Seated figure model drawing

Pencil on paper, 11 x 14
Email: marie@mariefox.com

Figure lying down, drawing, pencil on paper

Figure drawing, pencil on paper, 11 x 14
SOLD to a collector in North Carolina
marie@mariefox.com

Thus far in my figure drawing class, I've been drawing by observation, rather than by knowledge of anatomy. Eventually, I'd like the anatomical structure of the body to inform my drawings, along with observation of what's on the surface. To that end, I've been studying from a set of CD's called "The Structure of Man - Learn to draw the human figure from your mind". The author, Riven Phoenix, approaches drawing of the human form as an imaginative exercise, as if the artist is inventing the figure from scratch. His is a novel approach which I hope will improve my understanding of the human figure.

Oil painting of woman at beach; figurative art, self-potrait

Oil on Canvas, 24" x 20" - $500  
SOLD to a collector in California

Email: marie@mariefox.com

Twenty years ago I painted myself in this pose, wearing a pink bikini. To create a "self-portrait" for my painting challenge group, I added my right hand holding a book and invented the beach scene. Soon the painting became a story, it seemed, about someone else. She's at the beach in her red bikini. She was reading, but her book has dropped back to rest against her leg. She's probably daydreaming, as one does at the beach. And there's that guy just beyond the top edge of her book. And a sailboat racing by. And it's summer...

Drawing of woman, charcoal

Pencil on paper, 14" x 11"
Email: marie@mariefox.com

Pencil Drawing: Woman Seated on Stool

Figure drawing, charcoal on paper, 14" x 11"
Email: marie@mariefox.com

Happy news! My painting Sounds of the Sea was just accepted for a juried exhibit, California Open Exhibition, at TAG Gallery in Santa Monica, California. The show runs from August 19- September 5. (Click title or scroll down page to see the painting.) This city was home to me for five years, and I'm very pleased that my art will be traveling from New England to pay a visit. Hey, those girls might just take off for the nearby beach and ditch that shell. Why not listen to the real waves....and splash in them!

Figurative art, woman on elbow

Pencil on paper, 11 x 14
marie@mariefox.com

Jim Dine quote about drawing:
… I knew drawing was essential to me. It kept alive the need I had for family. It gave me a line of tradition that led me back to artists I admired, not just Rembrandt and Picasso, Matisse and Degas, but others who are dismissed but who gave their lives to drawing.

Standing figure model, drawing in pencil

I bought a fabulous drawing book recently called "Classic Human Anatomy" by Valerie Winslow. The author is a skilled artist with an encyclopedic knowledge of human anatomy. Really, an unusual combination. She presents the anatomical information in great detail but always with the artist, not the medical student, in mind. I absolutely love this book and am slowly working my way through it.

11 x 14, pencil on paper
marie@mariefox.com

Sounds of the Sea, figurative oil painting, 24" x 30", two women & sea shell, Italian landscape & interior, almost nude females

Sounds Of The Sea, Oil on canvas, 24" x 36" Not For Sale

Email: marie@mariefox.com

Click image to view larger.
This painting won First Prize at The TAG Gallery Open Exhibition 2009

I loved painting this big (for me) canvas of figures. It was fun including some small still life scenes at the edges of the scene, and using essentially monochromatic colors. Somehow the idea came to me to paint the standing figure listening to the ocean in a shell. So I made the landscape out the window rural, suggesting that the sea is far away.

Figure model seated on pillow, pencil drawing

Here the model is leaning on an unseen support while sitting on a folded pillow. Some parts of this drawing have a solidity I'm happy with.
Paper on pencil, 11 x 14
marie@mariefox.com

'Asleep' pencil drawing

Pencil Drawing, 11" x 14"  
SOLD to a collector in New York

Email: marie@mariefox.com

I recently returned to my first love (in art)- the human figure. The sketches I'll post over the next days are from a drawing class. The model poses nude, but here I caught her sleeping during a break.

"Where We Are": large figurative oil painting, women at beach, colorful

Oil on Canvas, 40" x 30" $2400 SOLD to a collector in Vermont

Email: marie@mariefox.com

Details of Image Below

This is the first large figurative painting I've ever done. It took months and endured many incarnations, but it is in the end the start of something new for me. I've always loved figure drawing and am trying to apply to figures what I've learned doing still life paintings.

The inspiration for this painting was three life-size drawings I did of myself a few decades ago. I had sat on the floor in front of a large mirror, looking, drawing then getting back into the pose. What interested me was the architecture of the body, the way the torso and limbs embraced space.

For the painting, I combined the three drawings into a single composition, and made the bodies and faces different from me and each from the other. I like the mixed perspectives which remind me of the folk art I painted for 15 years (www.mariefox.com). And the colors seem to work. On to the next...

