Grape Painting

It’s grape season here in the Garden State. There are over 40 varieties of grapes that are grown in New Jersey and over 2 million gallons of wine produced every year. Where’s your favorite vineyard to enjoy Jersey Fresh grapes? Let me know below!

 

Peach Painting

Jersey fresh peaches are in season. Where is your favorite farm or market to purchase your peaches? Let me know in the comments below 

Framed acrylic painting on board available for purchase.

Strawberry Season

 It’s strawberry season here in New Jersey! Which farm do you purchase your strawberries from? Let me know in the comments below 

New Drawing: Egg

Did you know that May is National Egg Month?Yesterday my kids found the very first egg from one of our pullets and they were so excited! I snapped a picture holding it and did a quick sketch.

Do you have chickens for fresh eggs?

Virtual Arts in Bloom Video

Below is my virtual Salem County Arts in Bloom Studio Tour video. The driving tour is rescheduled for November 28 & 29.

You can view my portfolio of paintings, in chronological order, here:
https://www.kimberlyenglish.com/paintings.html

Once there you can click each image to read the story, watch the video, and shop products that I make for each painting.

New Drawing: Brook Bound Farm

Now more than ever it’s apparent how important farmers are in supplying nutritious, healthy foods for our community. Today I wanted to highlight Brook Bound Farm, a local Salem County family farm offering produce to the public from their farm. This week they have: arugula, garlic greens, leaf lettuce, micro greens, pea shoots, and salad combo (8 oz of leaf lettuce, radishes, and 4 oz bag of baby lettuce). Order by Wednesday and pick up on Saturday. Be sure to follow their Facebook and Instagram Brook Bound Farm for more information how to order and weekly updates as they add more varieties of produce as the season progresses.

You can watch the time lapse video of this drawing below

New Drawing: Schober's Apples

Wm. Schober Sons’s last day of their winter season is this Saturday! Starting today they are having “Buy One Get One Free” while supplies last on: Apples (excludes deer apples)🍎, Nancy Hall sweet potatoes 🍠 , and onions 🧅 Their hours are Thursday and Friday from 9AM-5PM and Saturday from 8:30AM-4:30PM. Go to their website for more information: schoberorchards.com

I’ll be making some pies with the apples I picked up 🥧 What’s your favorite apple dish?

New Drawing: Buzby Farm CSA

Join A. T. Buzby Farm’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and enjoy a 20 week supply of locally-grown produce from May through September. Sign up for this year’s CSA program begins tomorrow, February 1st! Go to www.buzbyfarm.com/csa for more information.

Drawing © Kimberly English 2020

📷 Reference picture from Buzby Farm

2019 Penns Grove FFA Calendar Donation

This week I met with the Penns Grove High School FFA Officers to make the donation from the 2020 Salem County Farmlands Calendar. This year’s donation totaled to $735, the largest one to date! 

In total, I have donated $2,000.00 to all 3 Salem County FFA Chapters! Thank you so much to my customers for supporting not only me but the students who are learning to become active participants in our agricultural community. It’s such an honor to have my artwork help so many young people across our county.

Here I am pictured with President, Teagan Rudderow.

New Drawing: Sickler's Circle View Farm

Here’s a quick drawing I created of one of Sickler's Circle View Farm 🐄 If you’re looking for locally grown beef and pork, be sure to check them out. They sell their meat directly from the farm 🥩🥓

Sunset Corn Painting SOLD!

Now that the holidays are over I can share this photo with you all! At the New Jersey Farm Bureau Annual Meeting I sold the original painting “Sunset Corn”. Caroline Etsch, the Women’s Leadership Chair, purchased the painting as a surprise Christmas gift for her husband, Jim, who is the Treasurer of NJFB. It is such an honor to have my painting in their collection on Etsch farm. (Shared with permission)

You can learn more about the story behind the painting here: https://bit.ly/2QHjcCS

2020 Salem County Farmlands Calendar

The 2020 Salem County Farmlands Calendar is now available through preorder!

I am so excited to be offering my curated collection of 49 photographs for the third year in a row! I have been working on the calendar all year long and it is so much more than just beautiful landscape pictures. It’s my honor to document our county’s rich farming heritage while paying tribute to our hard working farming neighbors and family members who dedicate their lives to agriculture.

This year, I will continue to spread my donations among the Salem County FFA Chapters. For every 2020 calendar sold, $5 will be donated to the Penns Grove High School FFA Chapter. With your support, I am looking forward to being able to help more local students who are learning to become active members of our agricultural community. 

To preview the calendar and order your copy, click the link: bit.ly/2020SCFC

Donation to the Salem Tech FFA Chapter

Last year I debuted the first version of the Salem County Farmlands calendar and donated a portion of the sales to the Woodstown FFA Chapter. It was very well received and I decided to improve upon it and offer the calendar again. Some of the improvements were adding 3 more pictures per month, including the locations for each photograph, and information about myself and a selection of my paintings.

For 2018, I chose to donate $5 of each calendar sold to the Salem Tech Future Farmer's of America Program because I want to continue to help local students who are learning to become active members of our agricultural community. Yesterday, I presented the Salem Tech FFA Chapter with a check donation from the calendar sales. In total, 113 calendars were sold and a donation of $565 was made! It feels so good to give back to one of my high school alma maters. For those that don't know, I graduated from Arthur P. Schalick H.S. AND Salem Vocational Technical H.S. I hope this donation helps them achieve their goals and further their education in agriculture.

I am so thankful for everyone who purchased a calendar to give as a gift or to have for themselves. Every purchase is truly appreciated! I hope that both my paintings and photographs can ignite a sense of pride in where we live and an appreciation for the spectacular landscapes that we live upon. I also want to highlight the hard working farmers that dedicate their lives to agriculture and inspire me so much in the artwork that I create.

