Welcome to the final day of the 33 Paintings in 33 Days Project of Alaskan artist  Nikki Kinne and Wisconsin artist Helen Klebesadel.  I cannot believe the thirty-third day has  come so quickly. This has been an amazing experience.

For her final painting in the series Nikki stayed close to home.  Sometimes the best subjects are just outside our front door.  This was a quick study of wonderful lily flowers from Nikki’s yard.  When Nikki lets go of her inclination to do photo-realism, and moves into a more expressive mode she creates dynamic expressions.  Nikki says of this approach that when she tries to just ” grab for a gut response it seems my paintings have more life in them.”    She wants both the satisfaction and control she can achieve with photo-realism, AND the dynamic expression possible when responding with spontaneity to a subject.  Nikki wants then BOTH, and I do too.  What a wonderful celebration of painting for our final day in this project!

My final painting is my largest to date and it builds upon my earlier studies of waterlilies.  I had a wonderful time shaping the pedals and creating surface textures on the surface that disguised the twining stems below the surface.   I hope you enjoy looking at the painting even half as much as I enjoyed painting it.

This has been an amazing experience for me.  The commitment to daily painting is something I have promoted for years but all to often it was a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do suggestion.  Having committed to this process and received the grace and benefit of the experience I know that I will continue this commitment on my own for as long as I can manage.

Additionally Nikki and I are planning to develop a two-person art exhibition of larger new works that we will be creating over the next year around a shared theme.  We will be checking in with each other at least monthly to see how our work is progressing and to share ideas back and forth in a way  that we hope will make the new collaborative project every bit as fulfilling and successful as this one has been.

I’m a great one for reflection and review of where I’ve been as I think about where I am going next.  I couldn’t resist putting up all of  the thirty-three paintings I’ve created over the last month and three days to see what I had accomplished.

Here is a closer view that shows you the sizes of works in relation to each other.

And another…

Thank you to everyone who accompanied Nikki Kinne and I on this project.  Knowing you joined us made our experience all the better.  And, thank you to Nikki Kinne for saying ‘yes’ to this project and to living fully in this world as an artist.  Its a pleasure painting with you!

All of my paintings for this project are (or soon will be) be found on my art facebook page and available works for sale can be found in my Meylah Marketplace on-line store.  You can learn more about Nikki Kinnes painting and find artworks she has availabel for sale on her artist website.

Thank you.