Rainy Night on Main Street
“Rainy Night on Main Street”, acrylic, 24″ x 12″, 2007 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski
“Rainy Night on Main Street”, Acrylic • 12” W x 24” H • 2007
I pulled up to a stop sign and saw this view of Main Street at night in the rain. I took a photo with my ever-present digital camera (and actually have it in my gallery “At Night in the Rain” ) but at the time a friend had also given me boxes of leftover art materials from her aunt including canvas panels and acrylic paints and brushes. I could visualize this in acrylic paint, the fuzzy glow around the streetlights, the lights in the windows, the long, ragged reflections on the street, and so I did. I entered it in annual the “Carnegie Painted” art exhibit in 2007 and it’s also part of the gallery “My Home Town”, a collection of 12 of my favorite paintings of all the ones I’d entered in that exhibit over nearly a decade. The original painting is sold, but I have made prints of it in various sizes.
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This is shared on Friendship Friday on Create With Joy
Friendship Friday.
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All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
A Little Bit of Rain
Pear blossoms.
The sun shone this morning but the rain clouds moved in, a nice intermittent rain that let the sun shine between the raindrops, so pretty on the pear blossoms, forsythia, forget-me-nots and green grass.
Big round water droplets on the flowers.
Pear blossoms.
Crystals.
Pear blossoms.
Forsythia.
Pear blossoms.
Forget me nots.
Pear blossoms.
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All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Diamonds in the Rough
Diamond Dust
Rain fell overnight and into the morning, then as the clouds began to part the mid-morning sun reflected itself on every single tiny drop on the surface of each leaf. The window screen acts like a cross-screen filter to defract the sparkle, though it blurs the overall image just a bit that adds to the soft beauty of such a simple image.
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If you are interested in purchasing this painting or any other originals I have posted here on Today, please contact me. I will also have prints of this painting after the exhibit.
Raindance
Raindance
The rain fell in big showers as the leaves and I danced among the drops.
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
All images in this post are copyright © Bernadette E. Kazmarski and may not be used without prior written permission.
A Little Mist
City Lights
After a very heavy rain, mist hung in the air and my little wandering jew looked like a wonderland of magic or terror as droplets of mist collect on all the hairs on the leaves, and on the tiny web between two leaves. Above is “City Lights”, looking like a maze of lights in a city at night; below is “Tribulation”, appearing like the entrance to a dangerous place.
Tribulation
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
All images in this post are copyright © Bernadette E. Kazmarski and may not be used without prior written permission.
Raindrops on Lilacs
Raindrops on Lilacs
Some days you just go to take out the garbage not expecting a miracle, but you find a tiny raindrop right in the center of every flower in a panicle of lilac flowers.
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
All images in this post are copyright © Bernadette E. Kazmarski and may not be used without prior written permission.
Passing Storm
Passing Storm
Billowing clouds parted as the storm hurried on to other destinations leaving this Queen Anne style home soaked and silhouetted; East Liberty, Pittsburgh.
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
January Rain
January Rain
Heavy pendulous raindrops, each one its own little microcosm of the macrocosm, dangle from hangers on my clothesline in the January rain, so dark I could barely get clear photo but used that and the softening of the screen on the door to its best effect.
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms. For photos of lots of black cats and other cats—and even some birds as I first published this post there—visit The Creative Cat.
Rainy Window
Giuseppe watches the rain.
These are two photos from a series I took of one of my black cats looking out a rainy window. Today is rainy and contemplative and I thought I’d share them here; you can read the post about them on The Creative Cat.
Giuseppe looks away from the window.
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms. For photos of lots of black cats and other cats—and even some birds as I first published this post there—visit The Creative Cat.
Foggy Bend
Foggy Bend
I’m not sure what caused this blanket of fog to lie just above the water of the creek. I think the creek is cold still, yet our weather the past few days has been in the 50s and 60s, very warm for December, and it rained heavily this morning, drizzling all day. In any case, it was a real treat to photograph on the way back from the post office.
The photo may look a little tilted. The trees on the hill to the left are leaning outward, away from a nearly vertical highwall above a railroad track.
I needed several tries to get this right—the lighting is just dim enough, and the fog softened the edges enough that the camera complained. I had to use the railing of the bridge I stood on as a tripod.
The photo below may give you a little more idea of what the fog was like.
What the creek looked like from a distance; the area I photographed is slightly right of center.
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms. For photos of lots of black cats and other cats—and even some birds as I first published this post there—visit The Creative Cat.
A Little Mist
City Lights
After a very heavy rain, mist hung in the air and my little wandering jew looked like a wonderland of magic or terror as droplets of mist collect on all the hairs on the leaves, and on the tiny web between two leaves. Above is “City Lights”, looking like a maze of lights in a city at night; below is “Tribulation”, appearing like the entrance to a dangerous place.
Tribulation
Goose Herders
Geese in the rain.
Just a nice photo of our flock of Canada geese walking on wet pavement as they headed for higher ground this morning. The creek was high after heavy rainfall and they normally nest on the creek banks, now under water.
Below, they walk in a somewhat orderly fashion between the bank and the creek, but couldn’t cross the street for the traffic.
The geese head out between the bank and the creek.
