As of this week our immediate family is huddled up at home following the government order to "shelter in place." I started working from home on Monday, the kids' last day of school was Wednesday, and Paul started working from home today. Who knows how long this will last, but it seems like a small price to pay to stop the spread of COVID-19. Isabelle and I decided to entertain ourselves by doing a daily art project, recorded for your viewing pleasure. These are unscripted and unedited, but hopefully you'll find them entertaining. We are trying to keep them around 30 minutes, although we are filming real time so if we really get into a project it may go longer. Our current plan is to produce a video every weekday. We still have school and work responsibilities, so we'll see how well we're able to stick to our schedule. We'd love your input on this video series! If you like what you see, let us know. If you have suggestions, let us know. If you have a fantastic idea of what to call this video series, let us know. And we'd love for you to share your projects with us! You can post pictures of your work in the comments here, or tag us when you post to social media. Here we go! This first video is a quick introduction, and includes information about the basic supplies you'll need to play along at home.
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I finished up a large piece in May, and thought I'd try my hand at producing video of the process. The editing is rough in spots, but I'm choosing progress over perfection. Would love to hear your feedback or questions! Thanks for watching!! People often ask me how I learned to paint and how I come up with ideas. I experiment and practice as much as possible, and I regularly take classes to expand my knowledge and push out of my comfort zone. I'm currently enrolled in an online class called "Abstract Mojo" taught by Tracy Verdugo. Tracy is an Australian artist I've followed for a while, and I love her use of color and symbolism. What I enjoy most about the process is taking the new knowledge and figuring out how it fits in with my unique style. I generally complete the lessons more than once, following the directions the first time through and then using the lesson as a jumping off point to translate the techniques into my voice. If you're interested in flexing your art muscle (and there are so many reasons you should!), I highly recommend taking a class. Whether you need the structure of an in-person class or prefer the flexibility of learning online, the point is that the more you learn and do, the more natural making art will feel. Even if you don't like the finished piece, the benefit of making art is in the process. I've recently read several scientific studies that suggest making art, even if you're not good at it, is really beneficial for brain function and mental health. And remember, most artists didn't wake up one morning and paint a masterpiece. There is a tremendous amount of study and practice behind most great artists. What they put out into the world is the result of years and years of work. I know it's challenging, but try not to get discouraged if your initial attempts don't live up to your expectations. Keep at it, do the work, and I promise you'll eventually find your groove. The images below are from a series of exercises over the first two weeks of Tracy's class. I hope they inspire you to jump in and create! If you'd like recommendations on classes, check on my earlier blog post where I cover some of my favorite instructors. line and color studies incorporating organic shapes adding personal symbols and icons putting it all together I am motivated by a good challenge, so I decided to set several goals for myself this year to continue evolving my artistic practice. 1. Teach a class I am super excited to be teaching my first art journaling class this month. Invites have been sent, the outline is complete, and samples are made. I'm considering this a big experiment, as I'm sure I'll learn a ton about what works and doesn't work. First challenge to tackle is offering a version for interested folks outside of the Central Valley. I'm going to try Facebook live so people can join us real time, but who knows how well that will work. If the lesson plan works I may submit an application to offer the course as a non-credit class at the local community college. 2. Get published This year I plan to submit my work to several mixed-media art magazines. They typically receive hundreds of submissions, so who knows if my work will be selected. I'll never know if I don't try. I'm gearing up for the first submission deadline in February, to Art Journaling magazine. 3. Show my work I'd like to show my work in a gallery at least once this year. Not sure where or when, but I have a couple of possibilities I'm investigating. I've been working on a series of abstract landscapes that would work well together. I've set some other, smaller goals and I'm sure I'll think of more I'd like to accomplish as the year continues on. For now, I'm focused on developing my plan to achieve my top 3 arty goals for 2019. Wish me luck! Paul and I recently celebrated our 50th birthdays. Since you only turn 50 once, we decided to celebrate in style with our friends and family. My first celebration was a girls' weekend in Murphy's, California. We had great wine and food, Tarot card readings, and attended a fantastic Boy George concert at Ironstone Winery. The best part of the weekend was my closest friends from my childhood, college and adult life meeting for the first time. It was awesome! I am truly blessed to have such a great group of friends. The next celebration was a wine tasting weekend in Sonoma. What an experience! The house was amazing, the wine was phenomenal, and spending time with friends was the best. I am so thankful for everyone who traveled from near and far to attend. My friend Anna and her husband Per-Magnus traveled from Sweden. My sister Evie and brother-in-law John left their twin babies at home and made the trek from North Carolina. And my good friend Jonna made the trip from Seattle. We rode bikes, drank lots of wine, and enjoyed the beauty of wine country from a villa high in the hills above Geyserville. Paul's celebrations were also a blast. We spent his birthday at a cabin in the Sierra foothills. We were fortunate to get over a foot of snow, so the kids had tons of fun sledding and building snowmen. They carried on the tradition of "midnight sledding", and stayed out until about 1:00 AM barreling down the sled run they created. The main birthday event for Paul was a weekend in Tahoe. The view from our house was outrageous! Most of the crew went skiing, which gave me some quiet time to play in my art journal and enjoy the view. We ate, drank and explored the beauty of South Lake Tahoe. We are now officially on the other side of 50, and looking forward to what the future has in store.
