Kate Sammons

Fine Art Oil Paintings and Commissioned Portraiture

Featured Painting Dec 2017

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Happy Holidays everyone! I hope you enjoy my latest painting. I had a “ball” doing it.

Canning jars have a significance in American history, especially during the Great Depression. The Ball Corporation made their jars distinctive with the “Ball Blue Color” from 1915 to 1937. The Mason jar was patented in 1858 and various innovations and improvements were added to its design until 1915. Since the 1960’s, home canning dramatically fell in popularity but today these jars still remind us of an early time in American industrial manufacturing, the spirit of populism and a thrifty attitude.

Featured Painting July 2017

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This painting is one of my recent efforts to celebrate a time, place and memory in my life. This occasion happened during a family summer vacation in North Eastham, MA. Fittingly it is to be exhibited with Collins Galleries in Orleans, MA which is just a few miles from North Eastham.

The Great Pond in Eastham, MA is a wonderful place to go with the family on a hot summer day. My family has vacationed on the Cape several times in the past few years. It has become my mother’s place to get away from it all. She’ll rent a house or cabin and invite the family to come join. Our days there are long and relaxed, beginning with an early morning walk and breaking for a mid morning coffee. By mid-day we’ve gone inside to escape the heat and lie around reading or napping. By late afternoon people are figuring out what the dinner plans are going to be and usually headed out to the fish market to pick something up. This painting captures the mood of some family play time by the shore of the Great Pond.

Featured Painting February 2017

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For me the allure of this painting is how nicely the textures and colors play together, allowing the unity of the light to create the harmony in what would otherwise be a pretty colorless display. The warm tones glow richly golden and lend a luxurious touch to these delicate objects. This painting is available at Gallery 1261.

Featured Painting October 2016

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Portrait of Sumner Hunt, 18 x 24 inches, oil by Kate Sammons
Portrait of Sumner Hunt, 18 x 24 inches, oil by Kate Sammons

Portrait of Sumner Hunt, collection of the Los Angeles Country Club. Sumner Hunt ( 1865 – 1938) was a prominent architect in Los Angeles from 1889 to the 1930s. One of his early projects in Los Angeles was to design the Bradbury Building in 1893 when he had moved to his own practice. During his partnership at the firm Hunt, Eager and Burns in 1911, he designed the Los Angeles Country Club. This commissioned painting, completed in September now hangs in the recently renovated entrance of the building. The portrait commission was arranged through my gallery American Legacy Fine Arts.

Featured Painting June 2016

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tea-in-blue_web

Tea in Blue also features a Mexican glazed tile that I picked up from the Olvera Stree Market here in downtown Los Angeles and a decorative piece of fabric that I love because it reminds me of a dress that I was given as a gift from a man who sold Indian exports in Berkeley. I lived there for a few months some years ago and would bring a selection of his store merchandise to the Sausalito flea market on the sunny spring weekends.

It was a gorgeous white dress with blue patterned embroidery and a drawstring with little tinkly bells. This favorite dress traveled with me to Amsterdam and Morrocco later that year and became a part of my adventures there. I lost it afterward but it lives on in my memory with the scent of incense and the brilliant afternoon light and wind of the Mediterrean. This painting,I hope evokes the fragrance of afternoon tea, a bouquet of romance and nostalgia taking you to far away places.

Featured Painting February 2016

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Title: Self Portrait in Mirror
Size: 20 x 16 inches
Medium: Oil on Panel
Description: This painting was inspired by a sense of longing that I feel in my artwork for an escape into my imagination. Images have long held a fascination for me, the more mysterious and beautiful the better. Beautiful pictures have fed my imagination since childhood, giving my mind and emotions a place to wander and a sense of freedom that feels just as vivid as it would in the real world. Whenever I feel the need for a sense of calm or joy, my imagination often goes looking to connect with an image that gives me that feeling . The self portrait is a glimpse of me looking into this space which is much more in my mind’s eye than just behind my shoulder.

The painting will be exhibited and offered for sale to the public at the upcoming Paris Seminar Exhibition in Laguna Beach in mid April. The proceeds from the exhibiitons will fund an opportunity for the artists to participate in an educational trip to Paris. The selected group will have the benefit of special lectures on the humanities by distinguished guests, discourses on composition, and painting sessions in the historic atelier of the Grand Chaumiere. I invite you to come to this exhibition and participate with the artists in a rare event that brings together a mixture of hope, excitement, philosophy and adventure.

Keep on truckin.