Blue Horse

Today is my panic day. It happens two days before EVERY SINGLE TRIP. I mean it… two days before I leave the house my brain and body both kind of sieze up. Like I’m “shorting out.” And consequently, I get almost nothing accomplished on this day.

So, I’m writing a blog post. Ha ha. The above Blue Horse is a painting I’m bringing to Art & Soul next week… I get to stay with the fabulous Judy Wise… Steve is meeting me in Seattle later in the trip for a rare vacation alone together… plans for Wes are being made (and stressing me out)… the house, of course, is a total disaster… the weather is beautiful here in Colorado… kids are playing in the school playground just around the corner… trucks are driving by… I have an hour of sewing to complete and a cross-country race to leave for in a few minutes. The cat is sleeping. All the lights in the house are on and it’s the middle of the day. (AAAAHHHHHHHH!!)

Heads

These little clay heads are part of a series I worked on in 2003 (see more here). I loved making them, and I love how they turned out… but they weren’t huge sellers, unfortunately. I think it took a special person to like half-naked little British men!

I pulled them out because someone e-mailed me about them… don’t you love the internet?

Craft For China

I’ve donated a few things to Craft For China, who is raising money for Love Without Boundaries, which is an organization dedicated to helping orphaned children of China. You can find some journals, a purse and a painting here plus some other cool stuff! Everything raised will be donated to this charity!

Coloring Book: 2

Still slowly plugging away. Here is a first attempt at the cover. I will design a few more before it’s all over, then decide. Anyway, it was fun to do… reminded me of my old magazine days (the good parts). (I was art director there in the late 90s.)

We realized today that our master bathroom is full of MOLD. Ugh! Steve and I have been sick all summer with headaches, breathing issues, runny noses… I thought it was just a bad allergy year but it turns out it’s MOLD! So, my friends, you can go away from this post grateful (at least) that you don’t have to deal with THAT all day tomorrow…

Have a great weekend!

You know you’re a bad housekeeper…

… when you go to sweep and the broom has a spiderweb attached to it!

Just sayin.

Art & Soul Plug

++++ WE INTERRUPT THIS BLOG FOR AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT ++++

Art & Soul Portland starts two weeks from today! This is my second time teaching at this retreat. Last year I had so much fun, especially with the family portrait class.

I’m teaching three classes this year, and there are a few spots left in the first two classes, and ONE spot left in Drawing Blast:

Wednesday, Oct. 3, 9-4pm, Family Fun

Thursday, Oct. 4, 9-4pm, Voice Lessons

Friday Evening, Oct. 5, 6:30-9:30pm, Drawing Blast

Although I hope to teach any or all of these classes sometime in the future, at this point the only one I will be teaching in 2008 is Drawing Blast… so come join us if you have a little niggling to do so!

Toothfairy Pillows Have Arrived

Sandra Wright of “I’m Still Me” designed this little pillow to sell to children’s boutiques, catalogs, etc. So far she’s sold over 300 pillows!

I have 15 of them here and I’ve listed them on etsy.

Have finally settled down to paint today after a couple of weird weeks in that department… gee whiz.

Girls

I’ve been working on commissions the past few weeks… here is a detail of a painting recently completed of a BOY!

People ask me all the time why I don’t do boys. I think they often assume I am the mother of girls and so like girls better.

But my usual answer is this: I’m not a boy. My Girls series is not about my experiences of motherhood but of childhood. I’m the oldest of two girls but I spent a lot of time alone growing up. I spent a lot of time sitting on rocks thinking or playing with our assortment of small animals (hampsters, turtles, kittens).

There is a sweetness, innocence and confidence that young girls have that I’m trying to remember, capture, bring back. Reimagine. Just think about a 3-year-old girl dancing unself-consciously in the living room. She is not shy. She is beautiful and graceful and she looks right at you. See me? Aren’t I fabulous? And of course she is.

I read Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy while in India. It’s a wonderful novel; highly recommended! Anyway, for some reason this paragraph spoke to me and I photocopied the page to share with you all. However, it got buried in my horribly messy studio and so it’s been a few months… it’s not necessarily how I feel today but here it is in any case!

[Jagat Ram’s] childhood hell in a village, his brutal adolescence in a factory, and the vicious world of competitors and middlemen, povery and dirt in which he now found himself, had served to turn him into something of a philosopher. One did not argue with elephants in a jungle when they were on the rampage, one did not argue with the traffic in Chowk as it hurtled past in murderous confusion. One got out of the way and got one’s family out of the way. If possible, one retained what dignity one could.”