Today I’ll be featuring paintings by Susan Jenkins , an art teacher and painter from California.
After looking through her work, I decided that if I had to choose just one word to describe her paintings it would have to be "delicious."
And not just her paintings of food, although she has painted a few lavish spreads like the one to the left entitled Wine and Cheese in Provance .
No, it’s the colors Susan uses, the creamy whites, with light blue shadows; the pinks and yellows—colors of candy or cake frosting. Quite frankly, it all looks very eat-able.
Part of that effect is from the white highlights seen throughout many of her paintings, giving everything a clean, fresh look.
You might think that using white wouldn’t be that noteworthy, but white can be a touchy subject with some artists. Many painters don’t like using it because they’ve been warned away from it one too many times.
And yes, it’s true that always using white to lighten colors can actually dull down or neutralize your painting overall, but white by itself (or just slightly tinted) is often a wonderful color too.
Take a peek at Lemons on a White Plate and tell me those lemons don’t look good enough to eat—surrounded by very clean, slightly bluish white.
More than that, I love this painting for it’s simplicity—three lemons, a white plate, and a few yellow reflections that tie the two together. That’s all it takes sometimes.
Of course, if you like paintings with a little more. . . oomph to them, Susan has a few that will really knock your socks off.
Without losing any of that tasty goodness, Pink Floral ( seen on the left) is a veritable explosion of color!
The key to success in this painting was keeping the colors separated and pure enough so that there were still recognizable shapes and forms.
You can see pure white, pure black in the background, red almost straight from the tube, pinks, pure cad yellow dotted here and there, and the list goes on.
In fact, when you really look at this painting there’s very little blending or mixing of colors on the canvas at all, which makes for a much stronger painting in the end.
If you’d like to see more paintings by Susan Jenkin’s, please visit her new painting blog, Susan Jenkin’s Morning Paintings .