Presenting the donation to the Salem Tech FFA Chapter

2018 Salem County Farmlands Calendar

If you are a farmer in Salem County that would like to be a part of next year's calendar, please click here to fill out the form

Calendar Donation Update

We're almost half way through this year and I wanted to provide an update on the 2018 Salem County Farmlands Calendar donation. In total, 125 calendars were sold and a donation of $700 was made to the Woodstown FFA! This included extra money customers donated towards the cause as well as an extra donation from myself. The calendar donation was used to offset the registration costs for the students who attended the NJ State FFA Convention on May 23-25th.

Deanna Miller, Woodstown FFA advisor and agriculture teacher stated: "At this convention the students particpated in various events including quiz bowl, prepared speaking, and creed speaking. Additionally we had jacket winners, scholarship recipients, and were rated as a superior chapter within the state among other recognitions and accolades."

Thank you to everyone who purchased a calendar and helped these students attend this year's state convention! It is so awesome to be able to help this young students in their agricultural education journey. I hope you are enjoying your calendar so far. If you have two minutes, please help me improve next year's calendar by answering my calendar survey. Click here to take the survey. 

Below are pictures from the Woodstown FFA's Facebook page from their convention experience.

Students headed to the New Jersey State FFA Convention

Nathan Sparks, Treasurer of the Year

AgriCULTURE at RRCA

I have some great news! Two of my paintings were accepted into the Riverfront Renaissance Center of the Arts exhibition titled AgriCULTURE: Celebrate the Garden State with Art. When entering it was really difficult to only choose two paintings to submit. As most of you know, the main source of inspiration for my paintings comes from the agricultural landscapes of southern New Jersey. I am so honored to be apart of this show and to see the other artwork featured. Below are the two paintings I submitted.

 The opening reception is this Friday, April 20th from 6-9PM at RRCA 

22 North High Street Millville, NJ 08332.

"Distant Vista on Shirley Road" - Acrylics on Gessobord - 11" x 14" by Kimberly English © 2017

"Autumn in Daretown" - Acrylics on Gessoboard - 5" x 7" by Kimberly English © 2017

Painting Progression: Potato Harvest in Elmer

A local farmer and friend, Michael Brooks, commissioned me to create this painting. I saw online that he was having an auction of old farm equipment and I contacted him to see if I could go over before the sale to photograph some of the old trucks. He agreed and asked if I would be willing to paint one of the 1977 F600 trucks for his parents. They had bought them brand new and he wanted to preserve the memories they held on their farm.

I created the composition from many photographs of the truck at the auction and fields. Since the truck did not have a potato body on it, I used reference pictures from Ben Wilson's potato equipment, and old photos that Mike provided. I also edited the truck to make it look new again, as per Mike’s request.

This painting was a challenge because I wanted to ensure it was accurately represented to preserve their family’s farming heritage. I wanted the background to depict a typical summer day in South Jersey during a potato harvest with beautiful clear skies. The vines and ground were a lot of fun to paint including the small potatoes that didn't make it into the truck. 

Below is the painting, click the image to enlarge, and the painting progression video

"Potato Harvest in Elmer" - Acrylics on Gessobord - 9" x 12" by Kimberly English © 2017

Painting Progression Video

Prints are available for purchase. Click here!

Special thanks to Michael Brooks for commissioning this painting, Ben Wilson for allowing me to photograph his farm equipment, Jen and Andy Williams for doing a beautiful job framing this work, and last but not least, my husband and mom for helping with the kids at various times while I worked on the painting.

Utilizing Artwork for Agvocacy in South Jersey's Farming Industry

The artwork I create has been inspired by the agricultural landscapes of southern New Jersey since I began painting 9 years ago. At the time, I had just started dating my husband and we spent a lot of our dates on tractors in spinach and hay fields or on his four wheeler exploring his family's farm. The photographs I took from our adventures served as references for my acrylic paintings.

Fast forward to the present, I have continued to focus my subject matter on the beautiful farmlands southern New Jersey has to offer. Recently, I've come to realize that my artwork can perform an important role in the agvocacy for southern New Jersey's farming industry. What is "Agvocacy"? It is a relatively new term that is the combination of the words "agriculture" and "advocacy" which is defined as the positive promotion of agricultural industries.

I'd like my paintings and photography to serve as a platform to promote the active agricultural community in southern New Jersey. The hard work and sacrifices farmers make to grow crops needs to be acknowledged with artwork that evokes just as much of an emotional response from viewers as the farmer's physical efforts in sustaining their land. Portraying their fields, equipment, and operations in an artistic manner will help bring awareness to the often overlooked beauty that exists within farming. It is my hope that my artwork can create connections between the larger, non-farming population and the people that choose to dedicate their life to agriculture.

If you are a farmer from southern New Jersey that would like to have your land/operations photographed or created into a work of art, please email me at: kimberlydenglish@gmail.com

Wilson Brother's Farms - Daretown, NJ

Spring Brook Farms of Pittsgrove

Harvesting Spinach in Elmer

"On The Edge" - Acrylics on Gessobord - 6" x 6" by Kimberly English ©2015 - SOLD

 "Curious #601" - Acrylics on Canvas - 8" x 6" by Kimberly English © 2015

"Distant Vista on Shirley Road" - Acrylics on Gessobord - 11" x 14" by Kimberly English © 2017

2018 Salem County Farmlands Calendar

A collection of photographs by Kimberly English featuring the farmers and farmland of Salem County. $5 of each calendar sold will be donated to the Woodstown Future Farmer's of America Program. A great holiday gift that gives back to our farming community!

Click here to preorder yours today!

To view more agricultural artwork, please visit my website: www.kimberlyenglish.com