Color Inspiration—wisteria

Our wisteria is in bloom! 

Those blossoms are pretty gorgeous, and the bees love them too. 

To see more colors, click on the red "color inspiration" label below.

Hello May!

So nice to see you again, May—it's been a while. I think you are the most magical month in the garden…. birds and squirrels are singing and doing their courting dances, the plants and flowers are waking up from their long winter slumbers, the air is warming up and we can really smell the earth! Thank you May, for your glorious spring gifts.

Yellow Magnolia Blossom 48" x 30"  

My yellow magnolia tree, Madam Butterflies, is loaded with buds just about ready to bloom. Trees are blooming a little late this year because of our brutal winter. Here is giant painting I made several years ago of one of the magnolia blossoms.

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Madam Butterflies Shows off Again!

The breath of the cherry blossoms...

I went down to

mingle my breath

with the breath

of the cherry blossoms.

—Toi Derricotte, 1941

Chocolaty chocolate tart

How have never mentioned this utterly divine and wickedly chocolate glazed chocolate tart before? (The recipe comes from Bon Appetite magazine.) See those three layers? It's a trio of buttery chocolate, topped with whipped chocolate mousse, cloaked with chocolate ganache. That's three kinds of chocolate experiences on one tart! It's rich, and I've made it at least a dozen times and always get rave reviews. I don't change a thing on the BA recipe and like to serve it with slightly sweetened freshly whipped cream and raaaahhhhspbreeess. And if you have some fresh, edible pansies, even better.

INGREDIENTS for crust:
9 (5- by 2 1/4-inch) chocolate graham crackers (not chocolate-covered), finely ground
   (1 cup)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup sugar

For filling:
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
9 ounces bittersweet chocolate (not more than 65% cacao if marked), chopped
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt

For glaze:
2 tablespoon heavy cream
1 3/4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 teaspoon light corn syrup
1 tablespoon warm water

Equipment:
a 9-inch round fluted tart pan (1 inch deep)


PREPARATION
Make crust:
Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle.

Stir together all ingredients and press evenly onto bottom and 3/4 inch up side of tart pan. Bake until firm, about 10 minutes. Cool on a rack 15 to 20 minutes

Make filling:
Bring cream to a boil, then pour over chocolate in a bowl and let stand 5 minutes. Gently stir until smooth. Whisk together eggs, vanilla, and salt in another bowl, then stir into melted chocolate.

Pour filling into cooled crust. Bake until filling is set about 3 inches from edge but center is still wobbly, 20 to 25 minutes. (Center will continue to set as tart cools.) Cool completely in pan on rack, about 1 hour.

Make glaze:
Bring cream to a boil and remove from heat. Stir in chocolate until smooth. Stir in corn syrup, then warm water.

Pour glaze onto tart, then tilt and rotate tart so glaze coats top evenly. Let stand until glaze is set, about 1 hour... if you can!

NOTE: This tarts keeps well for several days—just make sure to glaze it while it's still warm.

Color inspiration—a melange of blues

This magnificent melange of blues is a sky detail from Vincent Van Gogh's View of the Roofs of Paris. It's so modern—and crazy to believe that it was painted in 1886. The colors, texture and overall intensity are very inspiring.

To see more colors, click on the red "color inspiration" label below.

Wooing spring

Arise, my darling,

my beautiful one, come with me.

See! The winter is past;

the rains are over and gone.

Flowers appear on the earth;

the season of singing has come,

the cooing of doves

is heard in our land.

The fig tree forms its early fruit;

the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.

Arise, come, my darling;

my beautiful one, come with me.

—Song of Solomon

Pink + green!

I think Lilly Pulitzer would have approved of the pink and green combo of these spring colored crostini. The bread slices (sliced bagels, in this case), were browned in olive oil in a saucepan, then topped with 2 separate dips. The pink crostini on the left is made of a mix of a beet and goat cheese then it was garnished with a tiny cube of beet, and the green crostini on the right is a mix of peas, ricotta and Parmesan cheese that was garnished with whole peas and pea shoots. I brought this to my family Easter gathering. Easy peasy!

Color Inspiration— WM's Tapestry

Easter greetings! I adore the muted colors of William Morris's The Forest tapestry (most likely faded from it's original glorious colors). This handsome hare was featured on The Forest Tapestry—designed by William Morris in 1887 at Merton Abbey—and woven by Morris & Co.'s three most excellent senior weavers. The tapestry depicts scrolling acanthus leaves, a lion, peacock, hare and fox, all frolicking among wild flowers. Shown below is the entire tapestry.

