Painting

I'm confused about choosing a color to paint my kitchen. I've heard that green is the color of the year. And then I hear about gray being the new neutral. What are the best colors to paint the kitchen? A kitchen should be an inviting gathering space, so warmer or brighter tones are ideal, such as deep ivories, rich coppers, luscious reds, golden yellows and yellow-greens. Be sure to take countertops, appliances and floors into consideration when selecting your color. You'll want something that complements these accents and flows naturally into the surrounding rooms of your home.

I'm confused about choosing a color to paint my kitchen. I've heard that green is the color of the year. And then I hear about gray being the new neutral. What are the best colors to paint the kitchen? A kitchen should be an inviting gathering space, so warmer or brighter tones are ideal, such as deep ivories, rich coppers, luscious reds, golden yellows and yellow-greens. Be sure to take countertops, appliances and floors into consideration when selecting your color. You'll want something that complements these accents and flows naturally into the surrounding rooms of your home.

Students in Jack Dillinger's art classes at the University of Maryland University College often ask him after final critiques if they can see some of his artwork. There isn't enough time, he tells them. Besides, he doesn't want to show his painting and drawing students just a few of the pieces he has done throughout more than 45 years as an artist and have them think that's the kind of creativity he's looking for. But now the longtime Columbia resident has invited his students and the public to see a collection of his life's artwork in a retrospective at Mill River Gallery in Ellicott City.

The formerly city-owned Barclay Recreation Center will make its debut as a privately run community center May 18, serving the Charles Village area, including the Abell, Oakenshawe, Harwood and Old Goucher communities. A grand opening celebration, possibly with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in attendance, is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the center, 2900 Barclay St., in the Charles Village area. The Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks last year turned over the underutilized, 7,300-square-foot facility to the city public school next door, Barclay Elementary/Middle, to operate as a social and education center in a public-private partnership with the nonprofit Greater Homewood Community Corp.

In 1993, a leaky roof damaged the Walters Art Gallery's 9-by-16-foot early Tiepolo painting, necessitating a restoration. During the restoration process, it became clear that as much as 80 percent of the original painting had been covered by earlier "restorations." The conservators uncovered Tiepolo's original painting and revealed an early masterpiece, which was then invited to the Metropolitan's Tiepolo show.The painting is now thought to depict "Scipio Freeing Massiva," an incident in Roman history.

George H. Barrett says his interest in painting was whetted in high school, but he didn't start dabbling in art until he retired from Westinghouse three years ago.Mr. Barrett, who has been taking watercolor and oil painting classes at the Pascal Senior Center in Glen Burnie, says he "likes watercolor a little better. My oil paintings come out a little dark a lot of time."One of his watercolors, a seascape of a lighthouse, won third place at the 1994 Anne Arundel County Fair. He didn't enter this year's fair competition.

Artists will be putting themselves on display tomorrow at Paint Annapolis, an outdoor painting event organized by the Mid-Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association. Lee Boyton, a founding member of the 7-month-old association, wanted to try Paint Annapolis after he heard about similar events in the Northeast and on the West Coast. "We are very excited to do something like this in Annapolis," he said, noting that there was such interest and support that Paint Annapolis 2003 has already been planned.

Even as a little girl, Katie Rickman loved art. Her coloring book and crayons were never far away. Years ago, she attended an outdoor concert with her mother. That evening there was a beautiful sunset. When Katie noticed it she said, "Quick, Mom, give me my crayons!" The crayons have since been replaced with paints, and Rickman is making quite a splash in the Maryland art world, in the classroom and out. Rickman teaches art at the St. Paul's School for Girls upper school in Brooklandville.

In the largest collaboration ever between the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Gallery, the BMA presents "The Triumph of French Painting," a survey of more than 60 masterpieces by 19th- and early 20th-century French artists drawn from the collections of the BMA and the Walters. The show, which opens Sunday, includes landscapes, still lifes, portraits and history paintings by more than 30 artists, including Ingres, Delacroix, Millet, Corot, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, van Gogh, Picasso and Matisse.

In her shop in Montgomery Village, Savita Jain practices the ancient form of henna art - applying a temporary stain made from a ground-up plant in intricate patterns on her client's bodies. Jain says she has equal numbers of Indian and American clients. The Indian clients prefer to have their hands and feet adorned, while Americans are apt to ask for designs on all parts of their bodies. The stain lasts about three weeks.

