Miss.P a New Watercolor

Welcome Miss.P, a new watercolor. I'm sure, kind Reader, you know the artist I borrowed from?

Sukah Time

A few people have asked me to post pictures of the sukahs we build every year for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. I suppose I could as easily blog them on my fairy gnome house blog
just as reasonably. I love this holiday- bringing our family outdoors at such a lovely time of year. Already we are a month past Sukkot, but I leave each years creation up until the rain and wind batter it down. Though the dried flowers have blown away, we still find an occasional sunny winter afternoon to enjoy a cup of tea and a treat under our free form sukah, or gaze at the stars through its loosely woven roof on a clear night.
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And, kind reader, in case you were wondering, Im a bit behind posting my newer pieces. Perhaps this weekend?

Studio Soiree Oct 27th

I will have a hodge-podge solo show of my work up at the Share Exchange in downtown Santa Rosa through October. Sono-ma.com is turning the reception into one of her fabulous studio soiree's, with vendors sampling their wares, raffles and more.
October 27th (thursday)
come in costume!

Our guest list is limited to the first 50 people who respond. RSVP for you and a friend today! Hope you can make it!

(This Sono-Ma event is geared towards adults - make it a date night or a parent's night out and enjoy!)

-Hope to see you there!


RSVP to:
holly@sono-ma.com

or off facebook

For more details about this free inspiring evening for local parent artisans and art enthusiasts see http://sono-ma.com/category/studio-soirees/.

A Tea Ceremony and Soldiers Marching through Time

Tea Ceremony
2' x 4'
This ones been fun. I do so like to combine all the ways I like to paint- you know. So, dear Reader, I have a tree painting, an animeople people, and carved wood. Graphic style with realistic. Two wood ducks having tea in a bonsai


close ups


Foot Soldier
30" x 48"?

and in case you thought I was just sitting around. Originally I was going to paint each of these animeoples as a separate painting. But who wants to dwell on soldiers for half a year? So I combined them, focusing my attentions on my favorites. The research was fun- I had to find foot-soldiers through time- not generals- and then use the art from that period, and find an animal they would have depicted.

Summer Daze and Studio Makeover

this table surface is way more beautiful than anything I can paint!
I am SO sorry my kind readers. It has been some time. I'm still chugging along- haven't put down the brush. For some reason I temporarily obsessed on 'doing up' my studio after the opening at Castle in the Air. My friend Chris Knerr, cement mason and graphic artist extraordinaire, helped me transform my scary chewed up particle board work table into a lovely cement surface. And I used up a lot of reallly old paint to break up the old band-aid colored walls. One of those- "why the heck didn't I do this ten years ago" projects.
Meanwhile I am working on a commission- a trade for a computer-yay. And while that challenging partnership resolves itself I am working on a more epic animeople painting of foot soldiers marching throughout time. And after that? sigh...I have to decide where my focus will be for the next year, for the show at RiskPress Gallery. More animeoples? hanging Box Art? more trees with a touch of the whimsical or sureal?

Chris teaching me how to make the cement table. I turned all the cement in a rusty wheel barrow with a shovel. it was pretty muscle intensive. then we added this adobe red.

hee hee power tools. hee hee

Not sure why the blue paint looks yellow here, but the finished table is almost too nice to work on!
more studio corners:

Castle in the Air Show Opening Night

Thank you so much to everyone who was able to come to the opening reception at Castle in the Air. And thank you for all the support from people who wanted to but couldn't make it. It was a lovely evening of animal headed good times. John, one of Castles teachers and a fabulous artist, put together the lovely bird headed lady in her crepe dress, demurely yet confidently passing out the catalog and card for the show. I wish I could say I shared that same confidence but she did inspire me to try harder to discuss my paintings with complete strangers and pretend I am not a rather shy person. My Elephant headed self-portrait, Will Work For Peanuts, was fabulously shown on a boxed Easel, its large paint drawer full of peanuts. And I was happy to see people walking about actually circling titles in their catalouges of paintings they wanted to buy from the walls, willing to wait until May 15th to actually get their treasures home. Almost half the 24 paintings sold (or will soon be) so far! I did not bring my children to this show. I would have had to put bird masks on them, dressed them in little velvet suits and hung them up on the wall, which, while entertaining to myself may not have been appreciated by them. Thanks again and please stop by to say hello to all my painted friends up on the walls if you happen to be passing through Berkeley.

