Back home and painting again!

It's more than a week ago since we returned from almost a month in Spain, but the memories still linger vividly of the warm late summer days, the light casting longer and longer shadows, the sweet smell of ripe fruit mingled with the first spicy scents of fall in the form of mushrooms and falling leaves.
Back here in Wisconsin it's not the usual warm Indian Summer October we've been used to for the last years, I remember swimming on the last day of October last year, in one of the nearby lakes. But you never know, today the sun came out after a couple days of heavy rain and we might be swimming this weekend....

In the studio things are going smoothly, I was able to tap right into the inspirational vein opened up in Spain and continued work on a large abstract that was well on it's way before I left. Another one turned out to be done when I came back. A little distance in time always helps to see things more objectively and while I did not consider that painting finished when I left, when I came back I saw that it was, there is nothing in there that asks for change. Great, of course - but then you need to get new canvases stretched.....

While working on that I will list some photo's from the work I did in Farrera, these are small Ampersand panels, 8x8" painted in acrylics.

On the subject of canvases, I find it extremely hard to find professional quality pre-stretched canvases. I prefer to paint on real linen and most of the pre stretched ones come in cotton canvas. I have tried The Italian Art Store, who does linen, but then the frames were not warp resistant, Centurion DLX now comes in linen but again, the frames are not warp proof and too light. That's why I returned to stretching myself on aluminum bars. In Holland there is Artel that sells aluminum stretcher bars of their own design ( very easy to adjust and to hang as hardware for hanging can be placed right in the groove of the bars) and a choice of wonderful linens but here I don't know where to go for that quality. Any tips?

As a PS, I have just added a new painting to my second blog: Studio Storage, where I sell some of my older works at very affordable prices.
And remember, nothing can make you feel as good as having a nice piece of art in these dire economic times!