For One Night Only

On Friday September 19th I'll be painting live at Alpine Art for the 25th Anniversary Open House at 7:00. I'm always a little nervous to paint in front of people that I don't know, but I'll have the painting three quarters of the way completed and will try to finish it up during the party. By this point I should have a very good idea what the end product will look like so it shouldn't be quite so scary. The painting above is one of the pieces that I will be displayed during the show.

Return to the Land

It's been ages since I painted any landscapes, but on a recent trip to Idaho to visit my best friend Cathy I was so stirred by the farmland that I took a whole bunch of photographs to use for references so I could do a series of landscapes. I'm planning on using acrylic on paper. It's been so long since I've worked on paper and I'm excited by the prospect. Here is a phenomenal picture of the moon rising. The colors were amazing, bold, yet compressed. Ahhh!

I'm Back

Yes, after three months of distraction I've ended my sabbatical. There has to be something said for the benefit of a deadline and right now I'm very grateful to A Muse Gallery in Columbus for being just the impetus to get me off my keister and painting again. If you're near Columbus in October, stop by the gallery to see the show.
My kids are slated to start school next week and I'm excited to get back to the studio with some regularity again. Ahh, I didn't realize how much I missed having a schedule. I'm hoping to get new work out to all my galleries and finally make some progress with the figurative paintings I've been working on for a collective show that I'm preparing to do with my brother.


Here are a few of the paintings I sent to the Columbus Gallery.


A Muse Gallery requested some monochromatic paintings and I had fun doing number of black and white paintings.

Mother's Day Show

I finally delivered eight paintings to Utah Artist Hands for the Mother's Day Show. Pam has a beautiful shop with an amazing eclectic mix of artwork that I would love to be able to buy. I'm always jealous of the people who go into a gallery with the intent to buy and I always feel a little guilty that I'm not one of those people more often. Most of the artwork in my house has been acquired through the beautiful act of trading. But it's a great feeling when I can actually pay an artist for her work.

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. . .