I go through phases of working on canvas and working in my art journal. Recently I've been spending time in my journal playing, experimenting and reflecting. I'm currently enrolled in an online class called "The Down Deep" by Fonda Clark Haight. What a great class! Fonda demonstrates some really helpful techniques to let go of expectations and let your intuition be your guide. You can learn more about the class here: www.artismagic.online/the-down-deep I won't get into my interpretation of what these pages mean to me, but I will share that it's been a really freeing and fun process to create without worrying about why certain things are showing up on the page. The class also reminded me how much I love water soluble crayons. The perfect, portable art supply for art journaling!
there is something liberating about painting outside. this weekend i set up my easel on the patio and dug in for several hours. for whatever reason i am more free with colors and composition when i paint outside. maybe its because i'm surrounded by blue skis and the colors of my garden. maybe its that i can crank up the tunes and sing my heart out as i paint. or maybe because it was a million degrees and i chose to paint in my swim suit, with occasional dips in the pool to cool off. who knows? at the end of the day, i'm really happy with the piece that came out of my patio painting session this weekend. untitled. 36x48 acrylic on canvas.
Over the last year we have taken on a ton of home improvement projects. Some DIY, some with the help of professionals. Some planned, some not. A few projects are totally complete (yay!), while others seem to linger on forever. I have vowed to not start any new projects (including purchasing ANY supplies) until I finish the projects that are currently underway. So hard! Must. Resist. Pinterest. Thought it might be fun to walk through all of the home projects we've tackled in the last year, and a bit about the status of each. Let's start with the floors, which is by far the biggest project of the last year. We decided to replace ALL the existing flooring in the house, with the exception of three of the four bathrooms. To minimze costs, we thought it was a good idea to stay in the house while the work was underway. Hindsight is 20/20, but we did all make it out alive. Above is a picture of what our living room looked like mid-demo. Not pretty. In some areas there was more than a foot of mortar under the tiles. Super dusty, really loud, and a general pain in the butt to live in. Thankfully we did a good job of protecting the kitchen from dust, and our crew was amazing at cleaning up every day so that we could have some sense of normalcy in the evenings. There's always some surprise waiting to be unearthed during demo. We had to make a decision mid-way through about keeping the sunken living room and game room, or leveling out the entire first floor. Paul and I couldn't agree on what to do, so we turned to our friends on Facebook for advice. As you can see, we decided to make the floors all one level. It added about a week to the overall timeline, but we made it through. And we love our new floors! Another project we tackled was updating the downstairs half-bath. Once the new floors went in the old wallpaper and fixtures appeared painfully outdated. We've completed lots of DIY projects, so we figured this was one we could handle. Down came the old wallpaper, counter-top, and brass light fixtures and in we went with new paint, lighting fixtures and a cool concrete counter-top. We are 80% complete. We need to pick out and install the back splash tile, install the new sink and faucet, and hang the new mirror. It'll look great when it's done! Another project on the incomplete list is updating the kitchen. It's not as much of a burning need with the new floors (so much better than the old gray tile!), but there are still a few things I don't love. I'm not a fan of the finish of our existing cabinets, but I think new hardware will help us avoid a full-on kitchen remodel. The hardware is currently sitting in a box in the garage, awaiting installation by yours truly. I've got one drawer and one cabinet switched out, and about 50 left to go. The ability to replace the old dishwasher was an awesome bonus from the new floors, as the old one was locked in place by the old tile floor. I love our shiny new dishwasher, and it's so quiet! We ran the floor all the way under the dishwasher, so if we ever have to replace it again it won't require any floor demo. Hopefully we can swap out the ovens and the outdated back splash tile in the not too distant future, although I'm calling the kitchen done as soon as the new cabinet hardware is in place. The floors led to other "scope creep", such as new shelves and paint in the living room. Wish I had a good before picture of the hideous mirrored walls with built in shelves that we started with. The shelves were really