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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Ten Years After
I have always loved birthdays. They are a reason to have a party, eat cake and be surrounded by your besties. What’s not to love? Which is why ten years ago I threw myself a big old birthday party. Lots...
Plenty
For those of you who have been reading my recent thoughts here or on social media*, you might have seen that this painting has been slow in coming to fruition and/or was accomplished in fits and starts....
Baby Steps
This drawing was started exactly a month ago. It was put on the back burner while I pursued a different project, getting myself a new hip. The hip is slowly healing – a miracle of modern medicine and...
For Kyiv
Orange.
Yellow orange.
Lemon yellow.
Red orange.
Orange red.
Salmon.
Pink.
Burnt orange.
Light red.
Mauve.
Deep red.
Brick red.
Burnt...
Summer In January
I’m turning 70 in a few weeks, something which my bones are all too pleased to remind me of on a regular basis. Knees, hips, hands, eyes, you name it, all chime in.
But unless I’m in motion – or...
The Humble Nasturtium
Last summer I once again planted nasturtiums willy-nilly throughout my garden. They went nuts.
Though slow to start and devilishly difficult to pick for floral arrangements they bring so much...
A Green Leaf
Sometimes a painting isn’t about anything. Sometimes it’s just a painting of a leaf with raindrops on it. Little water droplets reflecting the world above, around and beneath it. A tiny dim sun dots...
Yes, I Can Count
Way back in May (can it really be that long ago?) I posted a video announcing a new project that was supposed to spur me into an amazing flurry of painting production! The goal was to paint three paintings...
Old Dog Old Tricks
This was an odd Olympic year. Truly. Olympics are always in even years, never odd. I know, recently everything in our lives has been odd so why not the Olympics? But it was different for other reasons....
Buttercups
My studio was unusually quiet yesterday morning. Power was out here and throughout the surrounding neighborhood. No mowers, no blowers, only the sound of my brush drawn across the canvas. The rhythmic...
Big Bite
I’ve been wanting to embark on a big project for a while. I started one in early January which ended up being a huge fail. I found myself avoiding going into the studio it depressed me so much. I wondered...
Ranunculus No. 3
While entering this, my most recent painting, in an exhibition I was asked what “inspired” the painting. For floral paintings like this one, it’s clearly nature. I’m in rapture with the way this tiny...
Parting Company
It is not long until Thanksgiving and conversation is swirling around about what to do about the holiday. To gather or not to gather, that’s the problem at hand. There’s a lot of hand-wringing going...
Zhenya
Where the hell have I been? No, I haven’t succumbed to COVID-19, nor have I been abducted by aliens. Something scary did happen though, my computer died…or rather, was suddenly plunged into the death...
Adoration
News Flash: I’m in love. I’m in love with these children. They’ve been a central part of my life for just short of a month and I am sad that the painting is finished because I’ve loved seeing their faces,...
Mirrors
A number of books on my shelves were from my mother who died many years ago. I pick them up now and then when I want to read something different, much different from our lives today. On the inside cover...
Surveillance
My covid-19 companions are a pair of cats. Brother and sister. In the past when I’ve had only one pet I always felt bad about them not having a playmate especially when I wasn’t around, so I got this...
My Constant Companion
I’ve been well positioned to weather the weirdness of this retreat into our homes these past few months. I, like many artists, thrive on solitude. I like nothing better than to dig into a project, be...
Those Trees
Sometimes when I stand at my window and look out at all the trees that surround me, I wish that there were fewer so I could better see the sky. I used to work in a rather nondescript office building...
Dream State
They say that these days we are all having particularly vivid and sometimes alarming dreams. I read an article about this in National Geographic and won’t begin to attempt to summarize except to say...
On Being Resurrected
There came a day in my life that I had to make a serious life decision. It affected people I loved most dearly and I knew it would hurt them. It was at Easter services while I was in my pretty dress...
Gravitational Pulls
Tides ebb and flow as the moon orbits the earth. Earth maintains a healthy distance from the sun as the force of gravity tethers it to our all powerful source of light and life. And we too are drawn...
Surface Tension
Bubbles are irresistible to almost any human being. Frankly, I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t get a little charge out of them. Charlotte is a serious aficionado. I have a whole bunch of photos of her...
Looking For Turtles
Over the past seven years I’ve dipped my toe in and out of portraiture. It’s a bit intimidating trying to make a likeness of someone but I think I’ve achieved that. So, to change things up I’ve decided...
Motivation
As I wrote in my last post I am participating in a show at a local museum featuring modern interpretations of works in the museum’s permanent collection. The etching I selected is of a demure girl of...
Character Development
When I first started painting in earnest, and by that, I mean spending a good chunk of my waking time in the pursuit of my craft, one of the concepts I found elusive was the idea of creating a “body...
Morning Middle
On Day II of their parents’ mental health weekend we woke to a beautiful morning. The little one found her bubbles and wanted to blow some so I shepherded her outside, her brothers followed. Brother...
Orange Zinnia Mania
It seems like I’ve been working on this painting forever! I fell in love with the concept then sort of fell out of love with the process. But as is true with all my past difficult painting births I’m...
Accomplishment
Its been a weird year in the studio. From March until early July I was working feverishly on a body of work for the 8 Visions Exhibition at the Attleboro Arts Museum (see the paintings I selected here)....
Solstice, Birthdays and Flowers
I don't think it's my imagination that spring has been memorably rainy this year. It is raining now as I type, a downpour actually. Since our summer is short here in New England the natives are restless...
Pas de Deux
He wondered out loud, what is love now that we are in the last (two, dare I say three) decades of our lives? I said that I wasn’t sure, but what I did know was that it was different from the deep crushes...
Perfectly Imperfect
Modern social media is full of it. People proudly showing off their abs, their glutes. Perfect family photos, never crying chidden, tidy houses, fabulous vacations, happy marriages. I do it too. I post...
Kite Day
It had been a long hot day in July, though a perfect day to fly kites, which is what we'd done.
After a long drive, and a long search for a parking spot, and sunscreen in somebody's eyes, and experiencing...
Glory
As I finished up this painting I was taken back to high school English (my tattered, 1,398 page textbook still takes up real estate on my bookshelf). Thinking about what I might want to express about...
A Diversion
I've been going through an artists' slump. Just not inspired. Being someone who doesn't like being idle I realized that I now had the time to finish a long, put off project to paint a "headboard" for...
Aglow
I met Alicia online. As in an online dating app. But I wasn't looking for a girlfriend, I was checking out the competition.
After countless profiles of women my age in v-neck dresses looking lovingly...
Heading for the Barn
It was a dark and stormy night. Well, it was dark and it was raining.
We had been wine tasting down in the Willamette Valley on a cool autumn day, our teeth stained gray by the luscious pinot noir...
What Linda Said
Linda said, "Well, it's either going to be really fabulous," she paused, "or really gross." She was talking about the trip to Costa Rica I would be chaperoning along with two science teachers, both men....
Positively
She's a bit of an old soul in that body. I suspect she is reincarnated from someone who in some way was denied the life they wanted and has been born into this one determined to relish each and every...
Empty Nest
Whenever I see an abandoned birds nest I inevitably pick it up and find a place for it in my home. Some are fragile, loosely constructed with twigs and air. Others tightly woven from horsehair plucked...
Tulip Field Fantasy
Before all things went to hell in a hand basket there was this moment when I managed to get one of the boys to stand still long enough for a quick snapshot before he ran off with his brother to wreck...
The Joys of Grandparenthood
Being a parent is an awesome task. I remember days, and nights, that I thought it might just kill me. And others when I knew my children saved my life, and sanity.
Surviving my children's childhoods,...
All I Wanted
Looking back over the past few years worth of work it makes total sense why I was feeling a bit burned out. Flowers followed by fruit, followed by flowers, flowers and more flowers and then some fruit....
Two-For
It's been a crazy month or so. Rushing around to get myself off for a much anticipated two-week plus vacation left me leaning on my son to pick up and deliver some artwork from and to exhibitions (thank...
Everything's Relative
Here are the ten phases of painting, at least in my book:
Enthusiasm - Defined as the stage when I have selected an image and can just picture it in my head how it will turn out. I can't wait to...
Unsheltered
I must be no more than three in the portrait. I was exempt from posing, the artist having to work from a photograph to imagine my likeness...not to mention personality. As a result, I appear to be a...
Mocking
The fourth in my most recent series of tulip portraits is a departure from the up close and personal nature of its predecessors. It's both simpler and more complex.
I was drawn to the photo for...
Getting Brave
I don’t make New Year resolutions but I do try to set annual goals that sometimes take on an aspirational tone. This year’s theme leaned towards being brave and to be vulnerable. I certainly bit off...
I Do(odle) Now
I can’t really help it. I need to do something with my hands. So when I’m in a meeting or relaxing in front of the TV and there happens to be paper and a pen or pencil in the near vicinity I inevitably...
Jan Theodora
My sister Jan died a little over a month ago.
She was, as all of us are, a complicated human being. In her obituary her son captured the best and the worst of her life when he wrote "Wonderfully...
Grace
As anyone who has seen my paintings or read this blog knows, it appears that I have something of an obsession with tulips. They are at once elegant, simple, playful, serious, honest and mysterious. Their...
A Tulip By Any Other Name
I've embarked on a journey. An experiment to see if I will ever tire of painting tulips, sort of. I just might because despite having spent now more than 30 hours facing this lady's backside I find that...
All Mixed Up
When last I wrote I was in the throes of an artist's block. Yes, that damn petal was driving me to blog. And in the end the blog turned out to be about letting go of expectations.
