Media: oil on heavy fabriano paper
Size: 23x15 in
I am loving painting these tennis players with their various accoutrements...hats, jackets, sweaters, and of course rackets and balls. I love that balls now come in soft pink colors as opposed to day-glo yellow. So much prettier...and feminine!
Media: oil on museum board
Size: 6.75x9.75 in
Yet another rendition of my relationship with my dear, long-suffering husband. Is there anything more divergent than a man of science married to an artist??? What it amounts to is...we are very complimentary and sometimes annoying to each other!!!
Media: oil on masonite
Size: 6x6 in
As I continue painting lilies, I am getting to the zeitgeist of lily-ness. There is the curving, ruffle petal element, there is the dark glossy leaf element, there are the chartreuse stamen elements and the 'suggestion' of the blue and white Chinese pot in which they are placed. As an image, it is almost breaking up into abstraction...but not quite.
Media: oil on foamcore
Size: 6.5x7 in
This is another version of my granddaughter who wants to be a baker when she grows up. She has always 'messed around' in my kitchen, and this particular time, she took a break from her baking endeavors and stepped into the light coming through an open door...magic!
Media: oil on gessoed masonite
Size: 8x8 in
My beloved Grandmother always got out a LOT of red during Christmas, so I associate the color with the holidays. This guy at the Met Museum was wearing his "Christmas Pants" (as far as I am concerned), and sitting in front of a "Christmas abstract". Yep, put on your red, get out your red, light your red candles...it's Christmas. (Sidenote: I totally admire the restrained and all white interior, with a few greens to indicate Christmas...but para mi, its not Christmas til it's gaudy).
Media: oil on foamcore
Size: 8.75x8.75 in
Even when flowers are fading, there is a beauty as they go through the stages of drying up, curling up, and making seeds – especially big, fat, juicy sunflowers! As the petals around the center shrivel...the plant starts making big, fat, edible seeds! Yea!
Media: oil on foamcore
Size: 8.75x8.75 in
I don't know why but I am loving painting sunflowers...each painting is becoming more swooshy and simple than the last. I feel like it best expresses the quality of “hale and hearty,” with which sunflowers surge upward in the summer!
Media: oil on unstretched canvas
Size: 24x12 in
I painted myself today in my navy t-shirt that has a map of Maine on it (which always makes me feel closer to Fairfield Porter, even though I've never been to Maine). I also had fun with my favorite child's XXL sized Gap striped skirt that I always wear with said t-shirt. I am just getting re-situated after being gone from my studio.
Media: oil on canvas board
Size: 8x6 in
Full disclosure, I modeled for these kimono clad figures that I am currently painting. So, I am trying to look at the patterns of light and dark and figure out how to deal with the mustard colored kimono! Plus, I am always tempted to try to make myself look taller...
Media: oil on museum board
Size: 6x8 in
Is it just me or does my daughter's piano teacher look like Bonnard?? I painted him working with my daughter...and only when my little painting was done, did I notice how much he looks like one of my favorite painters.
Media: oil on museum board
Size: 9.5x6.25 in
I saw this little girl and her mother leaving my neighborhood library yesterday and it brought back such great memories. When I was about six, I started checking out my own books, and it has been true love ever since! I now live near a little branch of my city's library system, and every time I go, I experience "book anticipation" such as I noted on this little girl's face as she exited with her mother.
Media: oil on heavy fabriano paper
Size: 17.5x8.5 in
I painted her with blue eyebrows, and I don't think Edna St. Vincent Millay would mind it either. She marched to the beat of her own drum. AND the blue is a nice complement to her flame colored hair!
Media: oil on canvas board
Size: 8x6 in
Let's face it, 'Mouth Magic' sounds better than 'Mouth Maintenance'. But in order to keep doing the things that I should, the things that keep me healthy, I have to play little tricks on myself and make it a teensy bit fun! So, you know...pretty colors, fun retro lipstick, and new giant bathrobe sash size floss that my dentist recommended ( I swiped that ‘bathrobe sash’ reference from David Sedaris).