Click to enlarge.

To see more colors, click on the red "color inspiration" label below.

Russian red eggs

These richly colored eggs have a story behind them. Growing up in Beverly our Russian neighbor, Manishka Kotsovolos (married to a Greek man), would celebrate Russian Orthodox Easter every year  after our regular Easter. When we would arrive at her festive and aromatic home to celebrate the Russian Pascha—the Greek word for Easter—Manya would greet us with a hearty "Christos Anesti!" (Christ is risen!), and the feasting and celebrations would begin.

At the Pascha, the grown-ups would drink and laugh and talk with wonderful passion, and the kids would indulge in the many exotic Russian-Polish-Greek sweet treats that Manya had baked. And there, on the table, was always a giant bowl of these glorious ruby colored eggs that we—both children and adults—would play "Egg Wars" with. Two people, each holding an egg, smash the pointed or round ends of their two eggs together. The owner of the eggs that does not crack is the winner who goes on to the next round, and so on, until there is just one winner. Read more about Greek Egg Fighting here. Needless to say, there was a lot of egg salad the following week. Our family has since adopted this tradition for own own Easter celebrations.

So why do the Russian Orthodox dye their eggs red? Red symbolizes many things, but in this instance the Red is meant to represent the color of life and victory, and blood of Christ. Coloring Easter egg originated with the early Christians of Mesopotamia, who stained eggs red in memory of the blood of Christ. Read more about the history of Russian red eggs here.

Yummy red!

Here's how to make these crimson, blood red eggs: Dyed in onion skins and red food coloring, these eggs come out vibrant red every time. You may have to scrub your pots and pans a bit when the dying is complete.  After your eggs have come out of their red bath and are dry, lightly oil them with mineral or olive oil to give them a brilliant, luminous shine. Have fun!

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Greek Vasilopita bread

Girl on Rocks

Girl on Rocks  9 x 12  Circa 1977 

For Throwback Thursday... here is a painting I made when I was just a wee lass of only 16!  For anyone who is curious, that's... cough, cough... around 37 years ago. I  knew that I was going to be an artist since around age 3, when it was noted that I had and obsessive love of Crayola Crayons and construction paper. In my early teen years I took drawing and painting classes at Montserrat College of Art and at The Sisters of Notre Dame in Ipswich, and a spark grew into a flame that still burns. This painting, one of my first experiments using oil paints, proudly hangs on a wall in my mother's bedroom, and is definitely, absolutely not for sale. Ever.

Color Inspiration—Swiss chard

Swiss Chard is easy to grow and great in the garden for eating of course, but it also looks impressive en mass as a bold and colorful garden design element. Try planting some in your flower bed. Here they look nice and springy!

To see more colors, click on the red "color inspiration" label below.

Speckled lilliputian wonders

Behold these speckled lilliputian wonders! Aren't these little quail eggs perfectly darling? A local market carries them regularly, and not just at Easter when all manner of eggs—plastic and organic—are ubiquitous. I love the varying dotted egg exterior, and how the inside of the shell is lined every so faintly with the robin's eggs blue color. For those who are curious, their taste is very similar to a chicken egg. Though these quail eggs are certainly not plovers' eggs, they always remind me of that great passage in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited when, at his room in Oxford, Sebastian Flyte treated Charles Ryder and other schoolmates to a feast that included champagne and plovers' eggs—an opulent and rare delicacy. 

"The first this year," they said. 

"Where do you get them?"

"Mummy sends them from Brideshead. 

They always lay early for her." 

When the eggs were done and we 

were eating lobster Newburg, 

the last guest arrived.

+ + +

"I’ve just counted them,” he said. 

“There were five each and two over,

 so I’m having the two. I’m 

unaccountably hungry to-day."

Oh right—mummy sends them. 

Darn good maple syrup

Thank you Kim Bartlett, for your delicious maple syrup! We anointed our buttery orange French toast with your humble tree sap, which you have alchemistically boiled down to a sweet and luscious golden syrup. It really is darn good!

