March 2023 Working smaller . . . Scenes from San Miguel de Allende are 6×8″ or 8×8″. The figures are on wood panels that are 13×6″.
Feb 2023
Painting and travel! What a good idea! I went with two sweet friends and all the spouses and we attended a four day painting workshop in Mexico.
December 2022 FEBRUARY UPDATE see before and afters of two paintings
This is a series of compressed poses (model Shawna Holman @shawnaartmodel). I’m not finished with most of them. I just got excited and wanted to post them! CLICK to enlarge images. Happy New Year!
September – October 2022 CLICK to enlarge
I like to work in challenges. I purchased mdf board to paint on, and to play with collage. I need lots more practice with collage, well, and everything, right? Number 3 and number 6 have some collage. Ruth Asawa was my inspiration for number 4 and the painting on my website’s “front” page and number 5 are painted from a friend’s photos (from the 1975 Weiser Bluegrass Festival). Number 6 has a little tribute to Philip Guston.
Summer Sketchbook 2022
In July I took a zoom class through Winslow Art Center with Barbara Fugate on color and composition using sketchbooks. (Highly recommend!) She urged students to do something in a sketchbook daily. I already had a habit of sitting outside first thing in the morning, so adding a sketchbook seemed easy. It’s a great place for me to do “do corny things”, to record dream images, to just keep the channel open. Also this summer, I’m grateful to have met two artists who inspire me: Saundra Fleming at Columbia City Gallery and Craig from Portland (@craif2010 on Instagram).
Still waiting on that brilliance (haha).
Here are some side-by-sides of two June paintings:
Three paintings to include for April (from Feb-March 2022)
February to March 2022 More portraits
Working on portraits: one a day, painting, then scraping down and beginning again next day. It’s not that I was dissatisfied with the 25-30 portraits I did, I considered them all to be practice. As a musician in college I spent hours in rehearsals and practice. We didn’t “keep” those practice sessions – but they built our final performances, session by session. These are photos of some of those daily portraits.
Four more from this same time . . .
Also “finished” (never finished) an eight-week Diebenkorn-inspired figure painting class. 4’x6′ oil.
September 2021
Kubota Garden scenes. I’m borrowing a french easel to paint outside. A new challenge.
Another challenge: working on an enormous canvas (4×6′). Not done yet — here’s a preview, a detail:
July/August 2021
A mix. As usual with me.
June 2021. I finished up two classes on zoom and have worked on one big oil painting (48″x30″
here are some studies for the painting, trying out colors and spacing in the composition (based on photo from 1960’s – a party at my in-laws’ home)
After you do all the corny things, and all the ignorant things – then a little bit of brilliance starts happening.
David Hammons https://www.moma.org/artists/2486
Here are some paintings from April and May – I’m not done with corny or ignorant things . . .
March – four paintings based on a bouquet and a guy based on drawing . . . and trying out collage
January – February: the charcoal drawings inspire the paintings . . .
Color studies: low intensity/saturation and high saturation. Pleasing combinations, challenging combinations. Still practicing, still learning.
Two January paintings influenced by all this color work:
New for December and January 2021:
The latest paintings from November and December:
the blackberry series, made with blackberry ink:
the latest things:
The dandelion series:
"Not knowing how to do it is part of knowing how to do it." - Leon Kossoff 