Mark Cantley and I helped them cross the street—he parked his truck to block traffic from one directly and I stepped out to block it from the other and we both herded the geese across Main Street.
We herd the geese across the street.
Here they are in the empty lot.
Geese safely in the empty lot.
Rainy Morning
Raindrops on Hangers
Sometimes the most unusual things are beautiful.
open your heart to unexpected moments of beauty
See more photos of rain.
Poem for a Rainy Day: The World Upside Down
The World Upside Down
The World Upside Down
In the misty turn of a rainy afternoon
a single, ponderous drop of rainwater hangs tenuously from the curved tip of a leaf
holding within the world turned upside down
and a moment later falls into eternity.
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If you look closely you’ll see the maple trees at the edge of my neighbor’s yard upside down inside the droplet.
The World Upside Down ©2011 Bernadette E. Kazmarski
See more photos of rainy days.
Read more poetry here on Today or visit my poetry page to see more about my poetry and other writing, and to purchase Paths I Have Walked.
Paths I Have Walked, collected poems.
I’m proud to offer a folio of my poetry
Paths I Have Walked: the poetry and art of Bernadette E. Kazmarski
FROM FOUR ANNUAL POETRY READINGS AT ANDREW CARNEGIE FREE LIBRARY & MUSIC HALL IN CARNEGIE, PA
People who attended one or more of my poetry readings encouraged me to publish some of my poetry in a book from the beginning.
Once I completed my 2010 poetry reading, my fourth featuring the final piece of artwork in the “Art of the Watershed” series, I decided it was time to publish something and it should be those four poetry readings.
Poetry books are not best-sellers; it’s difficult to convince a publisher to risk effort on a beginning poet, and while self-publishing is the best option it’s not inexpensive and once you’ve got the book, someone’s got to market it. Plus, I’m a graphic designer and I designed books for years, and I want things my way.
All of this is a recipe for a little bit of trouble, but I decided the book was well worth the effort so I designed the book myself and had a set printed—no ISBN or anything formal, but it’s a start! I’m really excited to offer it.
Books are 4.25″ x 11″, 40 pages of information and poetry, with glossy covers featuring “Dusk in the Woods” and little thumbnails of all four pieces in “Art of the Watershed”.
$8.00 each plus $2.50 shipping (they are oversized for mailing first class).
You can order one on my poetry page, or in my Marketplace.
About the books and the poetry readings
My biggest inspiration for poetry, prose and artwork is the world right around me, and I enjoy the opportunity to share it from the perspective of one who walks and hikes and bikes and carries a camera, art materials and journal everywhere—even around the house—so the inspirations are fresh.
In December, 2006, two of my poems were chosen to be published on a section of the Prairie Home Companion website entitled “Stories From Home/First Person” for submissions of writing about the place we feel most familiar. I’m a long-time listener to PHC and reader of Garrison Keillor’s books as well as a daily listener to The Writer’s Almanac featuring news about writers and writing and of interest to writers as well as a poem, all compiled and read by Keillor himself. I was astonished to find my poems were among the first chosen from apparently thousands, and so happy to be able to share them with a potential audience of so many similarly inclined writers and readers.
My poetry readings and art exhibits were the vision of Maggie Forbes, executive director of the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall, after learning of my publishing of those two poems. I owe her many thanks for encouraging me to present this combination of my visual and literary art, a first for me. I love that building, every inch of it, and the opportunity to bring people in to visit is an honor.
A Diamond Bush
A Diamond Bush
This is what greeted me through the kitchen window this morning—a common forsythia, bare of nearly all its leaves, transformed into a sparkling shrub of diamonds. Last night’s raindrops still held, pendant, along the arched branches and fully caught the sun at just that moment.
I used my cross-screen filter to enhance the brightest drops. Without it they appeared as simply flashed-out circles and not the diamonds I had envisioned. Certainly something beautiful to see first thing.
Autumn Yellow and Blue
Autumn Yellow and Blue
Another overcast rainy day with a blue cast to the light, reflected on the wet leaves and filtering through the mist. The shapes and colors blend so it almost looks like an abstract pattern.
Another Rainy Day
Another Rainy Day.
Just a little light illuminates the drops waiting to fall from sodden branches.
October Rain, 2011
October Rain.
Water droplets sit on colored leaves. It was indeed very rainy, but the colors in this photo are the classic autumn harvest colors as well.
Looking at the Sky
Looking at the sky.
On a very dark day, each drop of rain left on the grass captures the glow of the overcast sky. I am looking at the grass, but the grass is looking at the sky.
Rainy Morning
Raindrops on Hangers
Sometimes the most unusual things are beautiful.
open your heart to unexpected moments of beauty
Downpour
Downpour.
No melodramatic weather today, just a lot of rain and, glad for my garden and all the growing things around, I ran out to the street and leaped into the sudden stream running past my house.
The Wild Carrot
The Wild Carrot
I post a lot of photos of, and I take even more of, Queen Anne’s Lace, out in the field in the country, sprouting from the space between a building and the street in the city, and in a vase in various places around my home. It is the wild carrot, and many legends of its name and medicinal powers have followed it through the centuries. It’s one of my favorite flowers and its delicate beauty combined with plenitude makes me love it even more.
We finally had some rain, and here it is in the vase in my front yard, refreshed by a storm with the sun just beginning to show through the soil.
Today 