Blackbird

I've had an exciting weekend of art shows and now it's time to start planning the next round of fun - a road trip to Vegas and re-instituting the Christmas Day Brunch. If you're reading this, and in town, you are invited to our December 25th White Elephant Brunch for singles, families, Jews, Christians, Pagans, and non-denominational Christmas loving souls (we will not toss you if you are a hater, though we don't want to hear it). Please come and celebrate with a competitive game of gift steal, hot beverages, eating and possibly even some singing. Email for details.

Cheers!

Bird Patterns

I've been fooling around with some new techniques while creating work for my December shows. This is an image transfer over encaustic medium and decorative burlap. City Art Gallery will be having the reception on December 4th followed by a one day Craft Sale on Saturday, the 5th from 12 - 6 pm. Look for Trish Tunney, who will be there, taking Green Screen Holiday Portraits in her sidewalk studio in front of City Art Gallery. Tedda Hughes will also be having a reception on Saturday, the 5th. Come on out for some arty fun next weekend!

Poured Pear

I tried a new technique last week - pouring the wax over a drawing. It didn't work, so I fooled around some more with an awl and some oil pigments and came up with this little guy. I'm now on to something completely different, but I will have to get back to making more like this one.

Exhale and Release

This is one of the pieces I made before Open Studios. It's hard to believe it's already November and Open Studios was almost a month ago. The best thing about this time of year, is the deep, rich light, and with this weather, it's been great to be in the studio. This Friday City Art Gallery is having an opening reception and both Trish and I are in the show - though you won't see this piece, November is all about mod animals for me.

Gingko ii 20" x 20"

Took advantage of the overcast sky to capture some of my new work. I did this series in 2007 and then re-did it again this summer. I really like the way they turned out.

Lucky

I made this picture earlier this summer but never got around to taking the photograph. Then we went to Wisconsin, and on our road trip, and before I realized it, months had gone by without posting to this blog. But I am still happily painting, I've just gotten a little lazy about posting. I'm getting ready for Open Studios which means new work and another year of transforming my house into a gallery. This year Hilary and I are showing together. Stay tuned for invitation.

Gold Spangled Appenzeller Spitzhauben

For Tedda.

Finches

We put a bird feeder in our back yard and we are now going through five pounds of sunflower chips every few days. This spring the finches had bunch of chicks and Trish and I call all the babies "peep." We've tried naming them but they flit around much too fast and we have not yet noticed their individuality. The boys are sometimes more or less red and some birds are fluffier than others, but I think that's because they are still very young and downy. This painting is a little nod to the finches and their flitting. I do wonder where they sleep and how long they live and where they go to die.

Reject

I meant to post this guy next to it's pal, the two rejects :-). Thanks for all your encouragement, I'm over it now. It also helped to listen to this talk by Elizabeth Gilbert- I wasn't crazy about the book, but now I'm a fan.

Warm April

I did a series of abstract paintings after my roosters were rejected from a fund raising art auction-actually two auctions. It was suggested to me by a curating intern that perhaps the roosters could go on the "non art" table. I was pretty distraught. So I worked on some things that made me feel better, but one could have a pretty lively discussion about what constitutes art.

Angel Chick

I see that this image is out of focus. I uploaded it a couple of weeks ago and it must have been late at night...I've decided to post it anyway, blurry and imperfect, like me. Or certainly my eyes. Speaking of imperfect, my computer is dying. And for those of you who know I've vowed not to buy anything new this year, you know I am facing a serious dilemma. Oh my goodness, dilemma solved! I think that extended warranty I bought is not up until 2010! What kind of moment of brilliance possessed me to buy a three year extended warranty?

Go-Go (Clean Version)

When I was a teenager my Mom had a pair of white patent leather platform go-go boots, and a red polyester outfit consisting of hot pants and a floor length jacket. The jacket had one button below the chest and was cut so it flowed open, revealing the sexy hot pants. I borrowed the outfit to go a wedding with my boyfriend. I was 13. All I can think of is what must his family have thought when they saw me arrive in that hoochy outfit.

Stripes

I am working on a new series of abstracts and I'm pretty excited about how they are turning out... this is not one of them. This is the third in the series, "circles, stripes, and patterns".
On another note, if you want to hear about the adventures of the 7th Child of the 7th Child, I've decided its time to make the blog public. One good sleuth found it on her own after hearing me talk about it. The blog has been my way of processing my Mom's death; it is not for the faint of heart.

Patterns

This is the second in the series made with found/recycled objects. It's also the last of the wood that was left over from Trish and her Dad's fence building project last year. On another note, did you see the First Lady in England meeting the Queen? Yes, I know Barack was there too, but Michelle Obama is my hero. She's incredibly cool.

Circles for the Green Show

I did this picture on a piece of scrap redwood and used buttons and patterns I collected over the years. I think of these as offering me a sense of play that I might not normally be able to engage in. It's funny how art is really all about play for me, yet I can so easily attach "shoulds" and "musts" and deadlines, and self ascribed seriousness to creating art. This is a playful piece and it reminds me to make more of them.

