey "Do you have any ideas for a title for this one?" I asked my Beloved Husband, when he got home after work. "Yes," he said, and he started trying to remember the words to the ditty Mairzy Doats . Do you remember that playful take on a nursery rhyme? I remember my Mother singing it to my siblings and me when we were small.  Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?* $1350.00 plus shipping and handling 30" x 30" Painted with artist quality heavy-body acrylic paint on 1.5” deep gallery wrapped canvas Edges painted black Click here to view or purchase on my website. The work started out with the same concept as many of this year's paintings have - "Fear Not". One of the earliest layers had the words Fear Not, and there were a lot of colors and shapes that came to my brush as I worked out some of what was on my mind. There is a LOT of texture, and swatches of iridescent and metallic pa...

Freedom, 2021 Click here for original blog post In honor of the 248th commemoration of the Declaration of Independence being adopted by Congress, I want to share these red(ish), white(ish) and blue(ish) paintings with you. I am glad to live in this great country that has been blessed by God in so many ways over the years. I am thankful for the good things that are part of my life because of these blessings.  40" x 30" Painted with artist quality heavy-body acrylic paint on 1.5” deep gallery wrapped canvas Click here to purchase or view on my website. Do you remember this painting from a few years back? It is one of my few red paintings. I bet you could tell that red is not one of my favorite colors! Galatians 5:1 It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.  White, 2014. For my white painting, I am going way back to 2014. This painting is not even on my website at the moment, though you can read the...

This Little Gem You might have heard other artists say that sometimes a painting just sneaks up and surprises them or that it tells them what to do next and lets them know when it is finished. Well, this one is pretty close to that kind of painting.  $130.00 plus shipping and handling 8" x 8" Painted with artist quality heavy-body acrylic paint on 1.5” deep gallery wrapped canvas Edges painted black Click here to view or purchase on my website. I have been trying to pay attention to elegant composition more often, or at least to using composition in a non-academic way. Part of my practice in that area has been to study other artists work and read more about composition from older sources. I have been examining all kinds of paintings from landscape and portrait art to abstraction and even calligraphy and commercial art. I have to admit, I love these studies!  Several times in the last few days I have run across the idea that end results are not my responsibility, but faithfuln...

Gentle Shore, 2014 Click here for original blog post Well, this June is flying past, and I am slipping a little bit on my art goals, but what fabulous other opportunities I have had! I will hope for a chance to catch up on my paintings in the coming months, but am enjoying time with family and other summer experiences.  So, while I tell you a little about one of those great times, I will share a couple of older works that you may not have seen, or you might not remember.  Gentle Shore, 2014 11" x 14" Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on acid-free, heavy weight Fabriano watercolor paper Ready to frame Click here to view or purchase on my website. Offering, 2016 Click here for original blog post About a month ago, or a little more, our Beloved Daughter invited us to go as a family to a woodworking school for a carving workshop. Well, to be more exact, she invited her brother and her dad to do the workshop, and invited me to come along for the ride, so to ...