Tuscan Sunflowers

Tuscan Sunflowers

Oil on gallery-wrapped canvas, 24x48

Please contact me for price and delivery options

It has been a hectic day. I took a second show's worth of paintings to Chris Rose at the Lighthouse Gallery today. I took my first show down, the one with my newest paintings, packed it into the car, and left Chris to puzzle and ponder and hang my older paintings.

In the garage here, I found all my show stuff, my S-hooks and my tablecloths, my exhibition grids and my guestbook and my receipt book and my price tags, my cards and postcards and all the little stuff I need for the Paradise City show in Marlborough, Mass.

The van is filled to the brim, I have a stupid amount of work left to do, and I need to pack my clothes and frame two more paintings, but sometime Thursday morning, I will leave for the show with my heart thumping.

I do all this, and I paint, and I work, and I worry about my job, and the house and Peter and the dogs, and I stress and fret that someone at the show will find out that I really don't know how to paint, but am only doing this because it is so very much fun - and then I think about Japan, and the earthquake and tsunami, and nuclear meltdown and the end of the world, and I am stopped short.

It would be all to easy just to say, Enough, and to stay inside and live a life of fear and worry and despair, but I can't do that. I won't do that. I will not give in. I will keep painting, and working too hard, and not sleeping enough. I will keep hugging my husband and petting my dogs, and yelling at my cats, and hoping that today, the sun will shine on my family and my friends, and there will be joy in our world.

Sunflowers, Tuscany - Supersized!

Sunflowers, Tuscany

sold

So this is the big version of the miniature painting I posted yesterday. I really love this painting. It has great texture - lots of paint! - and the addition of the blue and purple shadows in the foreground really make it sing for me.

Starting in the summer, I began painting the sky in a different way, in short strokes, with colors I usually wouldn't think of for sky - Naples yellow, ochre, different tans and browns and even greens sometimes. And then puffs of clouds over all of it. These skies make me so happy! They have depth and shine and movement, and it is so much fun to paint them.

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A week ago, I learned that I've been accepted into the Paradise City show in Marlborough, Mass. This show is in March, and is even harder to get into than the Memorial Day show that I will be doing in Northampton, Mass. It is so very exciting to know that I'm going to Marlborough, too! And the acceptance came on a day when I really needed something wonderful to happen.

Life is treating me so well these days, I am grateful, so grateful.

Sunflowers, Tuscany

Sunflowers, Tuscany

Oil on gessoboard panel, 4 inches by 4 inches, in wide black frame

Contact Center Framing & Art at 860-233-7804 for price and shipping options

I had the chance to paint yesterday, and I relished it. There's heat in the studio now, too, another huge step forward! 

Today, I am painting this same painting, but large, 30x40. I started it yesterday, and so far, so good. There's something magical about the start of a big painting, about those first strokes, those first shapes on the huge white canvas. I always love them when they are just started, and there is always a little part of me that wants to leave them like that. Next time, I will take photos along the way and post them. It's pretty interesting. 

For any of you who have enjoyed my fictional serials in the past, I'm writing another one, for the Patch site I run. The site is montville-ct.patch.com, and the story is "The Best Present Ever." 

If you read it and you like it, I'd be eternally grateful if you'd keep reading it, chapter by chapter, and also tell your friends about it. 

If you don't like it, let me know, and let me know why, so that I can improve. 

While you're on the site, please look around, and tell me what you think. I would appreciate it!