Boat Launch Ramp, Old Lyme (10x10)

Boat Launch Ramp, Old Lyme

Oil on canvas, 10x10
sold

The represented artists' show at the Wallkill River School Gallery on Saturday was hot, chaotic, crowded - and fun! It is always a pleasure to meet  new people, and especially new people interested in art... and it was just so great to see my old friends, artists and nonartists alike.

Before the show even began, a woman came up to me and told me that she remembered "The Christmas Surprise," one of the fictional serials I wrote for the Times Herald-Record. That conversation made my day.

And then the artists came in, and began setting up, and I tell you, it felt like going home to my adopted family.

There was Shawn Dell Joyce, with whom I'm showing in April, and who I called before I made my first painting, when I realized I had no idea how to do a background.

There was Bruce Thorne, the first person I ever saw painting with a palette knife, and there was his wife, Lita Thorne, who showed me how to push limits and be unafraid to make my own paintings.

Here's my painting in the landscape

There was George Hayes, with whom I had my first show, and Nancy Reed Jones, with whom I had one of my best painting days ever. There was kindred spirit and animal lover Lisa O'Gorman, and the ever so talented Mary Muegle Sealfon and Janet Campbell, and scores of others who shared their secrets and their inspiration with me, and helped me begin to learn how to paint.

So yes, it was too hot, and too crowded, and too nuts for words, but it was great fun, and greatly reassuring, too. I am so proud to be included as one of the represented artists in the gallery. I am in such excellent company.