Brenda Stichter, artist

Let's Hang Out I thought I knew what I was going to paint when I started this painting, but it surprised me. And, just so you know, I really, really like how it turned out! But I am finding it challenging to title it.  24" x 24" Painted with artist quality heavy-body acrylic paint on 1.5” deep gallery wrapped canvas Edges painted black Click here to view on my website. This week, I am working on sending out a newsletter from my website, and maybe posting a blog post on my website for the first time in a long time, too. If you get those email newsletters,   you will see that I am tackling the idea of Artificial Intelligence and how it impacts artists - as well as people in general!  So, let's talk more about this painting. Using a cruciform composition, bright color palette, and cheerful details made an inviting and hopeful painting. As I often do, I have used metallic and fluorescent paint and a lot of textured layers to make the work interesting up close as well as a...

Backlit  Our fencerow has a lot of mature trees growing in it, and the other morning, one caught my eye. The morning sun was behind the trees, and the colors just kind of suggested themselves as groups of color with the lightest ones in the background.  4" x 4" Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on cradled wood panel Edges painted black Click here to view on my website. Last year in October I did a painting for each day of October, and it was a really good way to get into the studio and out on social media with lots of paintings. This year, I am not painting one each day, but it has been good to keep my eyes open to possibilities for more small paintings. I think these little works would be perfect in the corner of a bookshelf or as part of a centerpiece grouping of decorations. 

Suspended Landscape Modeling paste, pearlescent paint, glass bead medium, textured gesso are all part of this new landscape painting. It is so difficult to tell from the photo, but all of the paint in the "background" is white. Some is pearl white, and the pearl color sometimes photographs as a very bright white, and sometimes a gray color.  20" x 16" Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on acid-free, heavy weight Fabriano watercolor paper Ready to frame Click here to view on my website. As different as it is from many of my works, I am really liking this painting. I love the "dirty mixes" of color that would be so difficult to achieve with traditional brushwork. I used palette knives and silicone brush/blade type tools, marker caps, and various other things to achieve what I found interesting to look at. I am pleased with the light to dark variations where sunlight is suggested in the green and blue patches of color. The strong diagona...

Bright Patches My Beloved Husband and I  were   recently driving in central Indiana, and I found so much inspiration from the views out our windows! It was not even what most people would admire, I would guess, but I was mesmerized. At one point we passed some rolling farmland with a couple of harvested fields in the distance, but before I could extract my phone from my pocket, we were long past. Rats!  4" x 4" Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on cradled wood panel Edges painted black Click here to view on my website. So I have spent some time looking on the street view on my maps, but to no avail - maybe because I don't really know quite where we were when I spotted the lovely view. Since I cannot find what I am remembering, I have tried sketching it, with marginal success. And then I decided I would try painting a small painting of it, before moving ahead with a large project using the same concept.  Well, this is not really quite what I saw...

Deeper Still My return to 4" square paintings was accompanied by nervousness - it has been a while, can I still do this? Honestly, any time I am out of the studio for a while, or doing all one style of painting, I get hesitant to get back to work.  4" x 4" Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on cradled wood panel Edges painted black Click here to view on my website. I had just finished this little one and was going through some emails at the end of this work day, when I saw an opportunity to enter a competition with no entry fee. It is hosted by an art supply company with a gift card as an award, and I can always appreciate new art supplies! So I thought I would enter.  Unfortunately, the theme is eerie paintings. (You would think it is October or something.) While I certainly don't think this painting is eerie, I thought that, if someone saw it with that already in mind, they might. But then I needed to assign it a title for the competition. Wel...

Unspoken I remember, and maybe you do too, when a musician chose a new name and became "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince". He was known that way because the symbol he chose as his new name was unpronounceable - unspoken, one might say.  6" x 6" Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint with composition gold leaf on ArtBite panel Ready to frame Click here to view on my website. Romans 8:25 - 27 But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience.  In the same way the Spirit also joins to help in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with unspoken groanings . And He who searches the hearts knows the Spirit’s mind-set, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. One of the artists who I met in 2018 at the Cape Cod workshop/retreat for artists of "serious art and serious faith" had recently moved from painting representational...

Extravagant Extravagant. It is a term that many of us these days would see as almost wrong, wouldn't w e? We should be frugal. Careful. Thrifty. Probably a minimalist. 30" x 22" Painted with the finest quality heavy-body acrylic paint on acid-free, heavy weight Fabriano watercolor paper, composition gold leaf Ready to frame Click here to view on my website. Recently I was moved to tears over and over in a church service we were attending. There was a group of men  there   from a rehabilitation facility - they come almost every week - and I could see them several rows ahead of me during the whole service. I was so struck with their beautiful, awkward, exuberant worship during the songs. Most of the congregation, like me, worshiped too, but our hands were at our sides or quietly lifted, and our bodies were not moving much. At the end of the service, the most expressive of the group of men chose to follow Jesus, and he broke down weeping. His brothers immediately surrounded ...