I'm BACK!

I haven't posted anything in so long I forgot how to get back into my blog! I have been creating art but got really lazy and really busy with getting on with life. More to come!

Fundraiser Sally

Another fundraiser for Animal Compassion Network was held in November and I took a picture of my last Golden and put her in a mountain meadow looking like she's waiting for something to be thrown or fed to her! She was all Golden Retriever but had a slight underbite which I never noticed until her first puppy visit with the vet. She was a real sweetheart... 12"x12" acrylic on canvas museum profile edges.

Ayla and Aiden

This is the latest commission that I finished recently. This is a brother and sister, Ayla and Aiden, 22x28 acylic on canvas. I combined two separate photos and invented the background. The original pictures were taken in an outdoor setting but I wanted to add a bit of whimsy. To me it feels a little bit like they are in a fairy tale or at a garden party where there are either lights or fireflies in the trees. I'm especially fond of Ayla's suspicious look and the delicateness of her dress and Aiden's shirt. The scripture reference on the back is Luke 18:16.

This is one of my older paintings. It hangs in my mother's house and is a portrait of where I grew up and love dearly. I have this picture because I was there recently for my Mama's funeral. She turned 94 in February and succumbed to the final stages of senile dementia. I don't remember the exact size of this but it is big.

Carissa and the Butterfly

This is the latest off the easel. 18x24 acrylic on canvas of my great niece Carissa who lives in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. I went to Canada this past summer to visit and Carissa very graciously shared her bedroom with me and gave me many wonderful gifts of rocks and coins and handwritten notes. Her Mom (who is a wonderful photographer) caught this shot of Carissa as she came in from the pool to show off the butterfly she just found. I think one day she'll be a scientist of some sort because she loves insects, rocks and animals. Or maybe we all love that kind of stuff at her age!

By the way this is her Christmas present! Shhhh!

The verse on the back is Psalm 65:8

Chewy

Here's my latest painting. It's Chewy, one of my nephew's cats. 12" x 12" acrylic on canvas. It's a donation to an auction to raise funds for caring for animals. I tried to be a little looser on this one too and really had fun with the eyes and the fur. I think I used too much Payne's Gray but overall I'm pretty happy. I hope it raises lots of money for the organization!

Here's my latest. This is a commission for the lovely Miss Marilyn mentioned in a previous post. These are five of her Cocker Spaniels, some of whom have since passed on, done from a photograph she took. She makes the hats and paints the sunglasses to match and used to sell them on the beach in California and Myrtle Beach, SC. They weren't originally on a beach so I made up the background to go with the history. Their name tags are in pink or blue for a girl or boy and the names are on the tags. I had a lot of fun doing this one. If I remember correctly the size is 40" X 30" . Acrylic on canvas.

Here's my latest painting and I absolutely ADORE it! This young man is currently deployed in Iraq and his Mom misses him terribly. His Aunt (Mom's sister) commissioned me to do this so that she can feel close to him from afar. He has such a wonderful face to paint and the medals, flag and uniform were a challenge to paint. The face is the most wonderful part though and I thoroughly enjoyed painting him. I chose Ephesians 6:14-17 for the Bible reference. Our soldiers that protect us and our precious freedom need the very best of protection.

Eric Randall Mahaffey

18X24 Acrylic on canvas

Otis's Cabin

Here's the latest to come off the easel. This is a commission for a lady from Georgia whose late husband built this cabin in Bryson City, NC and only got to enjoy it for a short while before he passed away. It's a beautiful peaceful setting with a raucous stream that runs behind it backed up to a beautiful mountainside. She is not able to get to the cabin as often as she likes and this is going to hang in her home in Georgia to remind her of this lovely peaceful place. The Bible reference on the back is Isaiah 32:18. Now go look it up and read your Bible!

Acrylic on canvas. 24 x 30

What a long strange trip it's been.....

So many emotions I've traveled through this year. The first month was raw open wound screaming in agony if you tried to touch it, to cope with it, to understand it.

Then came the sensation of floating in a raging ocean or river with no power over your destination, just go with the flow.

Then came the rock tumbler that is used to polish the rouch edges off of rocks to make the smooth surface so desirable for jewery makers. Just tumbling through life and grabbing for a bit of love and sanity offerred by those who will. Perhaps some laughter which is the greatest healer for me.

I've worked on a few things which I'm at varying stages of progression. This is Adam after he takes a bite of the apple and is on the verge of understanding the horrors of sins released onto mankind. His expression is subtle but, you get the idea that he knows something is

cosmicly different.

Noah playing baseball and getting his serious looks down

pat!

Kira playing on the beach.

Amanda

This is the Christmas gift for my sister's youngest daughter, my niece, Amanda. She is a grammar school art teacher so I invented a gallery scene behind her and put her sitting at a desk surrounded by her students' work. Her hands were difficult to work on as I had no references to work from and they are somewhat deformed by rheumatoid arthritis which she was stricken with at the tender age of 2. Her face is so indicative of the wit and willingness to use it that she possesses in abundance.

I had forgotten to mention that I have begun to add scriptural references on the backs of the paintings that are relevant to the subject or the reason for the gift of the painting. This one has Proverbs 22:6 and Psalm 127:3. The wedding gift to Kara has Genesis 2:24. I like to think that my paintings might make people read the Bible.

Acrylic on canvas 24x30

Terrible loss.

I lost my best friend, my husband a week ago to liver disease. I'm so lost wthout him that I can't think straight. Here we are in happier, healthier days.

Bailey and Sam

This is a commission that I recently finished as a Christmas gift for the owners of these two dogs. This painting is going to Salt Lake City, Utah. 16x20 acrylic on canvas.

My sweet Harry died today. After 11 & 1/2 safe and happy years he somehow ingested antifreeze and despite heroic efforts to save him, we had to let him go. This painting will no longer be for sale.

Wow! A lot's happened since I last showed you what I was working on. I finally finished it. Here's what it looked like (yes, I said looked like)

These are the pictures I was working from and merging together.

As it turns out, the person commissioning the work had been misinformed about which child was the cousin and was to be left out, and which was the brother in the family to be left in and I had to do some fast and heavy editing at the last minute. But I managed to do it freehand with just a brush! I usually have to do a drawing first but surprised myself and here is the finished product which is now on its way to meet the family. (There's more to the story but for the sake of brevity that's the gist of it)

This is what I've been working on for a while. This is a commissioned portrait of a family with a bittersweet story. The two primary pictures I am working from were taken in 1967. One is of the mom and dad in front of the "57 Chevy. He's in uniform because he is about to ship off to Viet Nam. The other is of mom with all of the kids you see here plus a cousin that is not in this painting. I merged the two pictures and have used some school pictures for some of the children.
This family's pictures were destroyed in a fire 3 months before the father was killed in a construction accident after coming back from Viet Nam. The eldest son, on the right, died in his 20s of cancer. The painting is a gift for the son to the immediate right of the father. I love the period in time thats captured here and it will be the only picture wth all of them together. The lady that comissioned this is giving the painting to the boy that is between his father and brother who have passed away for a Christmas gift. She hopes it will bring back some of the closeness the family once had. I'll keep you updated as I go.

These are a series I did from a few pictures I shot one morning when the sun was coming in my kitchen window and hitting this wild apple that my husband had picked while working out in the country. We used to have a scrawny apple tree that produced apples like this in our back yard and our neighbor called them "horse apples" because that was all they were good for-feeding to the horses. (I had heard that this was also what you called horse poop but who am I to say?)

Anyway, I thought the sunlight was so beautiful and fleeting, I added a few zinnias from the garden and changed the angles as the sun was going in and out of clouds and this is the result. I hope you like them!

Acrylic on museum profile canvas which means that they don't have to be framed because the edges are deep and finished (see picture) and they are 12 x 12.

Kara at Bodega Bay

This is my latest portrait. It's going to be a wedding gift for a couple that lives in New York state. Kara and I worked together for about a year and I just love her. I know she is going to be half of a very happy marriage and this portrait seems to have her looking off into the future and as a friend put it "looking very contented".

Thanks to some brilliant suggestions from my friends at Wet Canvas, I went back into this and tweaked some areas. The face was not showing enough contrast to differentiate it from the background and the rocks were lacking a little definition. See what you think.

Sketches

I thought I would share some of my sketches from a portrait drawing class I took a while back at ABTech. I'm going to be starting another class next week on painting. I hope I get better! I'm at a mental road block right now with colors so I'm hoping to get some inspiration and direction.

Sanctuary of Stuff

We've added a new location for displaying the lamps and my paintings. It's Sanctuary of Stuff in north Asheville just off Merrimon Ave. in Woodfin. After 4 months at Biltmore Emporium we've had no sales. Now it could be that people just don't like our stuff but I've had several people tell me that they just couldn't stand the heat because the place doesn't have air conditioning. We rented the space in the spring when it was still cool and the thought just didn't occur to us that this would be the case. Parking is a little awkward there too and they still have a fair amount of empty booths. I think the place still has great possibilities but just not for us.
S.O.S on the other hand has AC, YAY!!!!, ample parking, lots of traffic already as it's been in business for a while, and it's full of wonderful vendors with lots of stuff to look at and buy. Check out their website at http://www.sactuaryofstuff.com/