Find Shelly Wilkerson Poems Online

Shelly Wilkerson cat art - called the Cat Companion Collection, is all available as canvas fine art at the Naked Wall Art Gallery, but where can you find the poetry that Shelly writes to go with each painting? Visit the Shelly Wilkerson Poem blog of course!
http://www.catcompanions.blogspot.com/

I'm entering a new poem every day, so check back or become a "follower" and start every day off with a smile!

Oh, you want to know who this is at the left? No, it's not my sister-in-law with the horse - this is Rose - Shelly's Southern Bell - who is still waiting for Mista Right! That poem is not up yet, but will be soon!

Great Horse Art by karen Leibrick

Our search for great contemporary canvas art continues. I just got off the phone with my sister in law who is working on a blog about horse health issues, so horses are top of mind. Horse art has always been popular for us, and I'm particularly impressed with two new art prints on canvas - (we call that a canvas transfer). The horse artist is Keren Leibrick and Strider I and Strider II are two great pieces of horse art. Karen Leibrick stands out with these two paintings, not just because the horses are beautiful, but the uplifting feel the art gives a room. It's amazing how you can hang a simple canvas transfer print on a naked wall, and suddenly you feel like sitting up straight with a little more energy!

What does Contemporary Canvas Art have to do with Die Cast Toy Cars?

This is a brand new blog about art on canvas. So why is there a 1956 Lincoln convertible on my blog? It's Tom' fault!
We're still new at art blogging, so a little encouragement goes a long way. We welcome our first comment from my brother Tom Allen, of Buckeye AZ. He owns AZ Diecast a die cast toy car an truck store online. He's been collecting these die cast toy cars for forty years and selling them as a professional die cast dealer for twenty years.


Thanks for the encouraging words.
Hey, for amazing car art, posters, prints or canvas transfers of cars, you can visit the the website for the Framed Art Superstore - read all about how to order any art you want at outlet prices. For ready to hang contemporary canvas art, visit our new online gallery www.nakedwallartgallery.com

Artist Stefano Ferreri Biography

After searching the Internet far and wide, I could not find a biography for Stefano Ferreri for anything! He's the amazing wine and martini artist we've been so crazy for, but I was beginning to wonder if the artist actually was real!

After emailing his publisher, I got the answer no other gallery bothered to seek out!

So here it is, the only place on the Internet with the biography of Stefano Ferreri!

Born in San Giovanni Valdarno in 1946, Stefano Ferreri uses his childhood in Tuscany as a constant source of inspiration in his paintings.

Ferreri developed an appreciation for the full bountiful potential of the land that was worked by people with great skill, vision, and patience. Enjoying wine and understanding the people that produced the great vintages were both part of the culture that surrounded Ferreri as a young man.
He was trained at a local Art Academy and has cultivated a technique that is realistic and also rich with brushstrokes. Wine has become a favourite subject for Ferreri as he has taken the cultural inspiration of his Tuscan roots and transformed the imagery into strikingly dramatic glimpses of the rituals and visual details that surround the drinking of fine wine. His painting style creates a new contemporary realism by utilizing deep rich colours, the play of light on glass and liquids, and very unusual perspectives.

Early in his career, Ferreri’s works became popular with food and wine connoisseurs who appreciated his masterly technique and his knowledge of the subject. However, in recent years a wide range of collectors from many different backgrounds and interests are interested in his work. Wine has a universal appeal, as it has throughout history. Ferreri’s paintings are displayed in many private and public collections in Italy, France, and Northern Europe. He has won several awards and competitions in Italy, and his popularity continues to now grow in North America. All of his published prints are available as art on canvas, or a canvas transfer from the Naked Wall Art Gallery.

If you want one of his prints that are not on our site, send me an email info@nakedwallartgallery.com and we'll order it for you and add it to our site.

Stefano Ferreri Wine Art Rocks

We're constantly shopping for exciting new contemporary canvas art for our galleries and every once in a while, I find something to get really excited about. I found Stefano Ferreri's wine art in the fall of 2008 while creating a wine-themed window display when we opened the new Framed Art Superstore in North Conway Village.

