Art & Maple Leaves

Hi Everyone!

Just wanted to pop in and update you all on my various upcoming on on-going shows as well as show you a couple photos from my recent adventure to Seattle to see the Hokusai Exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum!

I’m excited to be at this show on SATURDAY ONLY at the HIVE (Emphasis added to hopefully prevent confusion!). I’ll have puzzles, Christmas cards, and calendars! I just heard back that I got waitlisted for my usual December show (Brrzaar). They had so many people apply that they could only accept 36% of the artists to the show, so if you’d like to come visit me at a show before the end of the year, this is it! However, you can always make an appointment to come out to my studio any time for a little shopping adventure! These are always very fun because I often also show my sketchbooks and works in progress if people are interested.

This show opened in October and is still running through December 9th. It’s a fabulous show in a historic building on Washington with a view directly onto the elevated train tracks.

This is one of my pieces in this show.

This and the two other night sky pieces below are all 3” x 5” paintings that I framed up and took to the Spokane Art School for their Holiday Small Works show. The Art School will also have a show (Yuletide) happening during the weekend of the my show at the Hive and is just 5 minutes away so I highly recommend visiting both shows!

I made a very fast visit over to Seattle to celebrate my and my mom’s birthday with my folks and to see the Hokusai exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. I am a huge Hokusai fan (I have the Great Wave off of Kanagawa printed on my phone case.) and the exhibit was FABULOUS.

Silk painting of a beautiful lady at the exhibit, which contained both many works by Hokusai and by his students, contemporaries, and the people who were inspired by his work.

With the glass over the prints, taking a decent photo was hard, but here is a beautiful planter that I would very much like in blue!

Continuing the theme-this is the Kubota Garden in the south end of Seattle-a 20 acre walking garden. I enjoyed its multiple ponds, great tree shaping and many stone lanterns, but I have to admit-I think our Japanese Garden has a better fall foliage display and is much prettier (though much smaller also, I must admit).

Did have fun with the amazing curving branches of the many trees-there might be some paintings coming inspired by my trip!

I’ve been delivering calendars to customers and I just wanted to pop this flip through of it into this email because I think this is my best calendar yet! If you can’t make it to the Hive on the 4th, just reach out to me and I can get you set up! We gotta get organized for next year! :)

You can buy it on my website HERE!

Happy Fall, y’all!

January Painting

I spent the month of January getting back into the groove of painting in the studio after the busyness of the holiday season. I’m going to be showing paintings at Bellwether Brewing in March so I pushed hard to get some new paintings done. I think I’m at the point that I can start framing and assess whether I need to make a few more-they have BIG walls at Bellwether!

This painting is of Palouse Falls and is inspired by a sketched painted on location made last spring. Yes, there really was a rainbow!

The first time I painted this scene I was leading a paint along on Zoom with the students of Mukogawa University and it came out well enough that I wanted to do a more polished version.

I have been asked to paint the Glover Mansion a couple times and I thought this would be a good opportunity to finally do so. It seems like a lot of people have fond memories of weddings at the Mansion. I still remember being blown away by the ceiling murals when I visited during a First Friday Event several years ago.

Watching the old White Elephant Building get demolished made me really sad, so this painting is a celebration of its fabulous murals of parading elephants. I will miss seeing them whenever I drive down Division.

I visited the Duncan Gardens during the height of the blooming season and while the flower designs are gorgeous every year, whoever planned the planting for last year really hit it out of the park for me. That color! I’ve painted the Duncan Gardens a couple times so it was a fun challenge to pick a new point of view.

This little marmot is bringing home his Christmas tree! I like to have a new Christmas card every year to send people and I like to work on them when there is still snow on the ground-much easier to get in the mood than in the baking summer heat or even the fall and it gives me something to festive to think about even when the lights and decorations are all packed away. I’m not sure this is the final card-I have another marmot design, as well as a couple other thoughts, but it was fun to paint!

Flat File Sale!

Moving my flat files over to my new studio from the house has been a long process. I had every drawer of those things stuffed full! As I unloaded each drawer, I found all sorts of things, including a bunch of paintings and sketches. So, inspired by my friend, the amazing Sheila Evans, I’m doing a Flat File Sale! I’ll be listing a bunch of beauties on my online shop at www.meganperkinsart.com/shop on Small Business Saturday, November 27th and have a super sale. You wonderful people here on my newsletter will receive a password to get early access on the 26th (Black Friday!) so keep an eye out for an email from me. I need some more space in these flat files for new paintings so there’s going to be some great deals! The sale will remain up until December 15th (to hopefully give time to be able to ship most items) and then all these guys will go back into my flat files to be rediscovered another day.