narrow and made of glass, so I think they were designed to display nick-knacks. The thought of dusting an entire wall of nick-knacks makes me crazy so out with the mirrors and glass shelves, and in with paint, hand-forged metal shelf brackets and simple wood shelves. One day soon our books will be liberated from their storage boxes and accessible for all to enjoy. The last floor related project is the stairs. Sadly, this is a much bigger project than we initially planned for, and I am totally dragging my feet on engaging with stair contractors. If we're lucky the project will be complete by the end of the year. We had hoped to stain the existing stringers and treads to match the floors, but unfortunately removing the old carpet revealed that the existing floating treads are just two pieces of plywood nailed together. We will likely need to completely demo the existing stairs and rebuild from scratch. It will be awesome when it's done, but I personally wasn't prepared for a full demo and rebuild. I'm still holding out for a creative solution to keep the existing stringers in place. In the meantime, we are living with the oak and plywood. And we kept carpet on the bottom two stairs, because the plywood wasn't ugly enough. We've also been busy replacing the brass light fixtures in the living room. We're about 60% done replacing the recessed lights, but we have yet to pick out the fixtures for the entryway. After ridding our home of brass lighting comes updating the brass fireplace surrounds and the brass door knobs. So much brass! If we leave it long enough, maybe it'll come back in style. Amidst all of the planned projects, we also experienced a disgusting unplanned project. The plumbing in the upstairs toilet went haywire, and we had a flood of toilet water that destroyed the downstairs ceiling. Yuck. At least we were home when it happened, so the damage was minimal. Paul's experienced at hanging drywall, so he was able to patch it up nicely. Unfortunately the plumbing malfunctioned again halfway through replacing the drywall, so we had to start over again. At least we hadn't completed mudding and painting. The final big project we tackled this year was replacing the arbors in the back yard. We put it off for several years, but when they literally started falling down we couldn't delay any longer. We had an excellent contractor who did all the demo and build out. If we had taken on the work for this project ourselves, I think we would have lost it. Now that the arbors are back up, we can finally replace the solar heating unit for the pool! Another item to add to the home improvement wish list. Phew! That's a lot of home improvement. I have a mental list of future projects, but I'm trying really hard to focus on completing the projects we already have in progress. Wish us luck! And any time you want to work with power tools or get your hands dirty, you are welcome to come over to our house!
Quick post to let you know I'll be the featured artist at Lori's Frame Shoppe this month, which has it's grand reopening within the next week. The shop is under new management and it's going to be awesome! The store itself has received a massive facelift (thanks to Lori's amazing design skills), as well as some new offerings. Lori will be showcasing local artists, and I'm her first featured artist! If you're in the area, come check it out. Or even better, attend the Sip and Shop event taking place in downtown Oakdale on October 12th. I'll be there and hope to see you!
Art journal boxes have been packed and shipped, and pictures of wonderful creations are beginning to appear on my Facebook page. I love it! I started this project with the intent of clearing out my art studio, and quickly realized it could be so much more. Creating art is fun, and I'm happy that others have an opportunity to join in.
The beauty of an art journal is that there's no pressure. The fun is in the process. There are no worries about the outcome, as your journal is for you. You can keep it private or share it with the world. It's yours to do as you wish. To experiment with supplies and techniques. To see what color combinations make your heart sing. Your pages that end in disaster are just as valuable as the pages you love. And if you really don't like it, paint over it! Below are some recent images from my journals. I've been mainly focused on bigger pieces as I've been preparing for a solo show, but it's always enjoyable when I make time to work in my journal. The pear study in my journal inspired a similar large canvas that is included in my upcoming show. |
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About the ArtistI am a self-taught mixed media artist with a passion for vibrant color and lots of texture. My hope is that my paintings will inspire joy, and encourage others to connect with their inner artist. Archives
March 2020
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