Musings

I'm sorry that I've been missing for sometime now. I found that writing this blog along with my other blog about my sons challenge of living as chemically free as possible to be a little overwhelming, so I took a break. I've re-assessed and come up with a new plan. I wanted to focus more on painting than talking about painting.

I've been thinking about taking on new challenges in my paintings. It really is something that makes me happy and it's fluid. What I paint changes as I paint more and more, I get bored sometimes with doing the same thing again and again so I'm reaching a little further. I'm also slowing down how fast I paint things. I used to love painting really fast and there are still some things that work better for me to paint quickly but most things I'm slowing down.

One of the challenges of being an artist is balancing the desire to be successful, to sell enough to support yourself along with keeping your joy of creating art. I personally do not work well under pressure when I'm being creative. It's all about finding out what works best for you. Sometimes I need to slow down, disconnect and meditate on creating art. It helps to get outside, to look for inspiration. The last couple of months I've been doing just that.

The last blog I posted, I shared pictures of snow in our backyard and guess what! just last night it snowed again!

Trees covered in white snow is about my favorite subject ever as you've no doubt noticed in many of my paintings.

It's been so nice to enter a new year and look back at my progress so far. For so many, many years the only people who saw my paintings were my son. (his murals in his bedroom)Here are a couple of pictures of them. I did these when he was 3 years old so the photos are pretty old (sorry)

Boy was this a long time ago!

 Then I got braver and painted murals for his school. I am so sad to say that his old school will be closing this year, but my murals have been in those hallways for 11 years now and countless kids days have been brightened by walking by the jungle, with snakes and a gorilla. I still treasure the time I spent painting those murals because I was able to be in the school nearby my sick kiddo in case I was needed but also the really funny conversations I had with different kids walking by and their crazy suggestions for the mural!    Here are a few pictures of the Gorilla Mural. I apologize for the poor quality of the photos but they were taken a long time ago and have suffered some damage while in storage for the past 2 years.

I know that it's difficult to make out the gorilla and other details.  This mural was 8 feet tall and about 20 feet long. It was quite a project!

Here's a cockatoo and a few other critters.

This is what the boys liked the best. A snake!

This is the ladybug mural I did for the kindergarten hallway. It was also 8 feet tall and about 15 feet long. I found it to be very challenging because it's on cement block and it isn't so easy to paint on!

Just as the kiddo eventually grew out of his mural in his room and it was time to say goodbye to it a few years ago, so it will soon be time to say goodbye to these murals. It was an honor to be a part of so many little ones beginning out on the adventure we call life!

Finally about 2 years ago I began actively selling paintings. I've so enjoyed sharing all the silly worlds that live in my head with so many people! I am very grateful for all of the support you all out there have shown me! I plan on continuing down this painting path and who knows what other silly worlds might pop out of my head onto canvas in the future! I will continue to blog about what I'm doing. I hope to write a blog once a month. I promise to try! In the meantime have a really happy day!