Winter Oak

This painting is in the midst of a big makeover...
  I know I have some images of the underpainting somewhere too, but I'll have to add them later when I figure out what phone or camera I was using at the time. I started this painting a few years ago, when the subject was then just a favorite tree in my boyfriend's yard. This project got put on hiatus when I moved and time went by...and by...and by. I eventually rediscovered it in my hoarder's delight of a studio and decided to take a different approach. I now live with this tree and know it well, so my perspective and the meaning of it all has changed a bit.
  For a while, I had gotten away from my usual process of dripping a graph. I use this technique to establish segments and bring some order to the big mess I make when a painting begins. When I came back to this piece after not seeing it for about a year, I decided to dive in and just paint naturally without trying to continue the non-drippy style I began with. The dripping process has become so much a part of painting for me that it looked weird without it! This tree has got the most interesting bark. A piece actually plopped off and was laying in the yard so I keep it in the studio next to this painting. I can't wait to get into the details.

hiatus state:

When Guinea Pigs Fly

  After teaching several children's classes and now living with a 7-year old, I have taken an interest in making art for children. I had been playing with the addition of animals in my last few landscapes and have always been a huge sucker for cute, fluffy animals in general so it is a pretty natural direction for me to find. I think I feel an Etsy shop coming on!

  Here is "When Guinea Pigs Fly" (for Hazel this past Christmas):

Songbird Mural

Now that I am not a renter I am really liking the fact that I can paint on the walls!! I previously posted our kitchen mouse...now I've added a robin in the bedroom. I made some gauzey linen curtains up there that cast a beautiful soft light on this little mural and it is just dreamy.

Clothes on a Line

It's a snow day here and I'm making up for lost time! I have some blog posts that I never got around to publishing, so I'm going to release them all now and pretend they have different dates...

  I have been largely consumed by this beautiful Victorian home that I am so tickled to live in. I grew up in an early 1900's reproduction stone farm house and I have always sought out old buildings as a renter. In my childhood home, there were Mercer tiles around a beautiful little St. Francis statue on the back of the house (this little thing was so important to me that I made rubbings of the tiles when my mom sold the house so I didn't have to leave them behind). Mysterious artifacts would sometimes get churned up when we tilled the garden and we ate apples from enormous trees that had been dropping fruit on that yard for god knows how many generations. It was all a big mystery that would never completely unfold. I enjoy the feeling of living in a place with deep history. This current house is so full of character and stories as well.
  This past summer, we renovated our little side porch and made all kinds of interesting discoveries. The crawlspace under the porch was hiding a huge, ornate bed post (it took a few weeks of walking past it in the hallway for us to place what exactly it was), several antique laundry ringers and a number of other great-looking but yet to be identified objects. THEN, we opened up the walls to add insulation and discovered that they were lined thick with old newspapers. They are very brittle and delicate so I carefully stashed them away in my studio, intending to do some projects with them but unsure of what they would be.
  I recently started a painting that incorporated these pages. I also used some stiffened fabrics that I cut into hanging laundry because I am sort of obsessed with clotheslines. Something about the way fabric catches the wind, and perhaps they represent a meeting of domestic life and the natural world. I can't put my finger on it, but I just love the image of clothes hanging on a line. It's been a while since I did a mixed media piece and now I remember why it is so fun! This piece is pretty rough around the edges, but when I get a solid block of time to work I think it will be very satisfying. I'm always off to a very messy start!
  Here is my progress thus far: