Epiphany

I'm still getting ready for an upcoming show at an art gallery right here in Salt Lake, Utah Artist Hands. I'm still madly painting of course, but sometimes I think I do my best work at the last minute. This painting is one of a pair that will be up in the show opening in time for mother's day. I love the new color palette I used in these paintings. They're inspired by vintage, Art Deco fabric that I found in a new book.
My friends and family know that I'm easily distracted, an entrepreneur by heart, and I'm not really myself unless I have a new passion to follow up on every few months. This past weekend while at a beautiful fabric store with my sister Cathy I decided to finally follow through with the passion for textiles that I've had for years. In what you might call an epiphany I decided to start designing a line of fabrics based off of my paintings, which I suppose brings things full circle considering the fact that my paintings are inspired by textiles to begin with.

Bon Voyage!

This piece, along with three others, are on their way to England. Liberty Gallery in Kent will be the first overseas gallery to display my paintings. Hopefully they find a happy home in England. Now if only I could hand deliver the paintings myself. Too bad my American dollar wouldn't get me too far.

Metaphor

I really struggled with these pieces. Sometimes a painting will just fall together, each stencil fitting in exactly the right spot, each flower the right size and color to begin with, and other times I feel like I'm fighting the whole time, exhausted at every decision, changing color and composition left and right until finally I end up too tired to paint any more. The funny thing is that it's usually these paintings that I end up liking the most in the long run, possibly because they were unexpected. They weren't the pieces I sought out to make, but were the paintings that struggled to form themselves out of the layers of paint, stencil and charcoal. No need to tell me that it's a metaphor for something larger. . .