Painting Archives - Greg and Jennifer Willits

Adventures in Imperfect Living Catholic Podcast with Rosary Army founders Greg and Jennifer Willits

8 Recent Paintings

I’ve been on a mad painting spree these last few months, and we’ve actually started framing and hanging some of them in the house.

What simultaneously amuses and befuddles me is that I never know which of my paintings my wife will deem “hang-worthy.” Having made some horrible design choices in the past, we’re both pretty picky about what goes on the walls. So I’m always pleased when I accidentally crank out a hang-worthy painting.

Like this one:

And this one:

See a trend as to where my paintings end up?

But then these others are sort of homeless right now. This one was tucked on a bookshelf:

And this one started a series of landscapes (which I feel like is one of my weaker suites, so I’m doing a lot of these lately trying to improve). This one might get hung:

This might get a frame, too:

Jennifer has made it clear this one WON’T get hung. So it’s in my closet right now:

Did this one on Good Friday. Not the best photograph, but I call this “Behold your Mother.” Pay attention to the right-side edge of the painting.

And I did this one yesterday on Easter Sunday. These last two I did on my front porch, and very much enjoyed being outside doing these instead of being in the basement, but it’s not the most convenient thing to haul all my gear upstairs and outside. But it’s worth it. More to come!

Blog

Rosary Painting Project

First, A Progress Report
A few weeks back I wrote about a new painting project I had started. I’m about 75% finished with that one. Here’s the progress so far:

Those are actually two separate paintings (thus, my wife Jennifer holding one of them) that tell the story of the Wedding Feast of Cana, which is one of my favorite stories from Scripture. It is based off of a stained glass image from the Cathedral in Providence, Rhode Island. Never seen it in person, but liked some of the photos I’ve seen enough to do my own version. When it’s done, these two will be framed separately and hung on the living room wall that has been completely blank for far too long. Like this:

The project has been a great challenge (in a good way) to re-awaken a lot of dormant understanding of painting.

Unexpected Surprise
One of the things that was driving me nuts is that sometimes I end up having to mix a lot of paint just to get a little bit of color on the canvas leaving me at the end of a painting session with a pile of unused and unneeded paint. And since I’m now painting with acrylics instead of oils, the paint dries super fast.

One night, further inspired by Pope John Paul II’s Letter to Artists, I had the idea of grabbing a spare, smaller canvas and just seeing what comes out of the brush by using the spare paint from that night’s painting session.

This was the result:

Third Luminous Mystery - The Nativity — Third Luminous Mystery – The Nativity

Surprised by the result, I’ve since continued doing these #SparePaintPaintings whenever I have leftover paint at the end of the night. I’ve now completed 16 of the 20 mysteries of the Rosary.

We’ve talked about the possibility of having prints made of these either individually or as one large collage, like this:

So here’s the question – Would you be interested in prints like this? It would require a bit of investment to have HD professional photos taken so that the prints would actually look like the original. And do any other artists out there have an idea how much things like this run for?

Here are some others I’ve done so far. Can you figure out which mystery each represents?

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