Wednesday, January 7, 2009

The Iceman... well, you know

Heavy snow, oil on panel, 6x6,


I started this one late in the afternoon of the most recent big snowfall. I held the panel in my hand and painted while sitting on the bed. The dogs thought this was great fun, and only because my voice is so loud and my language so blue did I manage to avoid a series of potentially disastrous catastrophes. Though, really, what catastrophe is not disastrous?

This morning, everything in my little Gales Ferry world is covered with ice. The trees creak when the wind blows. Some slender limbs and fir branches, bent to the ground under the weight of the ice, are now frozen in their arcs to that very ground.

Peter taped a "beware of ice!" note to the inside of the storm door, before he went to bed last night. Somehow, there's enough traction that walking on the deck is OK, but just beneath the bottom steps, where dog feet and human feet have stomped the snow down, it's treacherously slick. The yard itself is no picnic, either. And it will take me an hour to get the ice off the car.

I have a show in March at the Lighthouse Gallery! The show is with another painter, a woman whose name I can't remember, who makes the most lovely and brilliantly colored streetscapes. The Lighthouse Gallery is a new and small place, humble, in a strip mall in Groton.

Money from sales helps support the Lighthouse Voc-Ed program, a really wonderful program that helps people of pretty much all ages, with pretty much all disabilities, learn how to function independently in the world.

The gallery is run by Chris Rose, former admissions guy at Lyme Academy. He likes my stuff well enough to allow it into his gallery, and so I am grateful and happy. And looking forward to March!

Thank you for reading, everyone.


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