Iskra Fine Art

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New Forest Card Designs and Sketching the Future

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Black and White Windows Sketchbook

The New Year has come in with a roar of ice, snow, rain and broken pipes. It seemed fitting to learn to mix the colors of January, although washing paint out of my brushes has been difficult with frozen pipes! Above is the first spread of my new industrial sketchbook, through which I hope to learn to paint some of my many obsessions: backs of trucks, kiosks, factories and scaffolds and the ever changing sky which they reflect. To move myself from the digital world fully into the work of paint I have joined the #InsightCreative30DayChallenge2024, brilliantly guided by Cheryl Taves. I met Cheryl about 4 years ago when I visited her studio with friends on Vancouver Island. Her studio and process was a revelation, and I knew I wanted to continue a connection. Through her coaching at Insight Creative, the Sketchbook Challenge brings together artists from all over the world to create audience and accountability for taking risks and finding ones own vision. [Read more…]

From One Tree: Botanical Watercolor Paintings as Fine art Greeting Cards

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Laurel leaves watercolor

“From One Tree”, A new offering from The Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena

Before the Gardener moved onto land with a house she spent many years in a brick tower in the city. There her rooms were lit by the changing colors of the Sycamores outside the windows. Summers were dark, with a heavy cast of green oxide. Autumn showered the walls with gold, and in winter the air became blue.

The apartment building shared one side with an alley and here, on her daily walks, the Gardener began to notice unusual leaves scattered in the mud. The leaves were mottled with curious patterns and glowed with ruby, burgundy and lime. They seemed to have fallen from an ordinary laurel hedge, but all the other laurels in the neighborhood were monotonously dull and one color of green. She picked up one leaf and then another, and soon she was a collector, arriving each day to her rooms with pockets filled with fragile specimens. [Read more…]

The Wabi Sabi Suite of New Botanical Cards and Upcoming Shows

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Summerlight Botanical Card

 

Everything is in flux in late February, not quite winter, not yet spring. The juncos still sit on top of the echinacea forgetting December’s snows and pecking vainly for seeds. The willows hang above the water’s edge remembering autumn, and the wild plum cannot wait for the warm winds that bring spring’s color and perfumes. A new set of cards from the Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena is out today and available in my shop. I am calling this set of images The Wabi Sabi Suite, in recognition of the sense of impermanence that colors February’s mood.

The images were originally made as transfer prints using my original paintings or photographs printed onto rag paper with a solvent. The process is unpredictable and brings a granular texture and soft irregular edges to the images. “Wild Plum” is particularly soft and dreamy, as its original source was a 40 yearold film photograph with the distinctive soft focus only film can create. If you are interested in the large size of Summerlight, it is framed in maple and available from my studio. A very limited edition of 3, of which one is left, the image is 16 x 21 on a sheet of 30 x 22 Arches 88.

 

Summerlight in FrameSummerlight, available from my studio

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The Hellebore Suite: New Botanical Prints and Cards from Iskra

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New, from the Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena, The Hellebore Suite, available as prints and blank greeting cards.

The Meadow, archival pigment print landscape by Iskra

The hellebore is a complicated flower. Appearing in late winter, it rises up from drifts of snow and bracken, with leaves that unfold like carved marble. The blossoms hang from delicate arched stems, often hidden in shadow. When the hellebore looks up at you, you see a face both innocent and knowing, and you understand why this flower has been a key player in the world of potion and myth. This is a flower you should admire — but never eat. I have many varieties of these in my garden scattered among the ferns and hostas. They also grow wild in the woods nearby, where I captured the pale lavender specimen above, in a print called The Meadow. 

I did the first portrait of a hellebore as part of a series called “Sweet Old World” that came about as I sorted family papers and photos going back to the 1800’s. The style of this work is inspired by vintage tintype. I love the ragged borders and soft organic focus of photography in the early days of its invention. These pieces are a modern interpretation of tintype’s vintage haze and inexactitude, using watercolor, photography and digital printmaking. Click on any image to be taken to my shop.

Hellebore in Victorian Style botanical greeting card
Hellebore in Victorian Style ©Iskra Fine Art 2022
Spring Hellebore cards by Iskra 1200
Spring Hellebore Cards

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New Years’ Eve: In Which the Gardener Takes a Moment to Reflect

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Winter garden New years Eve

(Excerpt, from The Gardner’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena December 31, 2021)

The first thing the Gardener noticed on the morning of December 31 was the color of the snow. The sun had emerged after days of gray and bitter cold, and as shadows stole across the land they brought with them a new color, “warmth,” transforming the drifts and vaguely monstrous shapes of the shrubs into benign presence. The light most particularly touched the robins, who demand warmth to ignite their color fully. On the dogwood branches the robins sat, eastward facing, their chests swelling and feathers plumping as though they had been feasting all week instead of pecking amidst tire tracks for the carcasses of worms. In another garden a varied thrush had fallen to its frozen death with a sound like lead and been buried with ceremony, its dark necklace enveloped in garnet strings and rubies as befits a prince.

Last year the gargoyle had reigned over the pond with his broken wing. For 40 years his gnarled features gave purchase to every bird who came to sit and drink from the spout pouring water. Each December, through the incantations of ancient fractals, the water carved a heart from the ice, a wet obsidian streaked by the occasional golden contrails of fish. Each year the birds descended in order of size: first the crows, then the flickers, then the robins, sparrows, chickadees and towhees, and lastly, the shy wren. The Gardener did nothing on these days but observe and laugh, and all was good.

 

The Gargoyle of Christmas Past

Long ago….. [Read more…]

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