Down with the DPC.

Hey there Internet, Happy Fourth! I've been celebrating our nation's independence by... painting!!! Whooop! No fireworks for me, just the explosive magics happening in the art studio! Or... something.

Anyway, on Saturday I did some outdoor landscape painting - definitely still frightening and uncharted territory for me - with a groovy group of people from PAFA, including Mike Manley, David Campbell Wilson, Alina Osipov and Lexi Thomas. Mike has a great recap on the blog for their painting group (the "Dirty Palette Club"), so I'm going to be lazy here and link to his post, add a few photos of my own, below, and then call it a day - an independence day, in fact! Woot!

 Mike in the comfy chair

 Alina and her painting

 Painters in action

David being all arty

Au Canada!

John and I made a great little trip north to Montreal last weekend - what a fun city! Here are some photos:

On the way into the city, on a seriously foggy morning.

An art installation of giant air-freshener trees.



 Notre Dame: c'est obligatoire.

 Giant chess boards.

 Funky murals, cool architecture.

 Juste pour rire/just for laughs

 Elaborate graffiti

 Likewise, more elaborate graffiti

 John, going with the flow

 On the right: the movie that we saw. I love Isabelle Carré

John au Restaurant Les Pyrénées



 Along the St. Lawrence River

 Fancy metro station

 On the way up to Parc Mont Royal

 Telephone booth at the top of Mont Royal. John has entitled this photo "A Call of Nature."

A little snailfriend we made on the top of Mont Royal



 The ugly Croix de Montreal. Ugly! Ugh.

 Us chillin' in the Parc de Mont Royal

 Leaning birches on the way down from Mont Royal

 More crazy graffiti

 Under Pressure! more graffiti.

 Oh la la! Indeed.

 More graffiti/murals... I think I spy Alfred Hitchcock in there.

A perfect example of Montreal's architectural schizophrenia...



Et voila, des fleurs. C'etait un bon voyage! Merci et bonne nuit!

Two score, no more.

I am busy today trying to celebrate a slightly nauseating milestone in my life, so I'll catch up with y'all here in a few about our recent trip to Montréal, Québec. In the meantime, here's a pic from the trip - me hangin' with James McGill of McGill University:

Heavens to Etsy!

I am happy to announce that I finally have set up an Etsy shop, where I will be selling fine art prints of paintings from my "fabrication" series (like the painting below) - here's the link to the shop, be sure to visit!

http://www.dianefeissel.etsy.com/

impossibilitea, 12"x16", oil on printed fabric. Get a print of it here!

KC.

Hey! Been busy. More updates soon. In the meantime, here's a recent sketch of a friend from NC:

sketch of KC, oil on canvas, 12"x12"



Loving the City of Brotherly Love.

Now that we're finally having decent weather here in the Northeast (i.e. not 100-degree days with full-on humidity), we've had some occasions in which to enjoy that which spring has to offer here in the City of Brotherly Love. We took some time to enjoy the outdoors a bit this past weekend while Gus – my father-in-law and a talented photographer – was in town, with a little jaunt toward the northwesterly region of the city. A lovely ride along Kelly Drive, right up against the Schuylkill River, led us out to historic Laurel Hill cemetery; below is a view from the heights of the cemetery overlooking the river:

We then ventured out toward the Chestnut Hill region of Philadelphia, driving through the lush overgrowth of Fairmount Park along the way. I love that you don't have to leave city limits to get a great amount of tree exposure. Yay for Fairmount Park! Anyway, in Chestnut Hill we lunched at the French Bakery, grabbed some treats for later from the Night Kitchen, and spent the afternoon wandering the grounds of the lovely Morris Arboretum. Here are some shots:

Identity crisis.

Given all of the recent creepy hoaxes involving bloggers faking their online identities, I just wanted to assure you, dear reader, that I am who I say I am! No fakes! Just as the header to this blog proclaims, I am Diane Feissel, an artist living and painting stuff in Philadelphia. Why, just the other day I had someone take a picture in the studio while I painted our cats, just so I could prove the veracity of my claims, behold:

 A wholly accurate* record of the happenings in the Feissel studio - June 13, 2011.

 *However, I don't usually wear a beret.