an arting life
Well, this was unexpected. Usually, we look out our hotel room and admire the astonishing landscape. One of the high points is the long building with the red roof, at the upper middle part of the photo. That’s the National Basilica of Mary, Queen of the Universe. (Regardless of your religious views – if any…
I stare at what’s left in our apartment and blink. I’m promising myself that we’ll never accumulate this much stuff, ever again. Not until we actually put down roots and stay in one place. (That may be New England, but – long-term – it may be England or Ireland.) This has been a very long…
I’ll be honest. There are times when we feel as if everything is “in flow,” and our radical move will be fine. We know it’s the right thing to do, even if the timing isn’t ideal. And even if we have misgivings about leaving so much that we love, in Florida. We’ve lived in New…
Preparing for our somewhat radical move back to New England, I’ve weeded-out 80% of my current wardrobe (and donated it to Goodwill). My system has been simple, if a bit ruthless: Without looking at my clothes, I made a list of all the items I could remember owning, here in Florida. And then I crossed…
This isn’t a pretty story, but it’s real. It’s typical of what’s happened here… and in many other parts of the U.S. In 2014, we moved from NH to Florida to be nearer to extended family and because we love Disney World. It wasn’t an easy move. It was risky, financially. My husband did not…
Like much of my artwork, this Huntsville painting has a story. It started with a wedding invitation. I hadn’t expected it, but I was flattered. I hadn’t seen the groom since he was a toddler, and I’d never met the bride. Though I’d never been to the area where the wedding would take place, I…
Today, the light is dismal. It’s grey, flat, and rainy. Even sitting next to the floor-to-ceiling window on the “sunny” side of our living room, everything looks pretty blah. To test a painting technique recommended by Peter Wileman (see review, below), I chose a photo I’d taken, earlier this summer. It’s lovely, and I may…
Last night’s sunset was one of those where I look at the sky and say, “Ooh, I must capture those colors!” And then, five minutes later, the colors were even better, and then better, and so on… for the next 20 minutes. The hues were constantly changing, and I was right there, with a paintbrush…
As I’ve been painting this week, I can see my sketches moving in two directions. The first is capturing the colors as a background for a later work. My current thoughts are to combine the New England landscape colors with a tropical element. I have a few ideas for this, but experimenting is ahead. This…
It’s been awhile since I posted my recent art. Oh, I’ve been creating art; I just haven’t had time to post it here. It’s been a busy six weeks+. I may talk about some of these works in more detail, later. For now, this is a catch-up post. A long one. I completely revised the…
Yaayyy! I’ve completed White Mountains painting. (If your monitor is like mine, the actual painting is about 30% darker than this photo appears. It’s not quite so “New England quaint” as this picture may look.) I started this painting of the New Hampshire landscape – focusing on a Whitefield, NH, hotel – in February 2010….
Last summer, I suddenly had a clear vision of a painting that I knew I was supposed to create for an online friend in Colorado. The vision was partly realistic and partly a fantasy mix. (Now and then, I get an idea for art that seems — from the start — to be intended for…