Doors and windows

I have been in the same house for two decades and though I have changed a lot, the view has stayed the same. I sent thank you gifts out today to those who have helped me open windows and find doors in the job market. Palmer Trinity School in Miami has hired me. It's time for me to move on.
Yesterday I helped my friend Rosemary move to Massachussets. Behind each door in her building are fabulous creative individuals and spaces. It was both exciting and scary, though surreal and strengthening as well! She is such a dear friend and I hold her as an example of how to make change with grace. (It also helps to have two football players along to lug the big stuff).

Just another nest with wings

Flying about the galaxy... with everything including the kitchen window! There is a map of New York for grounding... are you on the move? Sometimes, you just got to pick up and go.
paper with mixed media, 6 x 10 inches.

Easter greetings

It's a time for new beginings... out with the old and make space for the new! I've taken a leap of faith, and hope my bad habits, memories, and lessons have served their purpose. It's time for promises to come true... for hard work to pay off, for taking a slight risk, for reaching higher, and for acting on dreams. (So many people believe in me, I should be a lot less timid than I feel.)


4.75 X 6.25 IN. Collage and paint on wood panel

Wanted for maplebrook show

Art buyers and art lovers...and all Kentucky Derby fans.
May 7th, 4:30-8pm

The body language in art

It's a narrow and literate society we paint for if we have to have them read text to get the concept. I'm tired of having to explain or write statements so others can interpret my visual art. Do they teach writing to artists in school now? There is just no words at hand right now to "explain" this piece.


9.5 x 6 inches panel of wood with paint and collage.

White rose and skeleton

Smell the roses...
4.5 x 6 inches

Comparing eyebrows and lowbrows

If you are wondering what he is looking at you will have to go see the art hanging at the RhineCliff Hotel on the Hudson River, right by the train tracks.


Rhinecliff hotel was quiet a hopping place with an English menu, live music and a fabulous sunset porch.
I am hanging with artist friends Val Valenti, Pam White, Joan Levitt and Patricia Decker...
Show is up till June!

Site to behold includes skeleton holding house

Spring cleaning... clearing closets for tag sales, and halls for pre-painting, even the curtains will come down for washing.
This little painting is a still life in what should have been monochrome, but for me became a range of secondary colors.

about 6 x 4 inches...wood panel and acrylic with headline from Los Angeles Times newspaper.

Hanging artist hopes not to shoot self in foot

wrapping, labeling and such and such... I have works needing to be documented, labeled, and cushioned, going out to 4 area group shows- an ice cream painting to the Noble Horizons show of 14th colony artists will be opening May 6, and three nest house paintings to Maplebrook's show of "local colors, local flavors" which will open May 7th. The Barrett house in Poughkeepsie is hosting an auction fundraiser at Locust grove and the catalogue needs an image yesterday...and
Opening this Friday at the Rhinecliff Hotel my work will be in the dining room. If I gather enough friends who want to stay out late we can have the artist special- a three course fixed price meal for two for $28.99! Actually I see I only need one other friend for that (haha).

Meanwhile I have an interview at an exciting middle and high school next Tuesday and need to prepare a lesson plan and gather all my loose ends, paperwork, thoughts and questions. I could get just wrapped up enough in the details here to forget to do that.

Under her spell

Adjusted new proportions to an old painting. I still want to call this "Caress" and seem justified by the painterly hand which, with the alterations, seems more gestural now anyway. I tightened up the skeletal waist and shortened the musical neck, which had the effect of adding more body to the guitar.
What a pair! I think they could dance all night.

"The body was never a free gift,

it gives temporary shelter to our aspirations on a finite lease"- Benjamin Rifkin, in his Human Anatomy (from the Renaissance to the Digital Age).
And he goes on, in his introduction, to say, "With kindred presumptions of benefice, the doctor studies the body to improve its fate; the artist to improve its spirit."

These are reflections of the past and thoughts on the future.
mixed media on wood panel, 5.25 x 7.25 inches

Spring fever

While I was trying to get yard work done, she was swinging from the trees and blowing in the wind!
I think it got up to 66 degrees today!
Lovely painting
wood, 6 x 4 inches

Caress

Listening to music transports even the driest of personalities. Seeing this on the computer screen has me a little baffled over my proportions...Is the guitar neck really that long?
I may have to redo parts of it... later tomorrow.


I am off today to the Berkshire Museum and a special event, a workshop hosted by the Berkshire Taconic Foundation. I hope to learn more ways to run nonprofit arts events in the rural region. There may be a trick in how to sustain dreams through income generation and inspiring personal participation.

Tomorrow (in another attempt to fund dreams), I will be selling, for cheap, some art books and kiddie books at tag sale on Caulkinstown road in Sharon... let me know if you are interested in details!

Putting it all on the table and hoping

for the conversation to bring insight, clarity, and even permission to keep the treasures I hold dear.
Skeletan number 8 and the series continues. This painting is a reminder that home is where the heart is.
4.25 x 6 inches.

Spring is pushing into my bones

After the latest light snowfall, I raked the flower beds and received infinite feelings of gratitude for the natural world. There is a glorious feeling when heavy wet leaves are scraped away and uncover fresh sprouts shooting up, fragile and strong, against all odds. My model and I cavorted in glee. I am hoping my closely cropped painting still carries a remnant of the idea in spite of the abstraction.
SOLD

Fun with bad hair and good kids...

Inspired by myths, Medusa and the Mill Street Loft... Yesterday was a blast. I can't show all the results... you had to be there. It's days like these that make being a teaching artist the best of all worlds.

Death of a Saturn dream

Tax time forces me to add, and there go the reams of numbers which continuously fly about without gravity... I can add it all up 5 different times and come up with 5 different sums. Bare bones and dreamy...painted with Mars black. Is there no hope?

That could be tomorrow's painting!

Tinted Blue

And stripped bare... Playing with space. I
like the idea of a stripped bare-bones person drinking from an empty glass... and then the woods are stripped bare, and snow blankets the earth. But the headlines, the found text, advertise a "hole heart". There is space here. Space in the heart, in the glass, in the woods.
Blue

Crystal and Bone Containers

Drinking from an empty wine glass on this April Fool's snow covered day, I paint her bare bones, the smudged crystal glass, wet snow, a hint of heart, and some words from the newspaper.

This is a recipe for a Bare Bones Martini:

1.5oz Crystal Head Vodka (of course, the kind that comes in the clear skull shaped bottle)

0.5 oz pomegranate juice

0.5 agave nectar

0.5 oz fresh lemon juice

Method:

Served up

Garnish:

Orange peel slice…rub around rim and drop on top.

Probably good to the last drop, and warming to the hole in your heart!

Acrylic and found text on wood panel. 6.25 x 4.5 inches.

Headlines change the story

I just had to ad something... draw the focus away from the grinning skull.