The only problem? No sooner do I get the window display perfect, and someone buys the art right out of the window. I reorder four new canvas transfers of new Ferreri's paintings and again, these darn customers keep wrecking my display! I love it when that happens! Of course when you look at this art, you can see why, and when you consider we sell them this art on canvas for less than it would cost to frame the poster version, you'll want one or two of them yourself. Our online gallery offers them at a real deal and with free shipping!

If you are a wine or martini lover, you will love any of the canvas art by Stephano Ferreri. They are all available as prints, but they look best as a canvas transfers, and we like them with the museum wrapped edges and no frame. The classic photo realism style fits any elegant surrounding - maybe a dining room or wine cellar and still they are modern enough, especially without a frame they fit in any modern or contemporary decor. Visit the Naked Wall Art Gallery.com for this collection and over 500 more of our favorite art pieces. Featured here on this blog in the top left is Chianti Classico by Stephano Ferreri and Grandi Bianchi is the white wine picture.

Bahama Mamas
Steal away to tropic breezes,
To sample wine and rum and cheeses.
Leave the office, leave the bills.(Bahama Beaches cure your ills!)
Gladly take the salt and sand,
And play another poker hand!
"Get the girlie", play some gin,
And shop some places you've not been.
Bead your hair and try new dishes.
Live out all your wildest wishes!
Raise the stakes and raise the glasses! Bask in sun and burn your ----- !!

Shelly writes an adorable poem for every painting she creates. Through her poetry you get to know the characters before you "adopt" them.

Okay, come on - admit it you chuckled just a bit! This amazing Shelly Wilkerson limited edition canvas art reproduction measures 22.5"x30" and is limited to only 950 available. This canvas along with many other Shelly Wilkerson paintings are shown at the Naked Wall Art Gallery You know you want one of her collectible canvases so get on the list for our spring Cat Companion Sale! We'll be offering a special one-time only, first-time ever sale on Shelly Art. To be invited to enjoy a big discount, just send me an email and I'll put you on the list - but I can't put the huge discount out here on the Internet without getting other galleries complaining to Shelly's publisher. Trust me though, it's big! Oh, and tell me which picture you like best, and I'll email you the poem for that painting!
About Bahama Mamas in the artist's own words: "My buddy, Carol and I threw caution to the wind and took a group flight to the Bahamas a number of years back. Even after snorkeling and staring a barracuda straight in the puss, we decided that it was a trip well worth taking. The locals were fun and friendly and the rum runners kept you glowing all day.... which reminds me.... Don't forget your sunscreen".

Okay, having recovered from my lousy dinner at Dolce Vita in New Smyrna Beach, I'm back in the sadlle and ready to talk about art. My old friend Pat came to visit from Orlando yesterday. She has a beautiful new kitchen that's been six months in the making and still has naked walls in both the kitchen and the sitting area to which it opens.
Are you ready for this? She re-hung an old framed poster she had from before the kitchen. We've been friends for over twenty years, and she breaks my heart like this! Folks, listen up! When you spend the money on new floors, new cabinets, new granite counters, and all the bells and whistles, I know you feel like you spent enough after all that, and you put your foot down by the time the big purchases are made. But somehow, hanging a cheaply framed worn out piece of art just seems to devalue everything else that you just paid for.
Pat's homework will be to shop the Naked Wall Art Gallery for something fabulous that will compliment that beautiful new kitchen and thanks to our super low prices, won't even be a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of it all. Art is so critical to the room's ecor, frankly it can make or break the entire package. Especially when changes to today's elegant-casual look, a canvas transfer with finished canvas edges is a great idea - no glass to cause glare, no frame to fight for your attention or to clash with your new cabinets, just a great statement of your good taste.

