My Studio

My inspiration/painting- mind- block wall to help me in those bad moments. I just cleaned my studio so it's in pretty good shape, hence the statues in a nice little row. My studio is really small, but I have a few ideas to remedy that, i.e. new attic room above the garage....can you even do that?

Grandma (elderly muse)

Grandma Roselle is the family muse. The first painting was a sitting my sister (also a painter) and I set up 2 summers ago thinking it might be our last to capture our 95 year old grandma. She is still going strong as you can see by her pushing my husband around in her wheelchair last week on Catalina island. She was complaining that she has been pushed around too much on this latest vacation and she needs exercise. Jason quickly and generously offered to sit down so she could push him. We stopped her after 30 minutes, she wanted to keep going. The other portrait was done a few months ago, again with my sister. Grandma is the best model, she needs no breaks, tells us funny stories about her wedding night and will sit all day. We just had to "coke" her up every hour so she wouldn't fall asleep. I really like this small portrait of her, I think it really captures her look. She always has this wonderfully thoughtful, sort of sad look when we paint her.

PS....She hates that we paint her without her wig. Is it creepy to have half a dozen paintings in my house of Grandma?

My Muses 1, 2, 3

My Muses 1, 2, 3 . Okay sometimes they are the anti-muses, but most of the time my "material" comes from the challenges and rewards of taking care of these beauties. My newest idea is working up a "portrait" of my girls for a show I would like to enter in October. I have never done a portrait of them (ok, other than drawing them during church services if bored) and am a little apprehensive but excited.

So I dressed them up in costume. They liked it just a little. And took a zillion photographs to work from.The drawing is not quite right, but I am only about 2 hours into it and need to fix faces. It is close. This is a preliminary drawing but I can visualize what I want it to be painted like. Sort of timeless and muted. Maybe I will just force myself into a very limited pallette, like 3 colors. These are some of the photographs I am working from and then I will use their live little bodies when I need them. Naomi (muse #2) was totally in her element because I instructed no smiling and strange poses please. There are some great photos on the roll. After I was done, they wanted to do their own poses for a photo shoot. Bentley's (muse #1) were sweet little blown kisses and Naomi's were crazy, quirky troll poses. I was laughing a lot. 

Self Portrait

My latest self portrait. It was shown in the Springville Salon 2008, Utah. A lot of my paintings are a process of expressing my frustrations. This one, in particular I almost titled "Inspiration", but settled on "Through the Lens: a self portrait". I remember thinking about how many expectations I feel are on me as a mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend. Possibly self-imposed. But a hard juggling act anyway. A newspaper article about a Frida Kahlo show that came through Utah is partially in the background and a postcard of one of my favorite artists I found when I was living in Iowa, MK Misol- a painting of a spanish dancer. A homage to women that have inspired me creatively. I love how personal and raw Kahlo's paintings are. And Misol's paintings seem so immediate and spontaneous. This painting is large for me at 24 x 36" and was a nice one to live with for a while. I think I won't sell this one just yet, after the show I will bring it home and hang it in a dark hallway....? I think it looks like me, hard to tell.

First Blog Ever

I decided to start a forum for displaying my art and my projects. I have to swallow a little pride because I have been the anti-blogger in a sea of serious hackers and bloggers...you know who you are. I am hoping that by putting my ideas from brain to "paper" I can refine my more abstract concepts into actual usable ideas for paintings. I also would love your feedback, you can hit me hard, I like a good critique (which means a bad critique). Here we go!