I'm not sure how...
Blocked
The other night someone asked me if I was ever plagued by the painter's version of writer's block. Oh yeah, I said. Definitely. As a matter of fact I was in the throes of it as we spoke.
I'd been...
Tetraptych
Summer came in with a whimper -- cold, damp and generally uninspiring. I decided to spend time on an ambitious project, four paintings, each a quadrant of a whole. A tetraptych.
I suppose I believed...
You Can't Win Them All
I've written before about how interesting it is to see and hear reactions to my paintings. I've reluctantly posted a photo of a newly finished painting, reluctant because I wasn't entirely sure it was...
Weiser, ID
My grandparents' home sits in state on Pioneer Road in Weiser, Idaho. Aptly named as my grandfather was a true western pioneer who arrived in this country at age 16 at the tail end of the Civil War and...
Hibernation
I do things a little differently. I hibernate come spring and emerge again in the fall. To my studio, that is. I suppose I just can't resist the urge to create on earth's canvas while the sun shines...
Little Faces
A while back my daughter-in-law gently asked me if I might donate a painting commission to my grandson's school's auction. Having been on her side of the philanthropy fence in a past lifetime I said...
Roots
Despite the snow falling outside on this blizzardy day, I'm thinking back to trips I took with my dad to the garden store; him passionate about plants and gardening, me loving sunshine, mud, worms and...
Painting is Terrifying
A sage teacher once told the class that you had to be brave to paint. As she passed on that terrifying concept, a loaded palette knife hovered over my painting. No truer words were spoken, I thought,...
Iconography
In college I loved to decipher, or attempt to at least, the symbolism in the paintings we studied. The musical instrument, a cabbage, a recently extinguished candle, the little dog underfoot, a unicorn...
Mistaken Identity
A good friend of mine, a former good friend of mine, someone who I once believed I loved, did something really stupid one day and ended up in federal prison. He told me he took the bribe but it only...
Wide Open Spaces
I'm partial to skies. I like looking at them, photographing them, imagining them and painting them. So I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that they show up in my paintings.
I've just begun...
Local Summer
The perennial beds are planted, mulched and are starting to embarrass themselves with effusive blossoms. The deck has been painted and pots planted as well. With the house and grounds set for the season...
Reflections
I'd only been living here a short time. My neighbors had mentioned that the town's Community Day might be a fun outing for my grandson.
There were musicians, dancers, hot dogs, a bouncy house, 4-H...
Unfinished Business
I’ve spent the better part of the past couple of weeks or so out in my garden. There were raised boxes to fill and flower beds to turn, and amend and turn again. I dug up turf, lovingly relocating clumps...
A Different Kind of Portrait
Come December, despite the sensory overload of holiday lights, music, food and good will to all mankind, something like a lowly piece of fruit sitting alone on the table can reach deeply into one's psyche....
Madame
She was a particular kind of feline. Sometimes stately, befitting her name and sometimes ornery, well, just because she could. She was rather large, you see, statuesque. Not quite as big as her scale-bending...
Winter's Warmth
Among tattered sticky notes, phone extensions listings, memos, meeting dates and emergency procedures, round little faces of friends, family and colleagues' babies and grand babies colored the bulletin...
What Value Art
What is the value of an artist's work? Probably the hardest thing they do is try to put a price on a piece of art. After all, it's not a widget. It springs to our soul from our eyes and through our hands...
From My Soul, From My Hands, and From My Heart
Who is one's own worst critic? I own up to often being my own. When I find myself looking at old photos of myself I acutely recall how much I didn't like that shot at the time, but years later find I...
Feminine Wiles
Last Thanksgiving I had the unique privelidge to sleep a night or two in a young ladies' bedroom. She was spending the night at her mother's house so I took up residence among objects most likely not...
Loosening Up
I'm at a bit of loose ends.
Started one project in oil but it needs to dry before I can move forward. Waiting for a call back from the collector to start working on a commission. Can you hear my...
Reality Check
We sat knee to knee in the living room checkered by Christmas presents and plastic bags full of wrappings when she coyly announced that he was taking her to a romantic inn in Maine for New Years. I wondered...
Melancholy
It sometimes happens that happy things are also sad things. That the innocence of children belies what the future holds for them. And life lives itself out in the way it always does, with gratitude jumbled...
Happy
It goes without saying that people and relationships are the most important things in our human existence. Without them we are but stick figures, dimensionless, solitary. Like you, my family and friends...
Chocolate and Ginger Ale
I've just finished a project, a commission, that's taken me longer than I'd expected and has turned out better than I could have imagined. I'd love to post an image of it here but won't be able to do...
Thoughts on Painting
...OR THE LACK THEREOF.
Since this little tack I've taken in my life has been largely motivated by a desire to follow my bliss and paint, it seemed logical to me to also turn this blog around into...