Dot Courson Fine Art Blog

Northeast Mississippi Community College in Booneville invited my daughter and I to exhibit at Anderson Hall Gallery this month. We both graduated from there before going on to finish our degrees in other universities. I attended NE in the 70s (nursing - RN program) and Susan in the 90s (pre-physical. Today we went up today to see the show which runs until the end of the month. Susan's children (my grandchildren) went up as well and it was fun seeing the 50 paintings on exhibit. I think you can find lots of family in these paintings as well as familiar southern landscapes. Here are photos of both our works:  All the works below are Susan's works:

This week I will be traveling to Richmond, VA! Here is the flyer for Plein Air Richmond . I so honored and really looking forward to painting there!     On my trip, I'm taking a painting for Senator Roger Wicker's staff to come down and pick up in Richmond. It will be on loan to hang in the office of Senator Wicker in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC!  I'm honored to have The Natchez Trace there. For almost 3 years it hung on the top floor of the Walter Sillers Building, Governor Haley Barbour's official capital offices in Jackson, MS. Here is a photo of us. On it's last day there he signed it for me at my request- before I picked it up. This is funny now but I was initially mortified because somehow he was mis-directed and signed the front (rather prominently) instead of the back as I had asked - so I had to take his signature off! I hated to do it - I...

A note from Dot: Robin Roberts was so kind to send this to me... and I want to share it with you... Dot Courson's Guest Blogger....  Robin Roberts .... Scary vs Fun... It went something like this:   one of my ardent painting students requested a class about faces and suggested we use a photo of a pretty lady she noticed in a blog.   It just happened to be my friend Dot Courson of Pontotoc Ms.   The student liked the smiling face and the straw hat.  So I requested a printable photo from Dot that she graciously supplied.   The students who attended are the brave ones willing to learn and tolerate boo boos.   I told them this would NOT be the portrait in a curly gold frame.   The class was intended to let them experiment and play with a face and not worry about having a finished "portrait" . You can see the reference photo of Dot that we used in the top photo .  We talked about the axis tilt of the head, and some basic p...

Amish Paintings:  This is an Amish child in Pontotoc county Mississippi, learning to drive a team of horses. I named it "Allied Education." as the Amish are home schooled until the 8 th grade, I hear, because they learn only to do their life's work.I read a court case in TN that stated that once. Around here the Amish have several saw mills. Also they sell fresh vegetables and homemade jams, etc. All done on wood stoves in the blazing hot summers. They are sweet folks!  I have prints of this (Amish Driver) for sale... 8x16's for $ $50 each unframed. Contact me if interested. A few weeks ago I had friends from out of town here and took them to see our Amish country...It's really interesting to see this place! Here are just a few of some oil paintings of the Amish that I have done: 12x16 Available- $ 350 Unframed.  Sold Sold Sold Amish Road (Study) ©Dot Courson   AVAILABLE   - Oil - $300   ...

Knife Painting Techniques Lately I have gotten interested in palette knife painting. Years ago I used to do some, and I still use a palette knife occasionally but it's mostly done along with brushwork. But nothing is "breaking the rules" in painting as far as I'm concerned. An artist can use anything- even elbows if they want to! I recently saw Barbara Flowers doing her wonderful and inspiring palette knife painting demo in Florida during our Women Painters of the Southeast (WPSE) show and got interested in doing palette knife work again. Here is a beautiful loose painting by Barbara who served as our show judge just in case if you are not familiar with her work: Teaching Pallet Knife Painting... So this past week I brought fresh pears to my painting class and taught palette knife for this weeks lesson. I was not sure what the students would think as I have not even talked about palette knife painting with them. And since I have never taught this - I lo...

Artist Workshops My husband Jackie and I host workshops for artists.  If you are an artist you understand about workshops. If you are not a painter, just think of it as education and continuing education for artists. These workshops are for students, intermediate artists and professionals. Sometimes the students are professional artists studying with another artist that they admire. Sometimes even the professional artist instructors themselves study with the other professional artists that they admire! No artist ever stops learning and we all learn a lot from each other.  I see lots of different styles of painting and work that I admire and their work styles range a lot. We recently invited and hosted a workshop with Anne Blair Brown.  Her work is loose and she has beautiful sense of color relationships within her works. A lot of what I love about here work is the beautiful colorful "grays" she mixes. I also like the way she lays in the ...