Food, Fabric and Romance

“Reflection”  Romance Series

• Oil on Canvas
• 48″ x 48″
• In a private collection

Intimacy, companionship and romance are conveyed using fabric and food. This was an early painting in the romance series. Looking at this painting is like looking at a favorite quilt. All the fabrics hold memories for me. Corn and croissant were often used in my still lifes from this period. Oranges remain a favorite, as does coffee.

Sunday Morning

“Sunday Morning”

• Oil on Canvas
• 48″ x 48″
• Contact the artist.

“Sunday Morning” as it should be; lazy, loads of treats and lots of possibilities.

Last Cigarette

“Last Cigarette”

• Oil on Canvas
• 12″ x 16″
• In private collection

Inspired by another lonely and desolate blues song by Patsy Cline, titled something similar to this. The phone dates the piece. A phone my grandchildren would not recognize as one.
This is a poem I wrote to accompany the painting.

Last Cigarette

You could get along nicely without me, you’d said.
Let’s forget this day ever happened, I replied.
You’d left for one of those long walks
you take when you want nothing close.
I sit in this hazy low lit room
down to my last cigarette,

….waiting.

A Blues Story

One Cigarette in the Ashtray

• Oil on Canvas
• 3 diptychs each 12″ x 18″
• $4500
• Contact the artist.

My husband is a fan of the blues. We’d been to hear k.d. lang singing Patsy Cline tunes while I was working on a series of blues paintings. This three part painting was inspired by one of her cigarette songs.  Cigarettes and depression seem to go hand in hand in blues tunes.

Following is poem inspired by this painting. Feel free to submit your own.

One Cigarette in the Ashtray

Late at night
I comfort a friend
by love abandoned.
We light two cigarettes.

Drinks and stories shared
in smokey haze
coerce my heart into
a lover’s daze.

Suddenly,
two cigarettes in the ashtray
turn to three.

Old love appears
and begs to stay.
I witness metamorphosis
as the heartsick is steered
from sad to gay.

Transformation complete,
a look of thanks
and they’re gone.
I sit alone__
sipping coffee, bittersweet,

one cigarette in the ashtray.

by Nancy Marshall

Donuts and Coffee on the River

Donuts and Coffee on the River (Detail)

• Oil on Canvas
• 12″ x 12″
• In a private collection

This landscape has elements that would lend themselves to a serene setting; sunrise, a river running through prairie, a breakfast still life, but the painting isn’t serene. The channeled river with it’s narrow riparian area and the orange sky and fields make one more ill at ease than at ease. But a bite of a donut, a sip of coffee, and we move on into the day.

Night Blooming Cactus

Night Blooming Cereus

• Oil on Canvas
• In the Paley collection

Memory fails me when I try to recall who gave me this plant (a cereus type, perhaps lemaireocereus thurberi?). No other plant gives me cause to throw a sunrise party.  When there’s a bloom, the party starts about 6am with donuts and coffee. By 9am, the flower begins to wither. Twenty-plus years ago my neighbor, Julia, Laura and I stayed up all night taking time-lapse photos of the flower opening.

This painting sets the cactus above the Missouri River with the full moon setting.

The Circus

Acrobats and Clown

• Oil on Canvas
• 9″ x 12″
• $800
• Contact the artist

After a night at the circus I returned to the studio and set a still life up on the circus poster. Besides playing around with objects, I decided to layer pictures. The black and white photos of a friend were in easy reach, so I added them. Turns out she has an aversion to clowns…ummmm??..”of all the gin joints.”

Your Luck Just Changed

Your Luck Just Changed

• Lithograph
• 11.5″ x 9″
• Edition of 64, in private collections
• Artist Proofs available
• $10,000
• Contact the artist.

“Your luck just changed” was produced at the Lawrence Lithography Workshop. It is a four color lithograph. Each color is drawn on a separate stone, then brought together in the printing process by master printer, Mike Sims. This piece is in the collection of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas.

Coffee

Coffee

• Oil on Canvas
• 9″ x 12″
• In the collection of J/CM

I begin most days with a cup of coffee, sipped while I perform morning chores. I share time with friends over coffee. I meditate over my paintings in progress with coffee.

I chose a limited palette and a painterly style which gives this simple object painting some liveliness.

Lisa-Marie

Tribute to Lisa-Marie

• Oil on Canvas
• In the collection of LMR/ET

Lisa-Marie was one of my painting instructors. She had the interest and courage to keep nudging me towards becoming a better painter. And she took me to Europe, an experience for which I’ll always be grateful. There I studied with Victor Temmerman, Belgium’s monumental sculptor. Both Victor and Lisa-Marie continue to create.  If I can link to a site with either of their work, I will.