BTW MAC had told me that they were discontinuing my favorite color…ACKKK, so I went to two different stores and bought up all that they had!!! My dear daughter went with me and did not treat me like I was crazy AT ALL!!! So, anyway, that is my mouth magic kit!
Media: oil on canvas board
Size: 7x5 in
Facts I've accepted about myself: I love pale pink (70's) lipstick, vampire red toes, and nothing on my fingers. When I deviate, get talked into something else...I just don't feel like myself. I know...its good to try new things...
Media: oil on masonite
Size: 7.75x8 in
“There is nothing...absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." - Kenneth Grahame, 'The Wind in the Willows'. I have to agree. Playing in, and on, and around water, is just the best! Especially if you add in children and dragonflies!
Media: oil on gessoed masonite
Size: 8x8 in
On our little sandy lake beach last week there were adorable striped canvas chairs (Ikea!) and little Adirondack chairs for kids and a cluster of blue and white umbrellas. It was visually sooo pretty when you swam in the lake and looked back at it...and I loved the message of accommodation for big and small alike.
Media: oil on canvas board
Size: 8x10 in
This is my friend's backyard in early morning. She is a positive 'strong tree' in my life, and I hope that I am a tree for her as well. I tried to portray the fun and whimsy that makes this friendship sing.
Media: oil on gessoed birch board
Size: 12x12 in
One of the many things that I love about water, is the shifting color...due to light, surface underneath the water, whether the water is still (glassy) or ruffled up. I love...I mean it's hard and endlessly interesting....to try to capture what is going on. And my daughter (who is also a painter) agreed that we should just make bracelets that say: WWDHD (what would David Hockney do?)
Media: oil on heavy watercolor paper
Size: 30.5x26 in
I was born in Florida and we lived right on the beach. Less than a month after my birth a hurricane hit. So I was a newborn, my older brother was 18 mos. old, and my father, a flight instructor, had to return to his base and fly planes out of the path of the hurricane...to protect the planes!! That left my mother to shepherd two infants to a shelter, alone. (She was a native Californian and had never been in a hurricane!) But here is the best part of this story; when my mother told me this story, she said, "But it was okay because your brother was a tremendous help!!!” Has anyone seen an 18 mos. old lately??? They are BABIES! I think that my MOM was the super-heroine of this story, but the baby boy? (Have you gone on 'Zip Recruiter' and asked for 18 mos old workers??) So here is my take-away from this story that I think is pertinent today: 1) We have the ability to move through a tough time and then "forget" the rough stuff, 2)We can look for, and FIND the pearl hidden in the pandemic, oops I mean hurricane, and 3) Women are warriors!!! My dad took care of the planes (they are probably mothballed somewhere now), but my mom took care of THE PEOPLE!
Media: oil on gessoed birch board panel
Size: 12x12 in
Swimming in warm turquoise water is so yummy...the velvety feeling, the beautiful light reflections. So dreamy on a hot summer day.
Media: oil on museum board
Size: 7.5x11.25 in
Okay, I have sorta narrow kitchen counters...I don't think the former occupant cooked! But then, I turnaround, and cram what little space that I have with little tableaus of my favorite things...because I...um, like to LOOK at my favorite things all the time. Also, if I don't SEE stuff, I forget that I have it! So, I enjoy looking at the iconic Coca Cola bottle, pretty wine bottles, my turquoise plate, my row of 'Hardy Boys' books with their dark turquoise spines, my Mexican tin scallop-edged trays, and my favorite photo of my husband and me (a black and white in a red frame!). I wish I were a tidier person...but I DO love to look at 'stuff'.
Media: oil on canvas board
Size: 10x8 in
My friend asked me to babysit her staghorn fern. So I put it on a top shelf in my studio so that I wouldn't forget to tend to it. Then I realized it was the perfect addition to the still-life!