Connection and chaos
It’s been a horrible week for many, but what if we looked at this week as an opportunity to welcome others into our Christmas spirit?
Annual Painting Sale and a Peek Behind the Curtain
It’s almost like those bad old days when department stores would advertise large-screen TVs and have only one in the store. Here I’m telling you upfront that there’s only one of each item. When the painting you love is gone, it’s really gone.
The limitations of style
Ravenous Wolves, oil on canvas, 24X30, $3,478.00 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US. I’ll be painting next weekend in Camden on Canvas. I’m a little rusty because my time right now is being taken up by things that have nothing to do with painting. While I can’t go out and do a full …
Ruthless pruning
If I had more time, I would have written a shorter essay. Coast Guard Inspection, 6X8, oil on canvasboard. The above witticism has been attributed to many people because it’s a universal truth. President Woodrow Wilson put it thus: “If it is a ten-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; …
Go outdoors and enjoy the weather
“’The trick,’ said I, turning on my stool with coffee cup in hand, ‘is not to adopt a siege mentality.’” All flesh is as Grass, 30X40, oil on linen The above quote is from novelist Van Reid. He was musing on the winter. I copied his essay here and I hope you will read it …
Imagination without follow-through is mere fantasy
If not now, when? If not you, who? The Late Bus, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, $435, available through Camden Public Library this month. “Imagination without follow-through is mere fantasy,” pastor Quinton Self said on Sunday, making me almost drop my sketchbook in a shock of self-recognition. I have a good idea nearly every day. I’ve …
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Fantastic Places and Magical Realms
I chose the title and theme long before I chose the paintings. Looking at them together in my studio, I thought, they’re oddly autobiographical. The Camden Public Library will present “Fantastic Places and Magical Realms” on Saturday, December 11, from 1 to 3 PM. The public is invited. When Julia Pierce asked me to hold …
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Change is hard. Embrace it. At the End of the Rainbow, oil on canvasboard, 16X20, $2029 framed. This weekend, I received a frame back from a gallery, unwrapped, battered and bruised. Some galleries treat artists’ work with shocking disrespect, so there’s no news there. However, it’s a large, expensive frame and there’s coffee splattered all …
The pernicious practice of group norming
Feeling out of place, like a failure? Perhaps the problem isn’t you, but your tribe. The Late Bus, 8X6, oil on canvasboard, $435 framed This week, kids start trickling back to school in the northeast. Every year at this time, I’m pensive. I was never one of those mothers who celebrated the first day of …
A friend challenges me to go deeper.
Paintings aren’t made in grand gestures; they’re made with brushes, one stroke at a time. Morning Fog over Whiteface Mountain, by Carol L. Douglas. Available. When I was younger, I did a lot of work that told a story and had deeper meaning. Today, much of it seems sophomoric. I prefer to concentrate on simple …