Dolce Vita - Not Such a Sweet Life Afterall

Okay, after the year it took us to get around to trying Dolce Vita - the Italian restaurant everyone in New Smyrna Beach is talking about - I can honestly say forget-about-it!
I just got back from my birthday dinner. I pretended to enjoy it, since the other three people in my party seemed to enjoy it. Service was amateur at best, but that's the norm these days so no problem. We started with the usual bread and plate of oil - I may be spoiled by Bellini's in North Conway serving really nice oil and a side of cheese, but this oil was horrible and so was the bread. I guess the Docle Vita in New Smyrna Beach is just no Bellini's! My friends ordered various veal dishes and they seemed happy. I ordered garlic shrimp served on a bed of angel hair - I got 4 (yes, just 4) tough, really overcooked garlic shrimp on a bed of linguine. Very bland and as amateur as the server. For dessert I had the very rich and decadent chocolate cheesecake, which was predictable and delicious, but obviously comes frozen from Sysco, not a homemade something to rave about as one might expect in such a place. It desperately needed a nice strong coffee to help it down. Their coffee was so weak, Sal sent his back - when was the last time you were so sad you had to send back a coffee?! It looked like weak tea, and tasted like Sanka the best I can remember. Why bother?! The Dolce Vita is very Italian owned and operated, and I know they would not drink this coffee at their house so why do they serve it?! For $150, with only one bottle of $25 wine, not great value - I will not return to the Dolce Vita. We're back to our favorite New Smyrna restaurant - The Atlantis Grill on Flagler - great food, great atmosphere, reasonable prices, and a short walk to the ocean and the Flagler Coffeehouse for a nightcap.

MooseMan Wildlife Photographer Visits North Conway

Rick Libbey, better known as MooseMan, is the artist of the month of February at the Framed Art Superstore in North Conway, NH. Rick spends weeks at a time living a hundred miles from any other human, camping with the moose deep in the woods of northern Maine and New Hampshire. He takes his photos from his Kayak, which he says gives him the best mobiliy and silent means of moving about.

That's important when you meet friends like the Peekaboo moose above, or Dripping Gordon seen below. Rick first met Gordon in 2007 and spent about an hour with him noticing his size, age and scars from fighting other large bulls for mating rights.
In Rick's words "...then in July 2008 I was in the same marsh once again. I located not one, but two large bulls feeding together just before sunset. For a moose lover like myself; this is serious excitement. Then I heard some brush snapping about 300 feet ahead. Out of the thicket comes Gordon and he walked straight to me and got in the water a mere 10 feet away. This was one of the first images I took that evening of a great old warrior of the Northern woods.
We are offering MooseMan photos as a canvas transfer with gallery wrapped edges (no frame needed) the image wraps neatly around the edges for a simple clean look. We have produced Gordon on a large canvas that is 36x48, and it came our gorgeous! We have it in stock at the art store in 24x36 and on order on the 20x24 - those sold out at the artist signing event over the weekend. Call the store at 1 (888) 669-6167 to inquire, or stop by in your lucky enough to be in North Conway Village!

For a huge selection of great art on canvas, visit our new online gallery, the Naked Wall Art Gallery

How to Best Display Your Artwork

Some common questions: I just bought a canvas transfer at your gallery, how high do I hang it? I need something to fit between my glass doors... What size picture goes over a queen bed?

Over the last ten years of selling art, we've had an amazing number of customers ask these questions. You'd think we would use a lot of over-simplified answers, but we really like to learn more about the customer's particular situation before we spout out a bunch of ratios and short rules for hanging their beautiful new purchase. Sorry, but my answers always start with "well it depends, tell me about the room".

I was just pouring through some online decorating web sites with their picture hanging advice. Truth is, some are really quite good when they show examples with lots of pictures, but eventually you need to know what to do in your personal case. That's why at our new online gallery, the Naked Wall Art Gallery, we do plan to add a decorating tips section, but we invite you to email us a digital picture of your room or wall area you're working on and we will give personalized advice.

Say you have a love seat against a wall - what size picture should you hang? Well, using the 2/3 rule, (you should know that I only learn the rules so I know what to break) you would measure the love seat - usually about 60 inches, and calculate 60x.66=39 inches. So, hang a picture that is no more than 39 inches wide. Do the same for the available space above the love seat - Now we're shopping for artwork with all these rules attached. These are just guidelines, along with anything is better than a naked wall, and too big is usually much better than way too small. read on for our mini-case study:

One day while hanging art at the Met - North Conway's best coffeehouse, Sal needs something to hang over the famed purple couch. The original purple couch at the Met was a love seat really, and was about 55" wide and the wall behind it was only a few inches wider. Sal hangs this gigantic 52" wide canvas transfer called "landscape of the Muse" by McCormick. (link to what is a canvas transfer) My favorite piece of art in the whole art gallery and he's going to hang it so it looks stupid! I usually win these arguments, but we were in a rush and that was the only piece left to hang without going back to the Framed Art Superstore (that's our main gallery for you newbies) but there was no time. I caved on this one (knowing I'd change it around the next day). Sal was right (he's always right, but that doesn't mean I should win some arguments anyway). The McCormick canvas was perfect! That purple couch never looked so good!
The reason it works there? As you can see in the photo, the Met Coffeehouse has 16' ceilings for one thing, so a grand canvas fits the feeling of the room. Yes, feelings. Don't panic, we aren't recommending group therapy - yet. The point is, how artwork feels in a room is more important than the math. If a picture is bright, is there a sense of balance with brightness on the other side of the room? If you love the look of today’s new abstract art, then you should be looking at transitioning into what you love, not what fits the rules - of color, of math or matching the sofa you want to get rid of anyway. The only rule we never break is this - when buying art, only buy what you like!
As in life, if you're going to take a new direction, you have to start with something.

Shelly Wilkerson Cat Art (Cat Companions)

I love this stuff! I just got an email from Shelly - she and husband Glen live out west, so we don't see them often enough, but we see her art every day and that's a real joy! In my last post I talked about adding humor art to our lives - Shelly Wilkerson's art works really well - hang it in the family room, bar or kitchen - that's easy, but we have plenty of customers who have hung these in living rooms and dining rooms. If you think it's to casual for your living room, you might ask if your living room is too formal. Take the plastics off the couch and live a little, will ya? Your Friends and family will laugh out loud at some of this art, and at the very least, stuffy people even smile a little. Read Shelly's poems for each painting at www.catcompanions.blogspot.com

Check it out at http://stores.nakedwallartgallery.com/-strse-Wilkerson,-Shelly/Categories.bok and click on Wilkerson as the category. If you see yourself in the pictures - stop whining, just laugh and pour a glass of wine!
Not a wine drinker? If you're lucky enough to be in New Hampshire, drop in the Met Coffeehouse and order a latte - like Daisy in "Daisy's Mocha Latte" yes, Shelly, famous for cats and wine now paints dogs sans wine. Shelly unveiled her Bahama Mama's original painting at our gallery at the Met Coffeehouse http://www.metcoffeehouse.com/ in North Conway Village - voted Best Coffeehouse in the North Country, and of course part of the great atmosphere there is one of our art galleries. We're waiting for a painting of our two black labs with coffee - email me your support for this and I'll keep after Shelly!

Until she paints our dogs, my favorite is Harry's Lodge Meeting - My goal is to be one of those old geezers one day! The most popular is Miriam's tea Party, and we've sold several of the Bestest Friends as well. Each piece has a poem about the people in the picture, so once you get to know the characters you don't buy a Shelly Wilkerson picture - you adopt it! I haven't got the poetry online yet, but in the meantime if you email me with the picture you want, I'll email you the poem that goes with it.

Consumed with new art gallery website

Geronimo! Here we go again diving into another business venture while the whole economy is in hiding!
Not stupid though, people want nice things, but they want to save money. We sell nice things at a fraction of what people usually pay! So we said to ourselves - Selves - duh!
It's been about a week since we selected Homestead to host the website http://www.nakedwallartgallery.com/ for our new online gallery. Homestead is way easier than Yahoo in our opinion and seems to have much better features. I should point out we are no experts, but we've created a few websites for the Framed Art Superstore - http://www.framedartoutlet.com/ and for Soyfire Candle - http://www.soyfire.com/ . This has been the easiest and most exciting experience, making huge progress each day and the art looks beautiful on the site! We hope to be ready for customers to start buying our canvas transfers by March 1st at the latest.
The Naked Wall Art Gallery is different from our store in North Conway and our other websites because all we sell is frame-less canvas transfers. Each item is on the site, easy to shop, easy to buy, put in in your shopping cart and wait by your door! Selling art is usually a challenge with lots of options - we took away all the options - no frames, no mats - just pick your picture and it comes on canvas ready to hang with finished edges and life has never been so good!
At the Framed Art Superstore in North Conway, canvas transfers have been our best sellers for about a year now. Fewer people want frames anymore, especially under glass when you can have the same print transferred to canvas and looking like an original painting for the same price!
So, times being what they are, we need to expand our business in some way, so why not share our amazing deals on canvas transfers with the world!?
Our art buying is changing a bit too - we're in FL for the winter while our friends in North Conway NH are cursing us thinking we're just basking on the beach. Truth is North Conway is beautiful in winter so they shouldn't be jealous and besides, we're here with our heads stuck in a computer all day anyway. Oh yeah, art buying - one can't help but be influenced by the beautiful colors and bright light of summer - that's January in New Smyrna Beach! We just visited the big annual art festival here - over 25 artist from all over the country put on an amazing show, which gave us great inspiration and several artist we would like to feature in the future.
For the new naked wall art gallery site, we started by shopping through every major art publisher's collection of fine art prints. We have over 100,000 prints available to us, but that's way too many - it's just overwhelming and tons of them are really crap - that's technical jargon for ugly art that was a waste of paper and ink to produce as prints!
We selected our favorite 500 or so images. Okay, Sal selected about 400 of them, so I will probably be adding about 100 more of the best images in the coming week or so once we get the web site up and ready to take orders! Our tastes run a little different. We both love the latest abstract art - boy it's not what you would expect if you haven't been art shopping in a while - this is not the 1970 abstract art you're thinking of - today's new abstract art is gorgeous!
We also love wildlife - nothing with contrived though - you know the ones where you're waiting for an elf to pop out from under a bridge?! We like real wildlife - in New Hampshire we love the moose, in Florida we love the huge birds. We have three great Blue Herons that live in our neighborhood and I must admit they are a little intimidating since they are as huge and will walk right up to us, they squawk like a junk yard dog - I wonder if anyone has ever been eaten by a Blue Heron... oh yeah - art - in our Florida home we prefer bright abstracts and tropical themes - no, not my mother's pastel Golden Girl's theme! We've found a lot of very cool and hip looking tropical art. Here's a link to our coastal images:
http://stores.nakedwallartgallery.com/-strse-Coastal/Categories.bok

What I want to add (when Sal's not looking) to the Naked Wall Art Gallery will be fun things, like Will Rafuse music, kitchen and bar art. Notice the bartender and the chef we chose for kitchen art. I love funky fun and bright colored art. Most people relegate fun art to the kitchen and bath, preferably in only tiny pictures. That's too bad, because hanging something that makes you smile every time you see it would be great in the living room and in larger sizes. I love the fun flip flop poster we transferred to canvas to look like a museum piece - at first glance it looks serious, but you do a double take and smile yup, it really is a painting of a flip flop!
All this talk of flip flops make me think of Margarita ville - stepped on a pop top, blew out my flip flop - maybe it's time for me to cruise on home and put something in my blender! Good thing home is only in the other room!
Good night for now, maybe next rambling will start to take some direction!

Naked Wall Art Gallery Online opening soon

The Naked Wall Art Gallery online is now up for viewing and the shopping cart will be working soon. Please visit us and check out the art and share you feedback with us. http://www.nakedwallartgallery.com/