Bethany Vanderputten's "Expressive Art to Capture the Heart"

Bethany Vanderputten in her San Francisco art studio

photo by Rosa Phoenix

I'm excited to announce Bethany Vanderputten's upcoming art show, opening on July 1 at Gallery 688 in San Francisco!

They say a picture says a thousand words. Bethany Vanderputten's naturalistic acrylic paintings go deeper than words. They are explorations of the inner and outer world.

Bethany's paintings glow softly with luminous colors, expressive brushwork and textures that hint at layers of multiple meanings.

Ideas and emotions seem to drift fluidly just beneath the surface. Experiencing these paintings, we travel back and forth across the border of what is real and what is imagined, dreamed, or felt emotionally.

Bethany's art is inspired by her love of travel and adventure, music (she sings and plays piano), heroic stories and quotations from literature and poetry.

Bethany was kind enough to let me interview her in her San Francisco art studio. This interview is on my other blog, Artists Up Rising.

Click here for the interview with artist Bethany Vanderputten, see examples of her art and get the full details of her upcomiing art show in San Francisco.

I'm an Urban Sketcher!

pen and ink sketch by Rosa Phoenix

I'm now a member of Urban Sketchers! If you have been following my blog you know I have mentioned this site before. There are so many terrific artists on this site, who all enjoy sketching the world around them.

Urban Sketchers members list is arranged by country and then city, with links to the artists' blogs or flickr pages. So, people who want to look at San Francisco sketches will be able to find my work.

Check it out, you'll see the best sketches!

Urban Sketchers

Mission Street Fair and Camera+ for iPhone

Mural painting in the Mission

all together!

Bike-powered band

I took these photos with my iPhone using the new Camera+ app. I applied a couple of effects to the photos and emailed them directly to my blog.

Sketchbook: San Francisco

Tibet Center

watercolor pencil 

in moleskine watercolor notebook

by Rosa Phoenix

I love the colors of Tibet. Bright red, orange, deep blue and yellow. And colorful prayer flags blowing in the wind.

A man saw me sketching and said, that's my house!

He said he lived at the Tibet Center and did the gardening. He wanted to make sure the garden was in the drawing.

this is a tiny door

see the colorful prayer flags

Sketchbook: New York

Cloisters Museum

watercolor pencil 

in moleskine watercolor sketchbook

by Rosa Phoenix

Fort Tryon Park is a beautiful hillside park overlooking the Hudson River.  On top of the hill is the Cloisters Museum, home of an important collection of Medieval Christian art.

Fort Tryon Park, NYC

watercolor pencil sketch

in moleskine watercolor sketchbook

by Rosa Phoenix

 It's a lovely place for a picnic!


I also wrote about the Cloisters Museum in my blog post here.

Sketchbook: San Francisco

2 Blue Houses

watercolor pencil 

in moleskine watercolor sketchbook

by Rosa Phoenix

Here are 2 recent watercolor pencil sketches. They seem to go together.