Big, fluffy clouds

Fluffy clouds over Fox Creek,  18 x 18 

I am delighted to have sold this painting this week to a wonderful couple from Wayland, MA. I was joking with the buyer—a very talented abstract artist—that perhaps she should paint the wall it will hang on a turquoise color to bring out the bits of turquoise in the painting. This piece is also filled with bronzes and dusty French blues, and has thick impasto texture. I hope the new owners never tire of gazing at those big, fluffy clouds.

•

SOLD!

Private collection, Wayland, MA

Detail

First day of spring!

Woot Woot…  Happy spring!

Officially, the Vernal Equinox
happens at 6:45 PM today.

We made it through one hell-of-a
record breaking snowy winter, so I hope
 you have a bottle of prosecco chilling!
Be there. Aloha!

Please visit her Mousehouses blog 
to see more of Maggie Rudy's fine work.

Farewell fiery path painting

Fiery Path, Halibut Point, 30 x 30 

I said goodbye to this piece today, which I painted of Halibut Point State Park in nearby Rockport, MA. The big draw there is always the massive old granite quarries and the rocky shoreline, but some of the pathways—like this one—are also quite beguiling and mysterious. This painting is now in the hip urban home of a Swedish fiber artist in Arlington, MA. I loved meeting the new owner, and I hope this painting gives her and her family years of pleasure.

•

SOLD!

Private collection, Arlington, MA

Hummingbirds + Flowers

Passion flowers and Hummingbirds  

These botanical paintings of hummingbirds and orchid and passion flowers illustrated by Martin Johnson Heade have me swooning on this cold winter day. What lovely and inspiration! Click here to see his complete works.

Orchids & Hummingbirds in a Brazilian Jungle

Red Passion Flowers and & Hummingbirds 1 & 2

Orchids And Hummingbird

White Brazilian Orchid

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Enchanting hummingbirds

A color plate illustration from 

Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Nature

(1899), showing a variety of hummingbirds.  

Color inspiration—Caravaggio's lips

Carravaggio used these lovely 

blush pink and peachy colors so well.

Looks like a Revlon lipstick ad, but really, I'm

just dreaming of those first blooms of spring.

To see more colors, click on the red "color inspiration" label below.

Renaissance Gold

Renaissance Gold  16 x 16

Here is another painting in my salt marsh series. I made a smaller color study of this scene back in June at Fox Creek in Ipswich, when the world was bursting with sunshine warm breezes—a far cry from the wintry white landscape I see out my window today. I have made this larger version changing the colors slightly with warmer peach and pink colors.

Renaissance Gold  4 x 4

This little gem radiates with the warmth of a 

summer morning on the Ipswich, Ma. marshes.

The Gloaming

The Gloaming  20 x 16 

Last June I made a small little color study (see below) of this lovely scene at Fox Creek in Ipswich, and I finally got around to making a larger painting of it.  I am inexplicably drawn to these salt marshes, and keep going back to paint them. They woo me. So I have been working on a series of works exploring the moods and colors of the Marsh. This painting is called the gloaming—those magical twilight and dusk hours.

The Gloaming  4 x 6 

Spring flowers for you

I'm just a little bit in love with Lulie Wallace's colorful, bounty of floral yumminess. She makes these simple floral vases burst with color, energy and happiness. At this point—at the tail end of a wicked New England winter—we're all craving color, or at least something growing and green. It's coming soon! Today is the first day of meteorological spring, so keep the faith people… spring is right around the corner, and with it will come real flowers.

Color inspiration— reflecting on white

Click to see larger image

I am fascinated by a trend on the web today, in which the mass population appears to have polarizing views about the colors in a certain dress. The dress aside, white is one of those tricky colors, and simply put, is the reflection of the colors around it, and actually a mixture ALL the colors of the rainbow.

White reflects all 

the colors of the visible 

light spectrum to the eyes.

The left photo was taken on a cloudy day, so the white colors and shadows look gray. We all know how white (ish) snow can look on a bright, sunny day, but yet, look at those gorgeous shades of grayish blue!

The middle photo was taken in a room with orange walls, and sunset, hence the darker beige hues. (You'll just have to trust me that the curtain and sculpture is actually white.) On a bright day this scene looks much whiter, and yet, look at those gorgeous shades of pinkish beige!

The right photo was taken after a snowstorm, in the shade, so the shadows looked very blue. Again, we all know how white (ish)  snow looks on a sunny day, but yet, look at those shades of blue!

Click on the red color inspiration label below to see more colors!