Happiness

Acrylic on stretched canvas, 24×20″

This one’s a commission. The client didn’t have a specific brief, but liked some of the paintings I’ve done with reflections. Also really likes lighthouses, bright floral scenes, sunflowers, and hearts.

By the way, you can actually get seeds for sunflowers with a heart shaped center!

Also, the favorite colors are yellow, purple, gray and turquoise. Oh, and blue skies!

Do you like it? Let me know what you think in the comments.

If you like this painting, please share – because it really helps!

Paintings about love & life & what it is to be human. All work is for sale, Pay What You Want. Seriously. Just tell me what price works for you.

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The Other Side of the Road

Acrylic on canvas, 14×11″

The Other Side of the Road

Looks pleasant enough over there, but are you willing to do what it takes to get there?

First you have to go through the red hot lava field. The good news is, there’s water on the other side of the lava. But then you’ll have to cross the water. Then if you manage to gain the opposite shore, there’s that road.

Now, here’s the tricky part. You see, the road is very pretty, you get a great close up view of what lies beyond, plus it’s a good way to assess where you’ve come from and how much you’ve accomplished. Which is considerable!

But it’s the road of temptation, it’s smooth and flat, and easy. And it’s really the greatest obstacle you’ll face, because this time it’s from within. You could spend the rest of your time happily going back and forth just sightseeing and congratulating yourself on your achievement. And that’s where your journey would stop.

But if you want to discover what lies beyond, you’ll have to let go of the path of comfort and prepare to take on the jungle and the terrain. Into terra incognita

The hero’s journey.

What say you, hero?

If you like this painting, please share — it really helps! 

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Follow me on Instagram: @webb.spyder

If you’d like to consider supporting my work on a monthly basis (for as little as $1 a month) and keep me painting, I’d love to have you join my team and get available discounts on original art and exclusive behind the scenes content:  patreon.com/spyderwebb

White Cloud

Acrylic on canvas, 12×12″

White Cloud

You’d think a cloud is just a loose mass of water vapor, and you’d be right as far as that goes. But might it have consciousness? Is it aware in any sense?

Is it possible that clouds, as insubstantial and ephemeral as they are, are still capable of interacting with us, with our thoughts and our deep questions? Could they be a tool of the divine mind? Well — isn’t everything?

Shortly after my father crossed over to the spirit world, I was sitting on the back porch of his house, and I looked up and noticed a cloud. A cloud that was unmistakably the profile of my father’s face. At the same time I heard his voice in my mind saying “you’ll just have to carry on.” Which does sound like the kind of thing he would say. 

Everything can speak to you if you’re open to receive it. 

Acrylic on canvas 12×12”

If you like this painting, please share — it really helps! 

All works are available for sale. DM me or check out my website:

spyderwebbfineart.com 

Follow me on Instagram: @webb.spyder

If you’d like to consider supporting my work on a monthly basis (for as little as $1 a month) and keep me painting, I’d love to have you join my team and get available discounts on original art and exclusive behind the scenes content:  patreon.com/spyderwebb

Cotton Candy Dreams

Acrylic on canvas 14×11″

Tekakwitha is awfully good at coming up with titles. I really like this one. 

I think the technique is progressing nicely — I’m pretty happy with this one. I have another, sort of a sister painting to this one, but it’s perched on my easel because it just needs something. I have a vague idea of what, but I’m not ready to commit yet.

Painting — the way I paint at least — is always an example of MLK’s saying (and I know I’m going to misquote him here) “you don’t have to see the whole staircase to take the first step.” Or something like that.

I almost always get to a point in a painting where I think this is not going well, I’ve ruined it. Then I launch a desperate rescue operation. Which usually works out. Some pieces end up in the pile of shame, but thankfully only a very few. Almost always I can pull it off, and I’m happy with the final result. Like I planned it that way all along. Like with this one. 😏

If you like this painting, please share — it really helps! 

All works are available for sale. Check out my website:

spyderwebbfineart.com 

Follow me on Instagram: @webb.spyder

If you’d like to consider supporting my work on a monthly basis (for as little as $1 a month) and keep me painting, I’d love to have you join my team and get available discounts on original art and exclusive behind the scenes content:  patreon.com/spyderwebb

First Snow

Acrylic on canvas, 14×11″

Cue the faerie dust! 

It’s amazing how magical these pictures start to look once I sprinkle faerie dust into the paint ✨.

Dots within dots within dots!

Oh, I’m not done with the recycled pieces, I just go back and forth. 

If you like this painting, please share — it really helps! 

All works are available for sale. Check out my website:

spyderwebbfineart.com 

Follow me on Instagram: @webb.spyder

If you’d like to consider supporting my work on a monthly basis (for as little as $1 a month) and keep me painting, I’d love to have you join my team and get available discounts on original art and exclusive behind the scenes content:  patreon.com/spyderwebb

Traveling

14.25″ x 5.5″ Acrylic on reclaimed wood, $316 (US shipping included)

The little curved black area at the top right and the thin black line at the bottom are not part of the painting, they’re areas where the wood doesn’t conform neatly to the rigid straight lines of the graphic image. What do you expect? It’s leftover wood from some project or other. I think these imperfections give the artworks an extra bit of character. Plus, I feel good that it didn’t go into a landfill. (You can feel good about it too, if you buy it! 😄)

Of course, I make sure to seal the wood with acrylic medium and multiple coats of acrylic gesso before painting to make sure the art itself is as archival as that painted on any traditional support.