Below are just a few of the many paintings and sketches that will be in the sale, so I hope that this year, you will give the gift of art to yourself and others!

Happy Holidays, Best Wishes from Me!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, and all best wishes for you in this holiday season! Here are some of my favorite things to do this time of year.

Admire snow. Preferably in a warm jacket with a warm beverage. Or even better, from inside.

Go to the Davenport and admire their Christmas decorations and hopefully catch some live Christmas music.

Visit Manito Park to see the Gaiser Conservatory Lights. I recommend a week day if you don’t want to wait outside in the cold. Maybe a hot cocoa at Rockwood Bakery to go?

Wheatland Bank does free carriage rides in downtown Spokane for some old fashioned fun. I love seeing horses on the streets of downtown Spokane and hearing the jingling bells as they clop-clop by!

Whatever you’re doing, I hope it is lovely and I’ll see you in the new year! Here’s to another year of adventures! Thanks for coming along with me and for all your kind comments and support. I really appreciate it!

Winter is Here!

Hoo boy guys, we haven’t seen much snow yet, but last night, the high at my house was 15 degrees! As I write this on Sunday afternoon, the furnace keeps kicking on to keep us warm!

Other signs of winter and the holidays? Amaryllis for sale at all the grocery stores! I love these flowers. They are so dramatic. I like to track the unfolding of their blooms in my sketchbooks every year. I’ve got all of mine stashed in a dark closet, trying to prep them to bloom sometime in January and I have high hopes that I’ll get at least a couple of flowers out of them, but it is still hard to resist buying an already blooming plant at the store when I pass by!

I did this demo at my last watercolor class to demonstrate how to make something look further away when we were working on landscape and reflections. More water, less color intensity, and softer edges are key!

Here’s another demo from this class, this time also addressing sky. The sky is typically a darker and redder blue up high and gets lighter and yellower toward the horizon (all the dust and dirt and particles in the air). Clouds are way softer than you think and definitely not just white! The colors from the ground below reflect up into cloud bottoms! For reflections, dark objects usually reflect a little bit lighter than they actually are and light objects a little bit darker! There you go! A quick lesson. Have fun!

Now here are my last two holiday shows of the season (You can always find my stuff at Pottery Place Plus and the From Here Store all year round!):

Urban Art Coop’s Holiday Market which is THIS weekend. They have an paid preview night on Friday where you can meet the artists and get delicious nibbles and are open for free Saturday and Sunday. The show is managed by the co-op so if you want to chat with me in person, your best bet is my next show: BRRZAAR, Saturday December 14th at RiverPark Square Mall! Yes, the MALL. Now this was a great show last year with lots of amazing stuff (I bought a print of a giant marmot rampaging through the Monroe Street Bridge whipping the gondolas over his head.) so you should definitely brave the crowds and come!

Urban Art Co-op 3209 N Monroe St, Spokane, WA 99205

Friday- opening night 6-9pm light food 5.00 suggested donation at the door
Saturday- 10am to 6pm
Sunday- 10am to 4pm

RiverPark Square Mall in downtown Spokane!

Snowy Scenes & Holiday Shows!

My painting of the Woman’s Club was the feature of my column in the Spokane Coeur D’Alene Living Magazine this month. These columns are always such a great excuse to go digging around on the internet for the history of my favorite places and buildings around town.

Snow and historic buildings are still on my mind. This is the Fort Sherman Chapel, also known as “The Little Red Church”. It is the oldest still standing structure in Coeur D’Alene! It has been a church, a school house, and meeting area, and now seems to be a popular wedding venue!

Every year I enjoy sending out Christmas cards, though most years they are more “Happy New Year cards” than Christmas because things get so hectic during the holidays. I love to get snail mail and I know I’m not alone in the burst of excitement when I see an envelope in the mailbox that isn’t a bill or ad. This year I am doing a special postcard for people who have helped my art career along the way so, if you have taken a class with me, backed the Kickstarter, commissioned me, helped me show my work or bought over $100 in prints, cards, calendars, etc, reply to this email with your address and I’ll send you a postcard!

This guy is my most recent finished commission-the Liberty Building! The original is 30” x 22” and getting framed right now to be hung on location, but you can get 11” x 14” prints at my next show-CUSTER’S CHRISTMAS ART AND CRAFT SHOW. It is Nov 22-24th down at the Spokane County Fairgrounds. It is $10 to get in but I know there are some $1 off entrance fee coupons still down at the front desk of Pottery Place Plus if you want to grab one. It’s my first year at this show and I’m hopeful that it will go great.