As a Hen stands balanced

...On the edge of her milk crate-turned-nest, I contemplate my own off-kilter existence. I am not at all balanced... in any realm!
I can't get all my picky lists done. There doesn't seem to be enough of me to please everybody. Could it be, in fact there doesn't seem to be enough of me for me? The inner judgement is an exhausting voice that tells me I am fat and lazy and should be calling so-and-so and getting those letters written and looking for that job and... I feel so empty yet my body seems a fragile thing with murmurs, eruptions, aches and so aside from balancing the outer world with all it's fast paced to-do-lists, there is an inner world that seems out of balance as well.
I am hoping this daily practice of painting again will help center me and gain me some... down home balance!
Sewn painted paper, 4.5 x 3 inches $35 plus shipping

Three french hens

and the countdown to Xmas begins!

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?

Flowers in memory

After making it through the winter I was surprised by the sadness that spring brought when I smelled the flowers I had planted for my husband. This is a large painting with maps and layers... acrylic on wood, 24 x 32 inches

Filling in the landscape

What is she looking at?

Pencil and charcoal on newsprint paper.

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

Kylies' dad

The nest as an idea and a place to be.

Acrylic on canvas- 12 x 6 x 2 inches

Nest with chair, nest with suitcase

The nest painting is just painted over an older image done last fall of shoes, maps and suitcase.

The earlier one was about movement- I was actually trying to pack for a trip to Miami Basel.
This new painting more about being still- though there is the hint, with the vehicle in background, of movement. (I think that is my family exiting)

Empty nest in studio

It's time to get back to the studio, empty nest and all.

nest within barbed wire

I did this in the late 1980's. It is three panels hinged together in the back with copper tabs. I was trying to convince my husband that having a child would be good for us. i remember wandering across the farm past the edges of the fields and finding nests in the crooks of old tires, in barbed wire, thorned hedges and junk piles. I knew you could build a thing out of beauty even if it were a trash site. I think that is what I am best at- Making something beautiful out of something ugly. In fact, I have rarely seen anything ugly...
Angry is ugly. It is hard to look anger in the face and keep my strength.

EMPTY Nest