The Painting Of The Month Special For April is (Drumroll please)

Sweetheart Bear!

Sweetheart Bear is a lovely portrait painting in oil of a dear little polar bear cub face on a 12” x 12” wood panel. It is one one of three paintings in my Baby’s Breath Series.

I think this painting about babies, innocence, spring and nature is perfect for The Painting of The Month Special.

Sweetheart Bear is 12” x 12” oil painting on wood panel.

Close up of Sweetheart Bear . Look at those beautiful eyes. ©Christine Montague

The fur on this little cub’s sweet face, inspired by a photo I took of a very real cub, perfectly forms a heart, so the title Sweetheart Bear was a given!

What’s With The Baby’s Breath Flower Crown?

Baby’s Breath (Gypsophila) are lovely little white flowers on delicate stems. This flower represents purity, innocence and everlasting love. These attributes perfectly represent our baby bear. Flower crowns have a long history of being given to those we honour and celebrate. But this crown is also a reminder that our lives - nature’s and humanity’s, are as intertwined as the flowers in the crown.

A Featured Painting Mean’s a Special Price

Once a month in 2025, I will select a painting to be featured, and offer it at special value. (PS Do you know if you sign up for my newsletter to receive the announcement in advance?)

Sweetheart Bear

Original oil painting

12” x 12” x 1.5 “ wood panel

Edges nicely finished in black

Wired and ready to hang

Certificate of Authenticity supplied.

SOLD

Here’s the other paintings in the series -

Left is Sweetheart Bear Middle isLittle Innocent Right is Little Hero of The North.

Each are 12” x 12” oil paintings.

Polar Bear Cubs- How to See the Picture

Triplets

This stylized oil painting has a climate change story to tell, and can be hung vertically or horizontally to do so. 

Hung horizontally: In my latest oil painting, Triplets, three polar bear cubs affectionately play with their mother, secure and warm in their den. It is rare that 3 cubs are born and so this is one lucky polar bear mother.

One of the cubs is in the shadows. It could be a sign of foreboding, but is more a comment of how the healthier a bear is the more likely multiple births succeed. (Recently, a Polar Bears International post mentioned a bear with three cubs was observed for the first time in five years.) 

Triplets. Hung horizontally. ©Christine Montague Oil painting. 20” x 30”

Hung vertically: The bear family’s survival is dependant on sea ice. Too early a breakup of the ice in the spring, and a delay in its formation in the fall, leaves the polar bear and cubs vulnerable to starvation, drowning and threat from male bears. 

30” x 20” x 1.5” oil painting on canvas. Edges are painted black. Wired, ready to hang. Certificate of Authenticity supplied. 

Triplets hung vertically. 30”h x 20”w ©Christine Montague

Polar Bears in My Kitchen

It wasn't long after the stone tile backsplash was installed in my kitchen, that I started seeing things. Movement, right there in the 2" x 4" tiles.  As I stared, the tan, grey and white striations in the stone shapeshifted into landscapes. Snowy ones. Cloud-filled and foggy ones.  Dark ones.

As if portals to other worlds like in old school Star Trek .

Polar bear drawing and fox drawing by Christine Montague

Christine Montague fantasy drawings

And these worlds, they seemed to be..gulp..inhabited! Polar bears and other bear-like animals, fox, and fish, and others, that I couldn't begin to classify.

I sketch portraits of these creatures when I can.   For the most part, they seem unaware I am there, as they fly, swim, and run past my window to their world. But when some stop  and gaze my way, I confess I sketch faster.

When Strange Neighbors appeared as a category in The Sketchbook Project, I sent my sketchbook their way. I had to let you know what lives with me in my kitchen. Even if you only believe it's all in my imagination.

The Sketchbook Project (www.sketchbookproject.com), is a global, crowd-sourced art project  and interactive traveling exhibition, of handmade books. It  is the flagship endevour  of Art House, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.. It consists of three libraries: Brooklyn Art Library, Mobile Library, and The Digital Library.