Lauren Edmond paintings

There’s an interesting ‘salon’ style show hanging at the Tompkins Square Library called MENAGERIE: Creative ExPression of the Lower East Side 2009. It was curated by Shell Sheddy and will be hanging through October 30.

With 40 prolific artists participating, there is art everywhere! And– there are scheduled performance, poetry, and films every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. Info will be on facebook.

Here are my 3 paintings in MENGERIE: Creative ExPressions of the Lower East Side 2009

this is a digital oil sketch that’s starting to become a painting. just sharing my process. and hoping you enjoy. this is from last week. i’ve already changed my “earthworks”.

Most of the day lilies in the Catskill/Hudson Valley region are orange tiger lilies. They grow wild everywhere, along all the roads, along stream beds and in flower beds. There are a few on this property, we affectionately call Lil Blue, and if Lil Blue was my house, I’d plant a whole lot more. The contrast of the orange against all the green is exciting. There’s a spray of red lilies in a flower bed in the backyard, dark velvety red, that really pops out. I prefer the orange, but these red lilies look like pieces of red velvet fluttering over the flower bed.

Here’s a big red lily, painted right from the backyard of ‘Lil Blue!

Sometimes people wonder why painters choose to paint nature. It’s always there, you can just look if you want to! Yet, nature changes. It is always changing as seasons and light changes, daily, weekly, seasonally, yearly, over decades… And entering nature through a painting can change the way you experience nature. For many of my neighbors, walking in Tompkins Square Park now feels like walking in one of my paintings. It always has that effect for me, as the painter. So i was surprised that transferred to others. But that is what a painting does, it asks you to enter and explore. It takes you somewhere, which can even be your own backyard!

The Red Lilies are done for this year. The last big storm wiped out the last of them and there are no more buds. Yet, here is a 2009 red lily;-)

my work goes through many phases. sometimes less is enough. and just seeing the paintings in all their forms can be fun.

so in that spirit, here’s the 6th BC Botanical garden in the spring of 2009. perhaps a work in progress, perhaps it is done!

the 6BC Botanical Garden is, of course, located on 6th Street between Avenues B&C, in the East Village, or Loisaida, or in the atlas, Tompkins Square, NY. The garden itself is a work of art, and the result of the work of many gardeners. Unlike the other community gardens where each gardener has their own plot, 6BC is one garden that all gardeners share. Here’s another painting from 6BC, in September of 2006,

This painting is part of the show currently hanging at Planet One Cafe. More on that show soon!