bare bones again

bare bones series

Here are a two of my limited series of skeletal studies painted on wood panels, 4 x 6 inches
I am trying to get them out of my system, and paint them without focusing on personality or morbidity. It's not an easy assignment for myself.

Persephone's bath and Proserpina's garden

Enjoying the flowers of my lover.
Two paintings- one 16 x 6 inches and the other 12 x 10.25 inches

Money Obsession and current woes

The peasant woman in Breugal's harvest painting

2011 calendars

The dailypainters.com national group have created several beautiful themed calendars for next year. A painting of mine is featured in three of them! I have my Nest Hair lady in the Figurative calendar, a chicken crossing the road in the Bird paintings calendar, and Shaker bed painting in the Still Life Painting calendar. Some of the money goes to charity. Most goes to spreading the word about daily painters. So your purchase helps a lot of people. Please consider it. Thanks.

I didn't want to get out of bed

In the fiction of my painted stories, I create lurid and exploitative tales featuring myself as heroic character.

In that vein, the bed is a place to safely destroy the past, mourn it with the salt of tears, nest until blue and broody, and then create new relationships...
How fantastic is that?

I think she is finished...

having conquered the stag. No idea what to call this painting. Taking suggestions.

some words...

There is this wonderful Los Angeles times newspaper headline: "And who is she this time?"

Before words...

Because the internet was down I didn't get sucked into my emails and I was able to paint first thing in the morning... painted from 7 a.m. to 1:30 pm!

Deer Diary

Still confused... the idea for this painting is so illusive now... when I try to pin it down it moves away from me. Constantly I have to ask myself , "what am I trying to share?" It's intensely personal...A recurrent yet fleeting dream. Mostly when I see the stag he is behind me, in the corner of my eye. So to look at him head on is a bit strange. Not sure I want it so visible... is that better? Turning the stag into a couch?

a new painting

is in the works. You can see the stumbling and the inspiration. Still have layers of maps to add. After all she looks a little lost.

Marching Through

Filling in the landscape

What is she looking at?

Pencil and charcoal on newsprint paper.

Steps to forgive

I think I've stopped dissolving. My painting has gone through as many transformations as my flighty horoscope-gemini-mood-moon-calendar! First I was too illustrative, then unbearably dark and shadowy. A frustrated brainless attack left the paintings a surface victim. Now, after today, I find the line and color are resolving themselves. In my own life I am starting to feel less the protagonist in a dramatic short story, not as much in the guilt ridden shadows, and actually, eventually, more substantial and brilliant. It took measures such as confessional tea dates with very patient girlfriends, driving across states to help a bigger cause, spending time rooted with siblings, working the gratitude list, crying salty oceans, and telling myself over and over that I forgive me. I forgive me. I didn't do it perfectly, but I can believe in more joy.

She's starting to get her form back!

For a while she was dissolving... I am so relieved to see her quietly emerge. I think this painting has a brighter future.

the beginings of a bleeding heart

Mona Lisa egg, tea, and me

Evolution of a portrait

I did a brave and appalling thing yesterday by trying to paint myself half undressed, at my age! Lately I have been reviewing my work and coincidentally mounting a mini-retrospective at a local venue. Surprising myself,it seems as though I have been painting nests in various media and with various symbolism for YEARS, decades... So it is time to really look, to really see what I am trying to say. Is there a way to say it clearly enough so that I can move beyond the repetitive nest? How raw is the experience? I feel as though there is a spiritual message I have constantly failed to properly convey. I feel humbled. I feel I have to get back to the studio...

Here are some stages and details to yesterday's experience.

I admire Alice Neel for being able, at age 84, to look starkly, and artistically at herself and celebrate the inner soul. Her painting is at the National Portrait gallery in Washington DC.

This is 18 x 12 inches, acrylic paint and map collage on birch luan panel

studio wall

Strange days. Where does the time go? Yesterday was a snow day... but after 7 hours painting today I realize that I am barely getting enough done in the studio. What should I be working on? There is the idea of GIFTS. Do I make things for Christmas? What value does the work have as a gift in these times?

What else can I afford to do? 

Started a store in the back of my studio in hopes to pay rent, bring more people in....and a few small items of my friends Rosemary and Michael have been selling. That is encouraging. 

Today I painted five paintings- three as gifts for neighbors and two that are larger and not finished and most likely unsell-able. They are figurative, symbolic, and intuitive. That just might not cut it on the commercial market. I haven't painted the figure so regularly in a long time- since this studio shot back in 2002.

 Strange days.