Studio Shorts
Courting the muse as a painter is an exhilarating sway of emotions, colors, and creativity. It feels like a delicate balance between anticipation and surrender. There is a palpable, even spiritual energy in the air, a connection to something beyond the physical realm.
For me, this is a lifestyle full of both frustration and elation, as inspiration ebbs and flows. With each encounter, the muse reveals new facets of my own desires, kindling a fire that eventually must have its way in the studio…
…or at the keyboard. Because I also paint with words. All of it, words and art, prose and paint, feels just like how I imagine a flamenco dance would feel - full of passion and vulnerability.
All I knew before beginning this piece was I had not done it quite this way before.
It needed to come out wild and free.
It wanted to be impetuous and beautiful.
She materialized exactly as I imagined she would. A gestural drawing, with strong lines and small imperfections that actually make her perfect. She flew out of my arms, hands and fingertips, onto the paper in moments, boldly and with courage, no erasing the history of any mark.
The intention was to distill a lifetime of noticing with more than a decade of art practice, into one manifestation of ease and grace and something of my own impetuousness.
It had to feel for sure like it might not work.
But then it did.
Her marks have been safeguarded. Next, she will be beautifully and simply framed. She will be available for someone to bring her home and be inspired every day by the ease and grace with which she simply IS.
Message me, if that someone is you.
She took less than twenty minutes from start to finish. She took great courage. She took my whole lifetime to execute. Someone will want everything she represents, and will be most willing to make that beautiful equal exchange of energy. I for sure won’t be discounting this piece.
The greater the ease with which an artist works, the better the energy in the finished piece. If you love art…really love it…you are looking for that fresh urgency. You love the immediacy of certain types of marks and paint strokes.
This is that. Oh, for sure.
Fresh From the Easel {...and headed to my second big juried art show!}
This painting began as pure inspiration, even before the leaves were fully out on the trees this past late-winter, in the form of the daily walks my husband and I take in the mornings, in a beautiful meadow.
As winter gave way to spring, and as spring matured into summer, I could not get enough of the lavish beauty of this place. It’s full of Queen Anne’s Lace, trumpet vine, passion flower, daisies, moon flowers, and berries. I had to paint it.
This beauty is a big 24x48” original, rendered in oil, on triple primed mdf board, which just happens to be my favorite surface upon which to use oil paints. The Preacher will be hand crafting a float frame for it. I have not titled it yet.
There are at least 4 open inquiries on it, so far. I’m willing to sell it, but I’m even more willing to bring it to my Artsclamation art show* this fall, where it will sell. I think this one is just about the prettiest thing I ever painted, so far.
And it’s okay to say so. How dare I offer anything to you, hoping that it be cherished by you, hoping that it adorn your personal space, if I do not feel absolutely over-the-moon about it?
I wouldn’t do it.
*This is a link to a promotional video from last year, 2022.
Contact me here, to open your own inquiry. (Just a fancy way of saying I tell you the price, you decide if you want it, and we work out shipping details. This one will have to be crated, and I do offer small discounts to help offset the cost of crate shipping.)