Michelle Wrighton Fine Art and Photography

‘Donnybrook Rose’ was a joy to paint, quite mesmerizing to paint the sweep and flow of the gentle curves reminiscent of a roses delicate petals.  Dark purples, magenta, plum and red violets contrast beautifully against the rich gold, copper and pale blue reminiscent of the iridescent sheen on a Ulysses Butterfly’s wings.

Modern contemporary floral art painting by Michelle Wrighton

This original art painting, like many modern abstract art pieces, is best viewed in a large size to appreciate the full depth of colours and texture of the brushstrokes. ‘Donnybrook Rose’ art prints will be available from my Redbubble and Zazzle shops shortly.  If ‘Donnybrook Rose’ would suit your interior decor and you would like to purchase a  unique hand painted and embellished canvas print of ‘Donnybrook Rose’  please contact me for pricing and purchase options.  Contemporary images using different colour schemes can also be created to your requirements.

Considering my normal subject material and style, how different is this one!

Boats at Harbour by Michelle Wrighton

As an animal and wildlife artist, I try to be bold with my colour choices while still retaining a high degree of realism, but I don’t usually get to enjoy using such explosive colour so paintings this one was an awful lot of fun! The fiery red reflections contrast against the cool blues and shades of turquoise greens in a way that would compliment a variety of modern contemporary interior designs.  Although painted as a single painting, I like it split up like the image shows as a triptych, but I think it would also work well as a four piece painting.  If two is a diptych, and three a triptych, I wonder what a four piece painting is called? I have absolutely no idea, so I better go google and find out!

Original abstract painting inspired by the colours and reflections of Fishing Boat Harbour in Fremantle, Western Australia.  Available for purchase printed with archival inks on ready to hang gallery wrapped canvas as well as glossy photographic prints for framing behind glass.

Thanks for visiting my blog  and sharing my art and photography with your family and friends!

x Michelle

Michelle Wrighton: Animal, Wildlife & Landscape Fine Art & Photography

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The original oil painting ‘Angel in Blue’ is one of my favourite traditional oil paintings on canvas that I have done.  Unlike many artists who will re-visit a painting they have created in the past and paint it again in a larger size or different medium, I very rarely, if ever do this…possibly because the traditional art mediums that I use (charcoal, graphite, color pencils, acrylic and oil paints) and the detailed style that I paint in take so many hours to create that I just have never had the desire to become that familiar with the image again!

However digital painting is proving to be so much fun and so liberating, LOL somedays I just think my artistic muse must be on speed;)  Or maybe something else a bit funny if the contemporary digital modifications that I have made to a photo of my American Staffordshire Terrier oil painting ‘Angel in Blue’ is any indication;)  While I still prefer the traditional oil painting version (and I am not sure if this version will appear anywhere else but in this blog post), my creative spirit is having so much fun that I feel somewhat compelled to share some of my experiments!  This is not a simple photo manipulation using one click filters or adjustments in photoshop, I have added all the new colours  to the photo and re-painted and blended them in this very funky version of Angel.  Nice and bright, hey?

Funky Angel - Contemporary American Staffordshire Terrier Painting

This is the latest piece I have been working on, an acrylic landscape painting created in a modern minimalist style on gallery wrapped chunky canvas. This painting developed quite differently from my original inspiration, so differently in fact that I initially started painting purple clouds! I am quite pleased with the way this one is coming along, as it was the strong contrasts in the light and darks of a desert sunset that I wanted to capture, and in particular I wanted to achieve this with rather bold brush strokes (considering the size of the canvas) and some pallette knife work for added texture. After looking at this piece for several days I am contemplating whether or not to further lighten some of the area around the sun, and some of the reflections in the middle of the painting.

One of the things that I am finding rather surprising with the modern, minimalist, abstract/contemporary styles that I am experimenting with at the moment is just how long they take to complete to my staisfaction – simple and less detailed definitely does not necessarily equate to less time to create, and I can definitely say that I have a new found respect for artists who work in these styles!

“Desert Sunset”, Acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas, 2006

Right side view

Left side view

Cheers

Michelle

This is the first floral acrylic painting I have done, of a tropical Bird of Paradise that I have growing in my front yard (I have a ‘brown’ thumb so its lucky this poor plant is still alive:). I really love the striking colours in this tropical flower, which is actually a native plant of South Africa and is also known as a Strelitzia.

This piece was definitely experimental, and a lesson in completing the background first – originally I had the flower backlit with a studio style background but I couldn’t achieve the halo lighting effect that I was visualizing so settled on a more abstract background.

The first image shows the whole painting, but after playing around with it in my graphics program I think for framing I prefer the closer crop of the second image. Overall I am happy with it, but at this stage I’m not sure if it needs more glazing or if it is ready to spray with gloss varnish so I will leave it for a couple of days and then take another look at it.

Above: Full painting Below: Cropped

“Bird of Paradise”, 8″x11″ Acrylic on canvas

More information on growing this beautiful tropical plant can be found on the Tropical gardening website.

Michelle

This is an abstract painting I completed yesterday, another in my flow series, experimenting with different interpretations of fluid motion. LOL – capturing digital images of my artwork is a challenge in itself -no matter what I do I can’t seem to get the images to accurately reflect the depth and detail.

I painted this one horizontally, like ripples in a pond, however when my ten year old daughter saw it she promptly turned it upright and told me I had painted a purple wave. That individual interpretation is what I love about abstract art, and I have called this one ‘Purple Wave’ purely because my daughters vision was different from mine!

“Purple Wave”, 5″x7″ on canvas board, 2006. Currently available at ArtByUs.

Michelle

I thoroughly enjoyed creating this acrylic painting of an incoming storm over the ocean, blues and greens and water in general seem to be playing a big part of creativity in the last week or two. Maybe its my subconsious trying to tell me to be flexible and flow with things at the moment.

Storm Coming, 5″x7″ acrylic on canvas board

I’ve been experimenting with a new Abstract series based on this concept, this first one, ‘Blue Flow’ is ACEO sized (2.5″ x 3.5″) acrylic on mattboard.

Viewed as Portrait format:

Viewed as Landscape format:

And the first one, as yet untitled, 3.5″ x 5″ acrylic on canvas:

Viewed in Portrait format:

Viewed in Landscape format:

The scanned digital images of these are rather disappointing as they have lost much of the vibrancy and depth of the originals. I havn’t varnished them yet, so will do so and see if I can get better images.

Michelle

Just to be different I have painted several modern/contemporary abstracts which are very different to the more normal highly detailed and realistic animals I normally do. My aim with these was in fact to avoid lots of detail and take the minimalist approach. These are all 4″x4″ art squared pieces, acrylic on canvas. I really enjoyed doing these and have listed two on Ebay to see how they go – they were a lot of fun and in between commissions, I plan on doing a lot more in this small format size.

Solitaire

Tall Poppies

View From The Dunes

Michelle