For the past 158 years, art historians thought that the painter Richard Caton Woodville, the James Dean of his generation, had completed just 19 paintings before he died of a morphine overdose in 1855 at age 30. Now, we know that there were 20. Joy Heyrman, deputy director of development for the Walters Art Museum, recently learned about what very well may be first oil painting that the artist ever created. It's an 1844 portrait of a childhood friend, the surgeon and investigator Stedman R. Tilghman.

I cannot believe that our mayor or any other city or state officials would even consider allotting up to $25 million for renovations at Lexington Market ("Lexington's update," April 7). As a retired merchant with 30 years' experience at Lexington Market, I suggest management give more thought to painting and to hiring a good Realtor to bring in gourmet cheese shops and a French bakery. The market should also offer incentives and stop the beer and liquor drinking among customers shopping in the market.

The case of a small painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art decades ago took an unexpected turn recently when new questions were raised about a woman's claim that she bought it at a flea market. The holes in her story should cement the BMA's legal efforts to reclaim its property after all these years, but the strange tale also throws a fascinating light on the pitfalls that inevitably arise in any dealings with artworks of mysterious provenance.

Paolo Romeo believes that food is art. The chef-owner of Artful Gourmet, which has been an Owings Mills mainstay for just over a decade, isn't wildly avant-garde in the kitchen. He doesn't take chances on creative dishes. But Romeo does take an artist's care with his capable interpretations of Italian food and global favorites. And the restaurant's adoption of the food-is-art theme adds charm to a menu stocked with familiar fare. His conservative approach, which focuses on well-worn classics like lamb chops and simple pastas, appears to be a hit with locals, who keep the restaurant busy.

Jackie Jordan, director of Color Marketing for Sherwin-Williams, offers five tips for tackling a painting project: 1. Be sure to have the right amount of paint and supplies before beginning. Paint calculators that help gauge how much paint is needed are available online. 2. Take it one room at a time, starting with the most frequently used spaces, such as a bedroom or living room. 3. First paint the ceiling, then the walls and finally the trim. 4. Test out a new color by applying it to a small piece of foam board or poster board.

Finally it's spring. That means baseball, hay fever and the start of painting season. "May through September are the biggest months for paint sales," says Mark Sposito, vice president of marketing for Sherwin-Williams' Eastern Division. As temperatures rise, so do the number of home painting projects, he notes. The Sherwin-Williams paint factory on Hollins Ferry Road is operating 24 hours a day, five days a week. Soon the plant will be working around the clock on weekends as well, says plant manager Mike Levitsky.

It's hardly spring yet, but Mount Airy Elementary School is awash in wildflowers, blue skies and singing birds.The idyllic scene isn't real, but it conveys the idea.As part of a project to brighten the school, the drab school walls have been transformed into cheerful scenes from a small town -- not unlike Mount Airy."We decided that the walls were so plain we needed to make it more child-centered," said Principal Bo Ann Bohman."We work hard to make the classrooms cheerful and bright for the children, and the hallways should be the same," she said.

After 30 years of lobbying, campaigning and organizing to save open spaces in Maryland, Nancy Lee Davis of Clarksville has turned to a different preservation tool: the paintbrush. Davis, a founder of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, has been personally drawn to barns, old houses and open fields - particularly on the Eastern Shore - as subjects for her oil paintings. She said she realized that "I could at least capture on canvas those things that were disappearing." Her paintings are on display at the Artists' Gallery in the American Cities Building in Columbia through May 25. Davis said she got involved in preservation causes while raising her children, who are now grown.

That's a relief. The last time a Travel Channel food show featured Baltimore, everyone was royally annoyed. But Andrew Zimmern's “Bizarre Foods America” show has a different agenda than Anthony Bourdain's “No Reservations,” which baked Baltimore into an unsavory “Rust-Belt” pie back in 2009. Baltimore came across better, and more accurately, on the Baltimore and Chesapeake Bay episode of “Bizarre Foods” that premiered on Monday. “Bizarre Foods” works so well because Zimmern is genuinely interested in what he's experiencing but also sensitive to a city's feelings.

It should be relatively easy for a judge to make a decision in the matter of the small landscape painted on a napkin by French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir ("U.S. court enters fray over painting," March 16). Museum collections managers and registrars adhere to the English Common Law concept, recognized in modern American jurisprudence, that deed does not follow theft, even after several changes of hands; the original owner remains the owner. Since the Baltimore Museum of Art was the original, legal owner of the painting (it having been left to the museum in an unchallenged will)