Red Shoes: still life square oil painting by daily artist, colorful

"The Red Shoes", 12 x 12, oil on canvas
$120 Plus $8.95 shipping
SOLD to a collector in Rhode Island

Carrots, Coffee & Orange: oil painting 12" x 12" square, fruit & vegetable still life, kitchen art, coffee mug, orange and blue, Marie Fox

Oil on Canvas, 12" x 12"

$120 plus Priority Mail shipping SOLD

Email: marie@mariefox.com

This is one of those paintings that just happened....and I'm happy with it. It seems playful, a good thing. The photo sent the colors in a cool direction. The yellows are really less green and the cup more lavender.

Three Eggplants: Colorful oil painting still life of garden vegetables

"Huddled Eggplants"
Oil on canvas, 11" x 14" $120 - SOLD
Marie Fox

Three Yellow Roses, oil painting, still life of turqoise vases, bowl of oranges, fruit, contemporary women painters

Oil on canvas, 24" x 30" SOLD to a collector in Laugharne, Wales
Email: marie@mariefox.com

My self-appointed challenge here was to balance a group of cool colored blue and turquoise vases against a strong hit of orange in the fruits. Separating and connecting these areas was the cloth which is also a warm color and different texture from the reflective vases. Although I never really altered the composition while painting, I did experiment a lot with the background colors until I came up with these. Big paintings are great because they're very demanding and I feel I can really 'get into them'...kind of like climbing into them. Oil paint is a lusciously physical thing...and working big means more connection with it, more manipulation and play.

Soldier Boy, Please Don't Go

Oil on Board, 8 x 10
$90 plus $8.95 insured shipping via Priority Mail SOLD

Valentine Flowers: Square oil painting still life of Gerber daisies, heat, blue glass vase, colorful orange & blue

Oil on canvas, 12" x 12
$140 plus $8.95 shipping
email: marie@mariefox.com SOLD

This still life set-up seemed to fit perfectly in a square format so I chose a 12" x 12" canvas. I like the simple shapes and strong colors of this Valentine painting. The pewter plate was made by my mother when she was a girl. Ten years ago, she asked an appraiser to give a value to her household belongings for insurance reasons. When he picked up the pewter plate, she kept quiet as he inspected it carefully. "Most likely 17th century," he announced. She enjoyed her little secret. For me, it was fun to incorporate her art in mine...and the pewter plate was the perfect backdrop for the orange flowers.

Blue Vase & Fruit

Oil on Canvas, 30" x 24"
Email: marie@mariefox.com
$1500 plus shipping SOLD to a collector in Massachusetts

I seem to have a love for fabric, and have a feeling that I'll be creating a series of paintings that focus on the folds and textures of draped cloth. I find this subject luxurious. Maybe it's because I spent many years hand-dyeing silk which I then fabricated into clothing of my own design. It sold well in designer boutiques but after a while I wanted to move onto the next project - high fashion leather belts. Sewing leather was amazing. Such a different feel from the silk, and just as much fun. So it's no wonder that fabric is the landscape I love to paint - the hills and valleys, light and shadow, paths in and out and around.

A goal of this painting was to subdue most of the colors in order for the turquoise and orange to stand out and draw the viewer's attention. It took great restraint on my part to keep the main colors neutral. I'm crazy about color and find it hard to hold back on my use of them in all their glorious intensity. I do like the way this painting turned out.

Spanish Dancer: 18" x 24" oil painting, colorful tile on linen napkin, green apple

Oil on canvas, 18" x 24"
My Email: marie@mariefox.com
SOLD to a collector in Massachusetts

Finally I tried a bigger canvas than my usual 6" x 6" and 8" x 10" ones. It was somewhat intimidating to set a large blank canvas on my easel. But by the time I'd finished setting up the scene I was eager to paint. I'm happy for the hours spent on this painting. However my camera did not quite catch the colors of the completed painting. Isn't that often the story? We struggle to create just the perfect color relationships which are then often lost in the photo or the upload to the blog. Anyway, off to find another big canvas.

Green Apple & Red Napkin: Small square daily oil painting of fruit, green and red

Oil on Canvas, 8" x 8"
$100 plus Priority Shipping $7.95
Email: marie@mariefox.com

I loved trying to capture the sense of the apple within the folds of the red napkin. I'm happy with the composition and colors here. The actual painted colors seem brighter than my photo. With all the differences between monitors and computers, it's difficult to get colors just right in a photo.

Tube of Orange Oil Paint

Oil on Canvas, 6" x 6"
$120 plus Priority Mail shipping of $7.95 SOLD
Email: marie@mariefox.com

Often I rush into a painting just to see something on the canvas. Naturally, I'm not often pleased with the results. This time I decided to draw the subject first on the canvas. I love drawing and it helps me with seeing the bones of the subject - in this case, a tube of oil paint. I'm happy with this little painting because although it's very realistic, I spent a lot of time considering the abstract aspects of the still life. And the colors turned out nicely.

Dance Class

Drawing on paper, collage 16" x 20" - SOLD to a collector in Vermont
Email: marie@mariefox.com

Dance Class is a drawing-collage I created a few years ago in response to a class assignment requiring multiple figures in a single composition. Since I had no models, I imagined and drew dancers in a mirrored studio. Before starting the drawing, I ripped up newsprint and glued it randomly on Bristol board to create a surface irregularity. I then drew the imagined figures in a box-like space (opened visually by the mirror) using graphite, color pencil and watercolor. My drawing of the dancers was kind of clunky, but I like the texture of this piece, its lack of sharp clarity and its sense of jumbled parts.

Dreaming and Drawing

Drawing on paper, 16" x 20"
Email: marie@mariefox.com

I've been thinking about what it is I feel passionate about that makes me want to paint or draw. In my last post, I mentioned that pears remind me of my interest in human figures. So I thought I'd post this drawing I did several years ago in a class. The assignment was simply "twins". I had no clue how I was going to fulfill the assigned task so I simply started drawing my friend as he himself was drawing. A while later, he lay down on the couch for a nap...and the idea of twins came to me - of consciousness and unconsciousness, the conscious and subconscious, dreaming and waking. What I like best is the link between dreaming and creativity, the incubation of an idea versus its creation or execution. I know I've had some of my best artistic ideas while in that state just before awaking. In the drawing, I emphasized the diagonal line between the sleeping-dreaming head along the arm to the hand that is drawing. I love it when these wonderful juxtapositions happen!

Besides the "twins" content of the drawing, I like the subject of the human form. If only I could find someone to model for me....other than a pear!

Lemon In A Blue Envelope

Oil on Canvas, 6" x 6"
$100 plus Shipping of $7.95 via priority mail
Email: marie@mariefox.com
I can't imagine what this lemon was thinking when it tried to hide in this too-small envelope. What appealed to me about these two objects was the smooth, spherical nature of the fruit in contrast to the creased old envelope with its purple stamp. The contrast-pull of the complementary colors of stamp and lemon caught my eye too. There's something about the paper wrapping the fruit that I find oddly appealing. Anyway, I find this still life playful...and it was fun to paint.

Blue Creamer & Two Lemons

Oil on Canvas, 14" x 11"
SOLD

Single Pear on Red

Oil on Canvasboard, 7" x 5"
$80 plus Priority Mail Shipping of $7.95
Please email me: marie@mariefox.com

At last I'm painting again, although I'm now 3000 miles away from my home studio. But pears, paints and canvas grow everywhere!

Three Olives on Blue. 12 x 12

Oil on Linen, 12" x 12"
$180 plus $12.95 shipping via insured Priority Mail SOLD
Please email me to purchase.
International shipping: please email me.
Email: marie@mariefox.com

Here's another set of three olives. Same models, but with a different color scheme. It's fun working with the same subject matter. Repetition makes me try to see the olives differently each time.

Three Olives on Pink

Oil on Linen, 12" x 12"
$245 plus $12.95 shipping via insured Priority Mail
SOLD to a collector in California

I've taken up painting olives again, but this time they're bigger than life-size. I've always loved painting larger than life because changing scale makes me see the object differently. Also when things are larger, I can explore them as abstractions rather than precious little objects. Hmmm, guess I should just keep painting and see what happens. Sometimes it's difficult to talk about art. Best to just make more of it.

Copper, Apple and Book

Oil on Linen, 6" x 6"
$100 plus $5.95 shipping via Priority Mail SOLD
Please email me to purchase.
International shipping: please email me.
Email: marie@mariefox.com

Lemon Slices on Napkin: fruit still life, kitchen art, lemons, wedges on linen napkin

Oil on Linen, 6" x 6"
$100 plus $7.95 shipping via Priority Mail
Email: marie@mariefox.com
More fruit slices, this time sitting on a linen napkin I bought long ago because I liked the little holes where threads have been drawn out. This painting pairs nicely with the limes on a book. Just perfect for a kitchen!

Three Limes and Book

Oil on Linen, 6" x 6"
$75 plus $10 shipping via Priority Mail SOLD
Email: marie@mariefox.com
I love the shapes of these lime wedges and the book creates some nice diagonals.

Three Apple Slices

Oil on Linen, 6" x 6" SOLD
Email: marie@mariefox.com
Apple slices are always fun to paint. They're like little boats scooting about on a lake. Hmm, I must be thinking about summer.

