Big Mug Little Hands

Time is approaching fast when these guys will look askance at me plastering their faces on gallery walls so I must work fast. This one was uber-quick, only taking me but a few days to complete. Record time for me.
But time is flying by quickly. I swear that there are times that they seem to have grown inches in the span of a few days. Their faces are becoming chiseled into previews of their adult faces. So it was particularly delightful to work on this little face for a little while, to stop time on my easel.
It’s always...
Fierce Beauty

Somehow my mother screwed up the forms needed for the dorm I was required to live in my freshman year in college. For that reason, mid-year, I first walked through the maws of that enormous university with not so much as a “good luck kid, here’s your library card” to help me navigate this new and oh so terrifying institution.
I didn’t eat for three days because how to get a meal card was even more opaque than how to get from class to class. I stumbled along as my stomach grumbled. My roommate was nowhere to be seen. Then suddenly two...
Nasturtium Duet: Harmony

Deadlines are amazing motivators.
I’d started this painting when I thought I was going to be leaving for Australia the first week of February. It was just past the holiday crush and I figured I’d have plenty of time to wrap up the painting while I tried to get my head around what to pack for a “summer” vacation in the heart of our winter here in New England. But like many best laid plans, things got crazy when the trip was moved up two weeks which sent me scrambling.
Somehow, I got it all done.
My trip was an inspirational journey....
Red Moon

It’s a little before four in the morning and I’m awake. Not an entirely unusual situation. I’ve heard of late that insomnia is going around.
But perhaps all is not lost; one of the things that kept me from sleeping was the enticement of a lunar eclipse to come within the hour. I remember the first one I saw. I was a child living in the Los Angeles area and the storied Brentwood fires burned miles away. The cool moon burned angry, a deep red.
Reds. In retrospect the color has dogged my existence. I still have the little red table I colored...
Blossoming | September 14, 2022

This week I started a ceramics class, my first in 58 years, I think. We’d moved just a few years earlier to a new town that had a shiny new modern art museum. Our parents always nurtured our creativity so it stood to reason that they thought this would be good for me. It was great!
I wish I could remember the name of the instructor. He was a grizzly guy who was a found object sculptor of some repute in, at least, the local art world. He was indefatigable and never treated us urchins as anything less than aspiring artists. We made sand...