Blowfish Chicken

I learned about labels last week. I've been blogging for over two years and haven't really paid attention to the world of blogging or what bloggers hope to achieve, or any of the ways to drive traffic to one's blog. I do notice that when I google something, I frequently land on someone's blog so it must be working for them. Me, I'm pretty content to post a painting for my pals and have that be that. But Isabelle is another story. Isabelle is a blog I've started and she's hoping to get some serious readership. For now, it's private, but stay tuned for "Stories From the Life of the 7th Child of the 7th Child."

Greta Garbo 24" x 36"

This guy is much larger than the usual square chicken portraits I paint. I first did the background last year and was never quite satisfied with the painting. Now I know it was just waiting around for the rooster, which is actually called a Phoenix. These birds are bread for the length of their tale feathers, the longer the better.

Peek

Saturday night Tedda Hughes Boutique and Gallery will be having it's Grand Opening party. Both Trish and I have work up so come on down and have a glass of wine and enjoy a sense of prosperity and possibility with the artists!

Mr. T

Tonight I spent time on the computer cropping, editing, and saving the images of my paintings. Twice a year I send off slides made from digital images to Visual Aid in exchange for vouchers to buy art supplies. It is also just good practice to have my images sorted by large and small (for printing or for the web).

I've been feeling pretty confident about my software skills lately so I choose to open Adobe Photoshop Elements and do my editing with a more comprehensive tool. I happily busied myself editing image after image. When I went to upload an image to this blog, there were no pictures, only words describing the type of file. I decided to take a chance and try to upload anyway, but no luck.

I've made a decision not to take this as evidence that I should stick to what I know but rather turn to my in-house technical support to see if I, once again, did something to cause this blunder.

Leghorn or Jimmy Dean?

I just learned that daylight savings time happens this weekend. Now that is really good news, I always feel better when it stays light longer.

I seem to be coming out of the coma/shock/malaise of losing my mother. This week I managed to cook a chicken, roast broccoli, steam asparagus, cook brown rice, and stir fry some red chard. Between the light changing and my return to self care, I'm starting to feel like everything is going to be alright.

Dolly

Lately I've been having the experience of talking about something totally remote and later having a completely different person brings up the same subject. For instance, last week over brunch, my friends were telling me that people were squatting in foreclosed houses and turning them into "grow houses." Two days later I get a call from an old friend asking if I could write a letter on behalf of his son who was arrested in a grow house.

Another example of this phenomenon is that I was talking to my friend about how my mom called me Dolly and saying I missed hearing it. Later, another friend who was not privy to any of this, was in my studio and she said I should name the elephant Dolly.

I should probably buy a lotto ticket, but instead I'm just going to name the elephant Dolly.

Demi Demure

Everyone seems to be sick. Yep, it's the winter of colds that never go away, or repeat themselves every other week. I've been feeling pretty superior about my excellent health. And I'm not saying that my attitude of health superiority has resulted in some karmic clobbering, but you won't hear me saying I have escaped the year of the dreaded cold. It's here and I am saying "uncle" with my deeply scratchy voice.

Moo 10" x 30"

Now I think this ol gal really looks like a cow.
Last week I went to a book signing event at A Different Light Bookstore. My pal Justin Early wrote a memoir about being a street kid in Seattle and was in San Francisco promoting his book. I showed up to the reading just in time to hear him read a section about his first meeting me at Walden House fifteen years ago when I worked there. Now that was a blast from the past. I think I should paint goldfish because my mind seems to be similar to one. I recognized none of the people that came up to me to say hello.

Moo Moo 10" x 30"

I finished the cows a couple of months ago but haven't had a chance to photograph them until recently. Cows are surprisingly challenging to render. This pair vacillated between looking like sheep and dogs. When I was in Florida in December I had a chance to pet some cows in a pasture adjacent to a medical building. They were very friendly. When I was a kid in Wisconsin, I rode my bike in the country to and from school and would moo at the cows, and they would pick their heads up and look at me every time...it was very satisfying.

Lil Cruella

I saw some encaustic paintings today by an artist who used loads of wax, and let the wax teeter precariously over the edges causing a very cool drippy effect. I had some practical concerns about shipping, packing, and moving such pieces but that does not come from the part of my brain that is an artist, but rather the part that hates to lose or break things. Normally I'm pretty Zen about paintings. I'll paint over one in a minute if I'm tired of looking at it. And encaustic paintings are very easily repaired if they do chip or crack. But losing my mom seems to have made me a little clingy, even to a disaster fantasy of a strangers art work being broken.

Hair

I tried to write a little in my last post but had inadvertently set my language to Hindi and all my text turned to unrecognizable words and letters. I managed to write the title in English by avoiding the space bar. I was certain I had a virus, rather than remembering that I had clicked "allow translations" in my settings. This is a lesson I seem to have to learn over and over...the first question I ask needs to be "what did I do?" rather than"what has been done to me?" I get to learn this frequently whenever I'm working on anything related to the computer or the internet.

ModCock