I have no idea if people are going to respond positively to the recycled aspect or not, but it means something to me, so I’m going to keep going with it, as well as continuing to paint on traditional supports like panels and canvas.

So what does the title mean? Does it evoke traveling to you? My wife Tekakwitha came up with the title when I was stumped, and I can totally relate to it. 

If you like this painting, please share — it really helps!

spyderwebbfineart.com 

Follow me on Instagram: @webb.spyder

If you’d like to consider supporting my work on a monthly basis (for as little as $1 a month) and keep me painting, I’d love to have you join my team and get available discounts on original art and exclusive behind the scenes content:  patreon.com/spyderwebb

The Red Bridge

Acrylic on stretched canvas, 10″x10″

So maybe it doesn’t look like a bridge to you.

It didn’t to me either, but that was the first thing my wife saw, and I liked that.

I just finished rereading The Legend of Bagger Vance by Stephen Pressfield (stay with me here) and there’s a lot in that book that isn’t about golf. In fact, the book isn’t really about golf at all, golf is just the vehicle for the meaningful stuff. I also found out that the book was based on the Bhagavad Gita.

There’s a lot of talk in the story about finding your authentic swing. And of course, your authentic swing is what you have to find in life, whether it’s your golf game, your painting game, your relationships, or your own spiritual journey.

I feel like I’ve been honing in on my authentic painting swing for the past year. I’ve come close in my career, but never as much as recently. And like Rannulph Junah, the protagonist in the story, I found it, then got in my head and lost it, and have come back to it now with greater understanding. I don’t find my painting path, my painting path finds me. And then I get out of the way and allow it to paint through me.

Kind of like getting on a ride at a theme park.

Oh, and the field of flowers or the bridge? It makes absolutely no difference. That’s head stuff that happens after the fact. I present the painting with a name that serves as an identifier, with some reference however tenuous, to the imagery so the title can be a useful tag.

Pyramids and green rolling hills and being the child of an immigrant

I’ve been thinking about these pyramid paintings I’ve been turning out lately. Although I grew up in Latin America, and saw my fair share of the pyramids there, these are clearly Egyptian pyramids. So why have I been placing them in landscapes that look more like the southeast USA?

Maybe it’s my subconscious trying to integrate the two sides of my heritage. I think children of immigrants, that is those born in the US of immigrant parents, have a lot of work trying to integrate both cultures, traditions and family styles. My mother was born in Cairo, and immigrated to the US as a teen nearly a hundred years ago, together with one of her sisters. She was a Catholic and a francophone, so that added to my cultural confusion. I learned a bit of French growing up, but not a word of Arabic. My father was born in Virginia of parents from the hills of east Tennessee, with roots going back to protestant Scots-Irish settlers in the mid 18th century.

I never really felt connected with either side, much to my puzzlement. Understandably I guess, I always felt much more connected to Latin American culture, and I feel a bit more Latino than anything else. I guess there’s a little of the Central American Jungle in some of these pictures also.

The pyramids popping up in these landscapes also remind me of the view from the back porch of the house where my parents retired in Charlottesville, Virginia with a beautiful view of the Blue Ridge mountains and Buck mountain in particular, front and center, vaguely pyramidical in shape.

I’ve only recently started to feel some connection to the Egyptian/Middle Eastern heritage when I said out loud something about “my Middle Eastern heritage.” For some reason, that struck me in a way it never had before.

Funny how we sometimes have to work things out symbolically instead of addressing them head on.

Cry Me a Pharaoh

Acrylic on canvas, 10″x10″ $160

Not a Beatles song this time!

If you like this painting, please share — it really helps!

spyderwebbfineart.com 

Follow me on Instagram: @webb.spyder

If you’d like to consider supporting my work on a monthly basis (for as little as $1 a month) and keep me painting, I’d love to have you join my team and get discounts on original art and exclusive behind the scenes content:  patreon.com/spyderwebb

Pharaoh On The Hill

9″x12″ Acrylic on canvas board $168 & free shipping

The third in the series of song title inspired paintings, and the second with a Beatles inspired title.

It almost looks kind of musical, doesn’t it?

Of course, I don’t mean to imply that the fool on the hill and any pharaoh might have anything in common, but I guess there might have been a pharaoh or two who fit that description. Law of averages among humans, I suppose.

Any thoughts on further Beatles inspired titles that could be adapted to this series?

Magical Pharaoh Tour (or Pharaoh Mystery Tour perhaps)? Pharaoh Lane? Here Comes the Pharaoh? While My Pharaoh Gently Weeps? Strawberry Pharaohs Forever? Pharaoh’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? Norwegian Pharaoh?

Well, you get the idea. Doesn’t have to be Beatles (the next painting isn’t) but if something strikes your fancy, let me know in the comments.