I'm Back!

Yep, I know..... it's been way too long since posting here. This last year has found me a little scattered and trying to do too many different things - not only in the studio but online also. Too many social media sites can suck you in so I'm narrowing my focus to posting here, my Facebook page and my Etsy shop. Ok, so I can't leave Pinterest out. I'll be there too. The stack of hats I've been wearing has gotten pretty tall so it's time to clear out some clutter. Maybe if I wear fewer of them I can work more on quality rather than quantity. I think the problem with a lot of us creative types is we like to do a variety of things and that can lead to overwhelming ourselves with choices and projects. So now I'm turning my focus to the things I love most. After all, why would I want to focus more on something I don't really want to do? Makes sense right?

In painting there are 2 topics I'm most passionate about - nature and adoption. My abstracts and landscapes are both about nature. The Silent Voices series is about adoption from an original mother's viewpoint.
You can tell from the tabs above that I like to work in series. I just added 7 new pieces to the abstract section and the landscapes are ongoing. In fact I'm getting ready for a new show in February '14 in Macon GA at The 567 Center for Renewal art gallery. I love working back and forth between these two series. After a long stretch of painting landscapes it's fun to loosen up with some textures and layers in the mixed media work.

Of course the Silent Voices series is near and dear to my heart. It's a very personal series about my own story so between shows I'll be adding to that group of work also. I'm constantly thinking about it, sketching and writing down lists of words that could be included on another canvas or the narrative poetry that goes with it.

This is where I am on this beautiful December day in Florida. I'm enjoying the warm weather and looking forward to a new creative year. I hope you've been well and will come back to visit, maybe leave a comment or two.

Sunrise on the Lake

8x10 acrylic on canvas

95.00

Happy 2013! I hope you're having a great to start to the new year. It's been a fabulous beginning for me. My fifth grandchild joined us earthside and I reconnected with an old friend. It's also time to get back to doing some new work. I'm not one to do New Year's resolutions but I am excited about painting, trying new things and rejuvenating some older things. One of the things I'm working on is updating this blog so check in once in a while. I'll be adding new work to the pages and I've just added a Horse Fever page with the horses I've done along with my butterfly in Lakeland.

Have a wonderful and creative day!

Silent Voices in a book

I've put together 11 paintings and accompanying poetry from the Silent Voices series to create a book. I've been working on this series for the last couple of years and decided it was time to start working on exhibition proposals. Since it can take a long time to get on a schedule I'll continue working on the series while submissions are going out. My idea was to produce a book that I could use as part of the proposal package. I tried a few print on demand sites and had some issues with template formatting or user friendliness. I spend a ton of time on the computer but that certainly doesn't qualify me for the Geek Squad. So anyway, I looked into Amazon - duh.... I love them and my Kindle. Now the series is in book form. Check it out - it's available here in paperback and here for Kindle. Of course it's in color so it would look best on a Kindle Fire and if you're a Prime member you can borrow it for free.

I'm almost done with painting #12 so I'm heading to the studio. Hope you're doing something creative today. Peace.

Get your hands in some paint

Today I thought I'd show off someone else's work - my granddaughter Maxine's watercolor painting. Now that she's 2 years old and old enough to sit at my drawing table I put together a tool box of art supplies for her. When she comes over for a visit one of the first things she does is grab my hand, pull me toward my studio and say "Painting Grandma?" So of course that's what we do. 

Max loves water and really loves dipping her brushes in it and sloshing around. That's how she usually paints - with brushes. This time she decided there's a better way to work with watercolors. This particular set of pan paints has glitter in it (unfortunately, hard to see in the photo). I don't know if that's why it seems to be softer than other kids watercolors but Maxine thought it was great fun to scoop it out of the pans with her fingers and smear it around on the paper. Every once in a while I'd give the paper a mist with my sprayer just to keep things moist and moving around. She loved to feel the spray too, she kept sticking her hands in it.

There's nothing like watching the creativity of children when they get their hands on some paint and I think she has as much to teach me as I have to teach her.

A dress burning

18 Years

48x36

acrylic on canvas

I took a little break from painting landscapes to go back to the Silent Voices series. This is the latest piece. So far I have 10 of these canvases done and one collage/acrylic piece on watercolor paper. Working on this image was a challenge. I used my granddaughter's dress for my reference and I burned through several  birthday candles in order to get the image down of the flame and wick. When I started I wasn't happy with the look of the dress burning so I mentioned to my son that it would be great if I could actually burn the dress and take photos. Well of course he thought that was an awesome idea - FIRE! Let's go! Lucky for me, my son and daughter-in-law didn't have a particular attachment to the dress that their daughter had outgrown so I was free to burn away.

 

The trick was getting shots without destroying the whole thing. I still needed it to paint from so I had to preserve most of it and hang it back up in the studio.

It took a minute for the flame to take but once it did it went up fast. As you can see, we got the fire stomped out before the dress was gone. So now it's on to another canvas. I don't have the next painting for this series worked out in my head yet so I may work on a landscape next.

Staying cool

Shadow Path

12x12

acrylic

So far it's been a busy summer. I've been doing a lot of painting - YAY! If you go to the Silent Voices page you'll see the latest work in that series along with the prose that goes with each piece. I've also worked on some landscapes like the little one you see above. The Landscape page has a few updates. When I painted Shadow Path I was desperately in need of something cooler so I decided to forgo the red background I usually like to use for the landscapes and go with a cool blue. I really wanted to get out of the sun for a while and this country road looked like the perfect place to do that.

I've also been busy teaching classes and workshops. I especially love the the mini-workshop I do on Friday nights. I take my folks through a step-by-step process to finish a painting in the 3 hour session. Last week I had them do a version of the painting above - here are the results....

And so far, the highlight of the summer....

going to Ohio to visit my daughter and these 3 characters, my grandsons Josh, Jake and Kory. 

Hope you're having a happy and creative summer!

I went a little crazy

with texture.

 Passage 51, 12x12 mixed media

 Passage 51, detail

                                   

These two paintings are part of an ongoing series of textured mixed media abstracts that I've been working on for a while. Aside from landscapes and a couple of series involving social commentary, I love playing with different materials - papers, glue, paint, polished stones, texture gels, Styrofoam, tissue, whatever I can glue to a canvas. I just want to make something that's fun to run your hand over and feel the bumps, cracks and wrinkles. Fun!

 Passage 52, 12x12, mixed media

 Passage 52, detail