Friday, March 5, 2010
Progress report
Friday, February 26, 2010
My podcast about our trip to New York
Of course I've never done this before and had no idea what I was doing, which is why it has taken me a week to update about my trip. I had the best time figuring out how to make it though! What a blast! My husband really got into the project too, actually going out and getting me this fancy microphone! Isn't it cute!

The podcast is on my website which you can see here. There are over 70 images to see, plus all the galleries and their websites are on this page too. I hope you enjoy it!
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Back from New York

While I was away, a wonderful artist and teacher, Karen Lynn Ingalls, was kind enough to feature me on her blog. Karen asked me several questions about about my approach to composition and painting in general. You can see that post here, and please take a look at her beautiful paintings on her personal blog here. Thank you Karen for this honor.
I would also love to thank all the wonderful suggestions we received for our trip! I only wish we had had more time to do every single one!
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Love and trip to New York
"I tell you, the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people." ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I am just so excited I can barely stand it!! If you have any suggestions for must sees or eat, please leave a comment, which I can check while on the road!
Hope this day and everyday your heart is full!
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Joy to the World
Most of my paintings deal with ideas about exteriors we can see versus interiors we can't. Thinking about ways to really dig deep and explore this core idea, a friend of mine suggested addressing directly my fears. For reasons unknown to me, the first idea that popped in my head was to make the container transparent, and without thinking more about it, I put a bow in a glass and painted Cordial. Then I revisited the idea with this painting. I didn't know what to say about it at the time, still unsure about this idea, so I packed it up and sort of forgot about it with the move.
I particularly enjoyed using thick blobs of paint for the transparent surface, and love the distortions of the ribbons as they press against the inside. Seeing this spot below with fresh eyes actually caused me to go back and rework Cordial, which you can see here.
Well I recently unpacked it, and Wow.... I could see that first layer of meaning! At least enough to know that I definitely want to pursue this idea a bit more. Pretty cool.
The painting is a bit larger (14x18) than most I post, so I thought I would show a couple of cropped shots. You can view a larger photo of the painting here on my website. I adore how all the colors melt together, and love this glowing interior space.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Slow progress and mixing grays
Progress has been very slow and difficult with my new painting, so I thought I would share some of my difficulties, and what I'm doing to get through them.
First COLOR!!! Usually the fun, joyful, thrilling part for me. I'm having the most difficult time seeing the color ... well I'm seeing it, but having a hard time translating it. My bows are white, but almost all in shadow, giving me a majority of grays, right? Well not as I see it. I see purples, and dark blues, and deep oranges, and yellows even. But when I try to paint purple-gray, and yellow-gray, the colors are NOT beautiful. I keep painting and scraping off whole sections. This has not been fun.
So I decided to adjusted my thinking. I love working with rich, saturated colors, so what I needed to work with wasn't gray, but super rich luscious saturated neutrals. Now that sounds fun to me!
I know this has to be clearly all in my head, that how I feel about a color effects the way I see and paint it - gray (sad) versus rich neutral (yummy), but it is working, and that's all I care about, so here we go:
Earlier I posted how I mix color based on opposites, and this is just another example, so I won't go into as much detail. The earlier post I used yellows and purples, this time I'm using oranges and blues. Opposites mixed together give us lots of beautiful rich neutrals, plus mixing this way gives me a lot of control. This makes it so simple to warm up a color or cool it down, plus it's very easy to remix a color. Here is a sampling of some of the colors I will be using:
Below that dark group is King's Blue + Cad Orange, these are super rich in person, and the palest group of purply pinky pearly neutrals is Radiant Blue + Shell Pink (= purple) adding Ivory White (yellowish white - purples opposite.)
More soon!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Getting settled in to a new Studio
I've been busy painting the walls/ceiling/trim all white, so it seems only fitting that my first painting in my new space would be inspired by all white as well. Of course, all the snow might be responsible for the white set up too, but I think the real source of inspiration started back in June by a comment by Alia El-Bermani on my post for Fireworks. She stated that "cloud nine" would have been a good title for that painting or a new one, because of my own joyful reaction to my recent paintings. Of course, my crazy brain immediately jumps to... cloud nine...yessss...nine big canvas of all white!
Well, that might be a bit ambitious. I have a very bad habit of starting a huge painting (that I never seem to complete) every move and new studio. But, seeing that I have so much white for inspiration around me, with clouds, snow, and a bright new studio, I just might get this done! I'm hopeful.
The canvas is 20 x 20, and this is the charcoal sketch so far.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
South Shore Arts Salon Show Award
I am so pleased to be a part of the show, and extremely honored to be chosen for this award!
Monday, August 24, 2009
Sharing some good news
I am so grateful and excited today, and I thought I would pass along the news. I have been featured on a wonderful blog I just discovered called, A Gift Wrapped Life.
As anyone might guess, Sande Chase, author of this inspiring blog, and I share an obsession with presents. Sande Chase's blog is a companion for her website which specializes in gorgeous gifts wrapped so beautifully I could cry! Her blog is a wonderful new source of inspiration and I am very honored to be featured there. Thanks so much to Sande, for her generosity and for her incredibly kind words. Also many thanks to Lara Harris, a fellow artist and blogger who saw the similar passions, and was kind enough to make the connection.
One more bit of good news, two of my paintings, "Fireworks" and "Melt" have been selected for the 66th Annual South Shore Salon Show in Indiana. I am very excited about this opportunity, it is a great honor for me to participate and I am thrilled these two paintings where chosen.
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