Category Archives: Realistic Painting

Realistic contemporary paintings, representing a person, thing, or landscape accurately and in a way that is true to life.

Realistic Art, Painting, Flowers and Roses

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Rose
Oil on Paper
7” x 8”
Mary Baker © 2005

It all started last summer. I wanted to tile my basement floor, but it was too expensive, so I painted “faux” tiles and they looked great. I never “fauxed” anything, although I know a lot of my fellow artists are very good at “fauxing” all kinds of things. This was new to me, so I decided to try it out on my flower paintings.

I had been painting flowers with dark backgrounds to make them “pop.” But one of the things I found that was very discouraging, was that people were taking photographs of flowers, putting dark backgrounds on them in Photoshop, and then printing them on canvas. Doing them in short order and selling them of course for “peanuts.” (I have this love – hate relationship with Photoshop, but more on that maybe another time.)

It also seemed that everywhere I looked that summer, “spas” were popping up all over the place. People were building huge bathrooms and calling them “spas.” And in my little town there seemed to be new “spas” everywhere.

So one of the things that crossed my mind was what kind of flower painting would be a “spa” flower painting? And I thought well, why don’t you try some of that “faux” stuff that you learned painting “faux” tiles on your basement floor on some flower paintings. That might be cool.

And they would be much harder to duplicate in Photoshop too, I hope.

So at the top of this post is a rose bud I painted with a dark background, which I love. And at the bottom of this post is a pink rose with a “faux,” “spa” background, which I think is pretty interesting. And the new “spa flowers,” as I am now calling them, are fun to paint, especially when I want to take a break from painting landscapes.

Mary Baker

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Pink Rose
Oil on Panel
8” x 10”
Mary Baker © 2006

(Editor’s Note: Please do not use any image that belongs to Mary Baker. It is a copyright infringement and it is against the law. I have found at least one image on another site, used without my permission, in a way that is unacceptable. The image has not been removed, and I am not pleased.

Unfortunately this forces me to put copyright information across the art images, which ruins it for everyone who would like to see the paintings. Mary Baker)

Art, Realistic Painting, Flowers

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Geraniums
Oil on Canvas
24” x 36 “
Mary Baker © 2006

In 2003 I started to paint flowers in my neighborhood. I live in the seacoast town of Newburyport, Massachusetts, in Newburyport’s historic district. My neighborhood is full of wonderful old houses with gardens and flowers along the streets.

I did a bunch of flower paintings, but people seem to resonate more with the landscapes I am doing, so I’ve gone back to painting landscapes. But I love painting the flower paintings.

The last one I finished is called “Geraniums” and there is a picture of that painting at the top of this post.

The painting is of a basket of geraniums that I saw sitting on a stoop in front of one of the houses near where I live in Newburyport, Massachusetts. And I thought the basket of geraniums was beautiful.

And what I love about this painting is the composition. It is definitely a Contemporary Realism composition.

The background is almost abstract. The vertical dark line of the door on the left of the painting. The center vertical white (it isn’t actually white, there are all kinds of colors in there) band in the middle. And then the horizontal yellow stripes on the right hand side.

And the very sharp geometric pattern contrasts with the soft, curvilinear lines of the geraniums and the leaves, setting up what I think is a nice visual tension.

It’s a fairly sophisticated composition, but the painting itself still remains beautiful.

Mary Baker

Art, Realistic Paintings and Artistic Pathways

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Azaleas
Oil on Canvas,
18” x 24 “
Mary Baker © 2006

I think for the first time in my artistic career I’m not sure where I’m going. And I find this very disconcerting.

It’s not that I’m artistically blocked, I just don’t know where the artistic pathway is going to lead.

In my studio I am now working on 8 landscapes. The painting “Azaleas,” at the top of this post is the first one I finished.

What I’ve realized is that all the paintings have pathways in them. I realized this a few weeks ago. I find this very interesting — it certainly wasn’t planned that way. I guess the pathway in “Azaleas” leads to something beautiful, so that’s encouraging.

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Morning Glory and Road
Oil on Paper
7.5” x 17”
Mary Baker © 2004

When I was doing flower paintings I did a painting called “Morning Glory and Road.” It’s probably one of my favorite paintings. I like the haunted quality that it has. And I like the fact that it has a path in it, but the pathway is certainly somewhat ambiguous and I don’t think the viewer, including me, has much idea of where it’s going to lead. Is it going to lead away from the Morning Glory into who knows what? Or is it going to lead from this bright, almost ignited flower to other bright places?

Mary Baker

(Editor’s Note: Please do not use any image that belongs to Mary Baker. It is a copyright infringement and it is against the law. I have found at least one image on another site, used without my permission, in a way that is unacceptable. The image has not been removed, and I am not pleased.

Unfortunately this forces me to put copyright information across the art images, which ruins it for everyone who would like to see the paintings. Mary Baker)

Art, Realistic Landscapes and Landscape Paintings

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Apple Trees
Oil on Canvas
36″ x 48″
Mary Baker © 2006

I’ve gone back to painting landscapes. I painted landscapes for 14 years and in 2002 (I think) I painted what I thought was my last landscape. I simply didn’t think I had another landscape in me.

But last year I started 3 large (36” x 48”) landscapes of Maudslay State Park in the Spring. And I finished the first one a few weeks ago of apple trees in bloom. At the moment it’s on the home page of my website, Mary Baker Art. It is also at the top of this post.

One of the things people keep saying about my work is that it looks so photographic. This drives me nuts, because when you get close to the work, it’s extremely painterly. So what I did on the Homepage of Mary Baker Art was to include two up-close details so that people could see exactly how painterly the landscape is. And also, so that people can see that up close, the painting is very abstract.

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Apple Trees (Detail)
Oil on Canvas
36″ x 48″
Mary Baker © 2006

One of the things that I’ve found is that when people come into my studio, it’s the landscapes that they resonate with. A lot of the time they don’t even notice the flower paintings or the paintings of the neighborhood.

So what I decided to do was to start more landscapes. At the moment I have started 3 landscapes of the marsh (the marshes being up here in Newburyport, Massachusetts.) In the past, people have loved paintings of the marsh.

It’s taken me a long time to be able to paint paintings of the marsh. Psychologically I needed to paint what was right in front of me. And that was flowers and up close paintings of my neighborhood.

Psychologically, landscapes of the marsh feel as if I have some understanding of “the big picture.” They feel expansive. And all the landscape paintings have paths in them, which I find very interesting. I didn’t plan it that way.

And I’m surprised, because I’m excited about painting the landscapes of the marsh. I thought I would dread it. But it seems that on canvas I’m ready to wander down an expansive path to the unknown.

Realistic Painting–Flowers

Rose_coypright.jpg
Rose
Oil on Paper
7” x 8”
Mary Baker © 2005

Up until three years ago it never occurred to me to paint flowers. I had painted landscapes for 15 years and had also done a more monochromatic series that I call the “Pod” series. (You can see a couple examples of the “Pod” series on my website. You can also see a lot of realistic flower paintings on my website too!)

I had gotten to the point where I was running out of landscape ideas (although landscape ideas are coming back in a major way) and after 9/11 people found the monochromatic Pod paintings, “cold” instead of “deep”.

So what to do? I wandered around my neighborhood and started to paint realistic flowers. It always seemed to me that it took a certain amount of chutzpah to paint flowers since Vincent and Georgia had already covered the territory, not to mention Heade…but what the heck, realistic flowers it was.

Once I started, I realized that although I had studied human anatomy in art school to paint realistic paintings, I had never studied “flower anatomy”…no botanist I.

I went to the Museum of Natural History in Boston where they have an awesome and extensive exhibit of glass flowers. I did massive research on the Internet on every type of flower or leaf I was going to realistically paint (if you go to Google Images, it’s just amazing what you get for let’s say “Morning Glory” or “Rose”). And then maybe the most helpful thing in painting realistic flowers was going around and snatching flowers in my neighborhood, keeping them whole or pulling them apart and pressing them between sheets of wax paper. That way I could see exactly how they were formed, making painting realistic flowers that much easier.

Original art–the palette, painting shadows

The second thing I learned from Steve Hawley was how to paint shadows. I had always used a darker version of the color, which had never been very effective. Steve told me to use:

Burnt Umber
French Ultramarine Blue
Thalo Green
Alizarin Crimson

What he recommended was to mix either Thalo Green and Alizarin Crimson, or Burnt Umber and Ultramarine Blue and use it very lightly as a gaze for shadows. It has made an amazing difference in my painting, and I’ve seen it make an amazing difference in other people’s paintings as well.

Original Art–painting tips, the pallette

One of the first things that happened when I studied with Steve Hawley, was that he gave me a basic painting palett that I had never used before. It radically changed how my paintings look. I’ve passed it on to a lot of people, and it always makes a huge difference. So here it is:

Basic Painting Palette

Burnt Umber
French Ultramarine Blue
Thalo Green
Alizarin Crimson
Burnt Sienna
Naples Yellow
Titanium White
Thalo yellow green

Realistic Painting

When I was in graduate school almost every one of my teachers was either doing conceptual art or abstract art. I wanted to do realistic painting. My teachers thought I was nuts!

It was around the time that Philip Pearlstein was coming on the art scene, and I just loved his art work. Over my teachers objections I painted realistic paintings.

My teachers were very surprised that in the student art show, not only did I get picked to get in, but I also got an honorable mention.

Realistic Painting–first art gallery bite

Just for the heck of it I decided to send out slides of the series of realistic paintings I had done to galleries in Chicago, the area where I was going to graduate school. And I got a bite. One of the leading galleries asked me to bring in my realistic artwork.

My art teachers were amazed, they hadn’t been able to get any response from galleries in Chicago and here I was with an art gallery bite!

Realistic Painting–first art gallery response

I brought in the paintings to show the gallery director, and I’ll never forget it. He said, “Great paintings, I love them, come back when you know how to paint!” Oh.

Realistic Painting–Artist Steve Hawley

The gallery director was right. I didn’t know how to paint realistic paintings, but neither did my teachers. But what to do??

When I moved to Massachusetts I was “lucky” enough to meet nationally renowned realistic painter Steve Hawley, who invited me to study with him. I couldn’t believe it–who was going to turn that one down. It was like having Michelangelo inviting you to study with him! Wow!

So I studied with Steve Hawley for seven years, and everything I know about realistic painting I owe to Steve. Visit Steve Hawley’s website (www. stevehawley.com), you are in for an incredible treat!

And you can see some of the results of my years of studying with Steve at my Website , Mary Baker Art (www.marybakerart.com).