Egg on Open Book

Oil on Linen, 6" x 6" - SOLD
$130 plus $7.95 shipping via Priority Mail

Silver Jar and Rose

Oil on Linen, 12" x 12"
$340 plus $9.95 shipping via Priority Mail SOLD to a collector in Hawaii
Email: marie@mariefox.com

Red roses & Letters: square oil painting 12 x 12 flowers in cream pitcher, desk still life reds and blues

Oil on Canvas, 12" x 12"
$275 plus $9.95 shipping via Priority Mail  SOLD
Email: marie@mariefox.com
I'm currently intrigued by flat shapes such as postcards and letters leading the eye into the painting. The colors feel new to me...which pleases me. I like the darkness of this painting whose objects are lighted from the back. And the roses seem to add just the right amount of intense color and focus.

Rose, Lime & Card, 9 x 11 still life original oil painting fruit flower saucer, home decor daily painting

Oil on Linen, 11" x 9"
$200 plus $9.95 Priority Mail shipping to U.S.  Donated to a Charity that helps young women
International buyers: please email me
Email: marie@mariefox.com
And the lime makes its appearance once more. I like the darker colors of this painting. Oddly, I began this painting by deciding what kind of shapes I wanted to paint, and then found the objects that best suited the shapes and lines. The object that determined the color scheme was the art postcard behind the dish. My grandmother had sent it to me when I was twelve, and for some wonderful reason, I found it recently. So magical to read her words to me. So maybe I added the rose because of that.

Lime & Fork: small square oil painting still life, daily art on canvas, 6 x 6

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Oil on Linen, 6" x 6"
$130 plus $5.95 shipping via Priority Mail SOLD
Email: marie@mariefox.com

Teal Vintage Creamer & Limes: square oil painting, lime wedges slices, fruit, kitchen art, still life

Oil on Linen, 8" x 8" SOLD
$150 plus $5.95 shipping via Priority Mail
International shipping: please email me.
Email: marie@mariefox.com

Lime Slices & Saucer

Oil on Linen, 6" x 6" - SOLD
$100 plus $5.95 shipping via Priority Mail
International shipping: please email me.
Email: marie@mariefox.com

As always, I love to paint fruit wedges. This time I chose limes for their color and tried to play up their translucent nature by placing them near dark reds.

Pencil & Sharpener

Oil on Linen, 6" x 6"
$100 plus $7.95 shipping via Priority Mail SOLD
Email: marie@mariefox.com

Watermelon Slices Oil Painting: fruit, 11 x 14 still life, vintage towel red and green

Oil on Linen, 14" x 11" SOLD
$290 plus $7.95 Priority Mail shipping to U.S.
International shipping: please email me
Email: marie@mariefox.com
Yesterday at the market, the gorgeously red interior of half a watermelon grabbed my eye. At home I noticed that the color became even more vibrant when I set the fruit slices on this towel of green, blue and bluish-red squares. So off to the studio we all went - to make art.

Roses & Degas Laundress Postcard: pink flowers in green vintage syrup pitcher, still life oil painting

Oil on Canvas, 11" x 14"
$195 plus $8 shipping via in US  SOLD
International shipping: please email me.
Email: marie@mariefox.com

More roses from my yard. This time I set them in a vintage green syrup pitcher - or maybe it's a creamer. It anchors down a card I've long treasured, of Degas' drawing/pastel called The Laundress. I've always loved her expression. She looks up from her ironing as if she has just spotted the viewer. I'm happy with this painting.

Comment by email: Hi Marie, Your painting is magnificent! You have inspired me to do paintings featuring a Matisse and this same degas painting that I have always loved. Jane

Glass Vase of Pink Roses & Flower Clippers, still life oil painting 11 x 14, rose cutters

Oil on Canvas, 11" x 14" - SOLD to a collector in Vermont
$375 plus $7.95 shipping via Priority Mail
International shipping: please email me.
Email: marie@mariefox.com

In this painting I had to work hard to stay in control. The beauty of the flowers was overwhelming, tempting me to record every luscious little detail. So I went for a simplified color scheme and strong lights and darks. I'm especially happy with the clippers.

Pear on Matisse Art Book: 11 x 14 oil still life painting, dancers fruit on saucer colorful daily art realism

Oil on Canvas, 14" x 11"
SOLD
Email: marie@mariefox.com

This was a fun painting because I loved the subject - a pear on a plate set on the back of my Matisse book. I even included the bar code as a spot of color. It was a wonderful exercise to follow the lines of these dancing figures by Matisse.

Sugar Bowl & Spoon: 8 x 10 small oil painting on canvas, sterling silver spoon, kitchen art, pottery bowl daily art

Oil on Canvas, 10" x 8" - SOLD
$190 plus $5.95 shipping via Priority Mail
Email: marie@mariefox.com