Lulu

Lulu

Oil on canvas, 12x12

For the Art for Shelter Animals Project

Some ups, some downs these recent days.

Clearly, one of the ups is that I've had some time to paint!  And really, never has painting felt so delicious, so luscious, so rich. How incredibly lucky I was to have had that year and a half just painting. I long for the day when that is my life again.
 
One of the downs is that this lovely dog, Lulu, has just had her ninth or 10th litter. This one was 10 pups; one was stillborn. The others are happy and lively and living in the Montville shelter. To see a video of the puppies, click here.

Lulu needs a home; right now, one of her mammary glands has become infected, and she has had a mastectomy. She is going to be OK, but this will make it even harder for her to be adopted. So that's a down. The other is that a neighboring paper got the story before I did!

Oh, well.

Another of the ups? The 100th follower has joined The Accidental Artist. Yay!

Thank you, all of you, for reading my blog. I appreciate each and every one of you. Your support and enthusiasm has carried me many days, and your kind words have enriched my life.

Black Dirt - and 'Rough at Hand'

Black Dirt

Oil on canvas, 10x20

Please contact me for price and shipping/delivery information 

Above, a happy corner of the Wallkill River School, with paintings from "Rough at Hand," my show that is there through February. You can see "Black Dirt" on the left-hand wall.

Early buyers bought three of the four small paintings I had hanging on the left-hand wall. Luckily, I had more paintings with me than I could easily hang, so three new ones took the place of the three that sold. There are joys great and small to productivity, and this is one of them! 

Top, "Christmas Eve." Bottom, "Tuscany."

My friend Michael Piotrowski, a wonderful painter, who will be showing at the gallery in April.

From left, Gittel Evangelist, me, Gene Bove (fabulous artist, showing in March) and Ellen Levine. Gittel and Ellen, bless them, braved the awful weather to come to the opening reception.

From left, Michael Piotrowski, Gene Bove, Ellen Levine and Gittel Evangelist. Jane and John Pette, readers of this blog, also braved the weather. The Pettes and I were strangers before the show opened, and friends by the time they left.
I was sad for a while that so few people came, but the weather was truly horrible, and I'd have been bereft if someone had gotten hurt, coming to my reception. The slight attendance (the gang pictured here, and the Pettes) meant I did have time to talk with everyone who attended - a rarity at openings, usually! 

Here's what you see when you enter the gallery showing my work in "Rough at Hand." On the mantle is "Scottish Highlanders," 48x60. Bottom is "The Watcher," which is 30x40, I believe.
You can just see the framed photo of my mother on the mantle. Whenever possible, I bring her photo to the shows and leave her to watch over things while I am gone. 

Upper, facing, is "Rusty Refrigerator." Lower, "Into the Sunset." 

"On the Way to Warwick." 

Sonoita Hills, old and new

 The original Sonoita Hills painting

The new Sonoita Hills painting

oil on canvas, 10x30

Please email me for price and shipping/delivery info. 

The painting is currently on display in "Rough at Hand" at the Wallkill River School gallery

This is another of the paintings that I repainted with the palette knife. I used the original painting - which I loved - as a guide for a new approach, a thicker impasto, with more color and more light and more surface. 

I'm really happy with this one! It is like seeing an old friend in new clothes. It makes you re-examine the bones and see the spirit and the beauty again. 

Max

Max

Oil on canvas, 12x12

Commission

One of the many things falling between the cracks here with work and painting is marketing! Eek!

"Rough at Hand," my show at the Wallkill River School Gallery, is OPEN! It is up for the month of February, and there is a reception on Saturday, from 5-7 p.m.

I had a once-in-a lifetime experience as I hung the show last Saturday. I'd just gotten it all up, and made a price list. I was sitting down contemplating, when in walked two people who had bought paintings from me last year. They love my work - and between them, Saturday, they bought five paintings. When they asked if they could take them, I said sure!

I had extras with me, and so I rehung, repriced - and thanked my lucky stars not only for the money that those two were willing to part with, but also, and even more, for the fact that they loved my work. Honestly, there is something so moving about that, so sustaining, so life-affirming, that it makes my heart beat fast now, just thinking about it.

Please come to the opening! I am just as excited as I could be about my new work, and it is more precious than ever to me, as my time to paint is so scarce these days.

The Wallkill River School Gallery is at 232 Ward St. (Route 17K) in Montgomery, NY. The website is wallkillriverschool.com.

For those of you in Connecticut and Rhode Island, I will be having a show in March at the Lighthouse Gallery in Groton, with the amazing Laura Maiolo. More on that as it draws closer.

For those of you in NY, see you Saturday!

Mesa

Mesa

10x30, oil on canvas

Please contact me for price and shipping/delivery information

Not so long ago, I was spreading paint sort of thinly on canvases. When I drove to Arizona, that's how I often painted. It was on that trip that I began using a LOT of paint, but many of the paintings from that trip have thin paint with flat surfaces.

As an experiment, I took this painting and, using the thin paint as a guide, repainted it. I slathered the paint on. I piled it up, and spread it thickly, and have ended up with a painting that I absolutely adore.

I should have taken a "before" photo. I have already done this to one other painting - without thinking of the "before" photo. But if I do it again, I promise I will take one.

Sometimes, with a feeling approaching despair, I look back at the ever-increasing span of "yesterday," and feel that I've wasted a whole lot of time and energy on ideas and pursuits that will never matter to me.

Doing something like this, though, makes me reconsider.

Yowza Cowza

Yowza Cowza

Oil on gessoboard panel, 8x8, $125 framed
sold

My life gets too complicated.

Well, that's not quite true.

I complicate my life, and I do it without knowing I am, and I am so, so good at it.

Really, in most of my life, I simply need to get from point A to point B, and that's it. No one cares if I do it in an inventive way, no one cares if I do it better than anyone else. No one cares if I do it creatively, or with great passion, or great energy. Get there. That's it. Get back.

If I can keep from complicating certain things (read: job), I can direct the creativity and the passion, the inspiration and the energy to my painting, where it belongs. I can direct the love to my family, and my dogs and cats, and my friends, where it belongs.

These cows don't complicate things for themselves. I can learn from them. I must.

Lavender Fields

Lavender Fields

Oil on canvas, 12x12, $100
sold

A year or so ago, I bought a painting by Patrice Lynne Young, a Georgia artist whose work I love. It was a painting of lavender fields rolling off to mountains in the background. I loved the painting and still do, and I look at it every day and appreciate it.

A year ago, in my show at the Wallkill River School, Shawn Dell Joyce and I demonstrated our painting techniques. I demonstrated palette-knife painting, using Patrice's painting for inspiration.

The painting here is the painting I started during that demo.

I began it and then invited people watching to participate, and lo and behold, they did! They all had fun, and for the most part, made marks that made sense in terms of the painting. A couple really didn't, and so I never finished the painting, never knew what to do with it.

But it has intrigued me for a year, and I have looked at it for a year, and so, one day last week, I pulled it out and went to town.

I guess it's fair to say that this is my painting - but it is my painting based on a painting by an artist whose work I love, and a painting informed and helped along by friends and strangers. And so, it is very much like life.

My show this year at the Wallkill River School - titled Rough at Hand, from a poem by Robert Hegge - is Saturday, Feb. 5 (not the 12th, as I had originally thought). Please save the date, and please come to the opening from 5-7 p.m. I will have new work, small work, big work, and exciting work! I think you will love seeing it in person, so please come, say hi, and let me thank you in person for your support.

Rough at Hand

Love is like a landscape which doth stand,

Smooth at a distance, rough at hand...

- Robert Hegge