Lily of the Valley

I loved making this painting!   The idea behind this image was inspired by memories of my childhood, and also by seeing Lily of the Valley peeking out of a garden in West Philadelphia.  Lily of the Valley has always reminded me of Massachusetts, both because my parents had a patch of them growing in the backyard alongside trillium and jack-in-the-pulpit, and because I always saw them on the forest trials that my grandpa maintained behind his house.

Lily of the Valley is native to Europe and Asia, as well as North America.  It’s sometimes used as an ornamental flower, and loves to grow wild in light-filled forests and along woodland edges.

White-Breasted Nuthatch

One of my favorite sights when birding is seeing a Nuthatch crawling upside down along a tree trunk, hunting for food.  I see these birds around the city, in urban parks as well as more remote locations like the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge.  White-Breasted Nuthatches are an avian species native to North America.

This painting is the loose copy of a photo taken by Alex Zorach in Newark, Delaware.  Alex is a knowledgeable birder, who has donated a group of his bird photos to me.  I recommend looking at his website, as he shares many of his photos and knowledge online.

Alex and I both record the data from our birding trips with eBird, a valuable resource for bird tracking run by The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Birders who record their data on eBird contribute to the study of bird species and conservation efforts around the world.

Hello WordPress

My name is Kelsey, I’m an artist in Philadelphia, and this is my blog.

I love painting nature and animals, especially horses, but I don’t like to limit myself in my work.  I’m inspired by the world around me and love to paint what I see, so my work also includes city-scapes and human portraiture, alongside my nature work.  I love painting pets as well, especially capturing their personalities and their relationships with other animals and people they live with.