"Red Cellophane" -- oil on canvas -- 24x24" -- Margie Guyot

Last Monday I was in Meijer's in Traverse City, looking for a pink flower to paint. None of their pink flowers looked very striking. And then I spied this red cellophane! Wow! My heart started beating faster (always a good sign!) and I knew this was what I had to paint. The red gerber daisies were actually rather dull and drab-looking, compared to the cellophane.

I've painted clear plastic before. That's relatively easy. But to do red? I found it impossible to mix reds and get them to look transparent. Everything looked way too dark and muddy. What I ended up going was painting the entire tablecloth, using Liquin in with the oil paints. Liquin helps oil paints dry a lot quicker.

Once the tablecloth was dry, I was able to do a thin wash of red with Liquin. I think it turned out pretty well.

One of the striking things about the red cellophane was the pink shadow it cast on the tablecloth. It took some figuring-out to do on this one.

That's another vintage tablecloth from my collection. They're all from garage sales I've visited over the years. Glad the mice haven't found them yet!

"Gnome for the Holidays" -- oil on canvas -- 30x40" -- Margie Guyot

People always ask me what my inspiration for a painting was. In this case, it was the ancient accordion I happened to see high on a shelf in Petals, a flower shop in Charlevoix, MI. The woman told me she used to play accordion (me, too!) and she'd found this old instrument out in a Las Vegas pawnshop. Reminds me of "Accordion Crimes" by Annie Proulx -- one of my favorite novels, by the way.

I thought this was such a cool accordion. I dared to ask the woman if I might borrow it sometime to use in a still life painting. To my utter surprise, she said yes. She'd never seen me before, but was willing to let me whisk away her accordion! This would only happen in the rural Midwest! As a thank-you, I bought a bunch of lime green fuji mums, which I managed to incorporate into this painting.

My friend Ev had been suggesting to me that I should paint a musical instrument-themed still life. Now that I had the piece-de-resistance, I could build the rest of the setup. Ev loaned me the cornet, guitar and violin.

I had the gnomes. This big one in the center is from Meijer's garden department. Usually it's stationed right inside my front door, greeting all vistors in its namaste pose. The other gnome in the back I brought up from my old digs in Farmington Hills. How it survived the move without being broken, I consider a minor miracle.

Found those great, old vintage poinsettia glasses in Consign Design, in Charlevoix. I love old schlock like that! The poinsettia tablecloth was from my "early garage sale collection".

For reasons I can't really explain, I had to set everything atop a tropical print with turquoise and golden palm leaves. Maybe it's locked way into some subconscious fantasy about spending Christmas down on a desert island.

The cookies are entirely made up, from memory. The miserable grocery stores up here have the nastiest, most pathetic cookies you could imagine! I'm trying to cut the carbs, so I didn't want to bake any. Plus, I'm too impatient to stop & bake cookies when I'm inspired to start a new still life. But I do remember how Christmas cookies USED to look. They're sitting on a Depression glass plate I inherited from my mom.

Swirling around in the back are branches from one of the neighbor's bushes. They sure look like some kind of cranberry to me. By the time I finished this, they were dried-out mummies.

What was the hardest part about this painting? Painting the musical instruments! Unlike a squash or apple, they have to be ACCURATE. And those accordion keys -- oy vey! Early on, I'd painted in the accordion, then when I came into the studio the next day I saw it was all skewed. I'd stood close to the canvas, looking down on it. It looked OK at that angle, but from across the room, it was very much "off". As usual, I did LOTS of wipe-outs on this. But I'm pronouncing it done!