LIVING CREATIVELY
Remembering Summer
Way back in the spring I was furiously painting in order to have enough pieces for the summer group show. Then I was furiously framing
I was looking forward to a break. I had been at the easel from March to mid-July for what felt like every day towards the same end, to get the work done. Oh, and I also redesigned my website, completed a commission and nursed my painting arm shoulder injury.
But it was all worth it.
At the reception I met a lovely woman who had remembered one...
Center Court
I had planned to write this post yesterday and in so doing check a number of things off my to do list which had grown substantially while working on my latest painting. Instead, I spent nearly five hours watching two grown men bang a small neon yellow ball across a low net. I squirmed thinking about all the things I had hoped to accomplish but the longer it went on, the more invested I became. Almost five hours! I have no idea how they kept moving. Why didn’t their arms drag as the match wore on?...
Waterfall
I’ve sat next to all manner of waterfalls. The kind you unexpectedly come upon on a hike and need to figure out how to get over; the little creek cascades that trip pool to pool and disappear under deep forest growth; and the grander ones you seek out deliberately from maps, following signs through parking lots and down wooden walkways. Big or small they impart sensations of awesome power and hypnotic serenity. Even the behemoth Niagara Falls, with all its well-worn commercialism and history delivers.
Falling...
Kindred
Being thoroughly unproductive during the dark years of 2020 and 2021, it’s taken me a while to recover. I’ve tried to pick up the pace by painting some smaller pieces and increasing my studio time. This has paid off. As of the end of this month I’ve completed exactly as many paintings as I did all last year. I feel accomplished but at the same time I still feel like I’m playing catch up.
A few years ago I tried working on multiple pieces at the same time. They were all paintings of pink tulips...
The Red Sweater
The astute observer might notice that I like the color red. I’ve written about this in the past. But it wasn’t just the fabulous red sweater (although I do want one just like it) that drew me to this subject, nor the party dress, nor the crazy hairdo, it was the two-year-old imp who was rocking it all.
Sometimes a little one comes into our lives and lightens our days. This one certainly has, as have her two brothers.
Ask a group of people, young or old, “Who wants to do _____ ? and her hand...
The Birthday
This past winter a gallery director asked if I’d like to be part of a four-woman show this summer. My heart fluttered as “yes” flew through my lips. I’ve only had this opportunity a few times but never with the caliber of artists I’d join.
However, when he said I’d need oh, maybe 15 paintings of both florals and people, that elation gave way to panic. How in the world could I get this done in a few months? My inventory is not that big! So much to do and so little time. Turns out deadlines...
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...
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...
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...
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....