On Animeoples in General and the Reception in Particular

Well Deer Reader, my sister, a Jungian trained psychologist, gave me a possible answer to the question that has flited at the back of my brain like a small moth headed person. That is- WHY am I seeing so many Animeoples in art lately? I, occasionally, when time permits, and so not often, go web surfing through the incomprehensibly huge world of art blogs and sites. And more often than not I find artists who are painting animal headed people. Some pieces are fantastic, some are less than. Most are in clothes worn hundreds of years ago. And I wonder- where is this all coming from? Are we dragging these images up from the depths of our collective unconscious?
My sister suggests that people are wanting to go back- pre-industrialization, to find our animalistic natures and return to nature. Is that it? To be less refined? To take a step back to the simplified, straightforward and slower paced days? So we stick a deer head on a woman in Victorian hoops, whose hands and garb are human and indicative of a past century or two, but whose outlook is toward the hills.
I like this answer.
So while perhaps I am searching consciously for some totemic chimera my unconscious strives to live on berries in a unmolested wild wood.
I hope you can all make it to Castle in the Air next Thursday at 6 for the opening!

River Gods and Zip Lines

River Gods and zip lines...
two things you might not think go together, but in my world...
I am the queen of multi tasking, the empress of creative mothering, and heiress to the throne of put-it-off-till-later-so-we-can-do-what-we-want.
My house isn't too clean, but everyone is happy.
So Benjamin plays monopoly (rolling for both of us- "do you want to buy Boardwalk?"), while I work in the garden. And an hour of building a platform for a zip line is followed by an hour of wiring paintings for the Castle in the Air show. I rather like it. How dull it would be to do just one thing. Though I often do long for simplicity I soon find it dull when it occasionally shows me its serene face.

River Gods (framed)
based on Manet's Luncheon on the Grass (did you guess, dear reader, from my last posting?)
uh...14"X20"?
Did you know Luncheon on the Grass was Manet's version of an even older Roman artpiece called River Gods? (and that one was a version of an even older piece as well) It makes me feel like what Im doing- ripping off these antique portraits is more justified. MANET did it after all. And I actually didn't even know that Luncheon was based on this older piece until after Id choosen and find ref for Racoons. So how perfect to call mine River Gods. More odd intuiting.

Meanwhile, in the backyard....

Fearless Phineas getting ready to jet down the zip line. Parents, are you quaking in your Mommy boots? 12 feet off the ground, the line dives across the lower yard to only about 5 feet. BAM! They get going pretty darned fast. The beginnings of our future Ewok village?

Knight, Stuck, and Benjamins Interior Design

Knight
10"H-oil on wood
almost done almost done! The show goes up on the the first, opening is the 14th. I want to wrap up these last few pieces so I can get to the hellhole of matting and framing. I have the supplies but I need the quiet space of no children, the soft tap of rain on the skylight to keep me company while I measure and cut angles.

close-up of Knight


Stuck
I was stuck for awhile on stuck. I had boring grey walls and the piece was lifeless. Im not usually a fan of metalics but this pseudo-gold sure did the trick. I think I might go back into the hand/key and bring it out a bit. The tiles were a makeover course in perspective. Yikes. I didn't get it perfect but hell- YOU try. yeash.

meanwhile, in the intersection of art and home and child...I had woven curly willowbranches into my lamp shade with teh paln of hanging paper cranes all over it. But my six year old snuck in and tagged it before I could. He, of course, choose to have Bionacles (Lego Robots) crawling and climbing up it.

But his best stab at decorating took place weeks before I even noticed it- and I happily left it in place, for its whimsy. A Ferby riding my guardian dragon.

and finally- a sneak preview of the final piece. Can you name the painting it's based on? Come on- its a classic- right at the beginning of Jensons History of Art book.

Starting Smoking and Sofonisba

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Sofonisba
um...7" square
I can never remember her last name. I think it's amazing I can remember her first name. Anguisola or some such. Anyway- a very neat lady artist, who lived an interesting and all encompassing life as artist, court painter, wife and mother. A good roll model for me. Someone I'd really really like to sit down to a cup of tea with. After I learn Italian. And she really did look like a lemur. It wasn't exactly a stretch of the imagination.

I thought I'd lost three of my watercolors today. It took me an hour to find them. I felt so ill. Afterward I started smoking again...but not really. I did consume a cup of coffee late in the day as well as a large hunk of frozen cookie dough. Now everything is, suffice to say, VERY orderly and organized.

Watercolors on a Rainy Day

The Lovers
10" High

based on a very old German tarot card. I finished this one early this morning and then proceeded to paint another tarot card- the high priestess, which most likely will be finished tomorrow morning. It is a lovely and peaceful thing to sit inside with the heater blasting and paint light filled watercolors while outside the slate grey sky throws down heavy blankets of rain. I am so reminded of when I lived in Northern California- more Northern California, and the rain was constant and I only painted in watercolor. The nostalgia and melancholy of that time in my life hit me so hard I was impelled to buy clove cigarettes at the gas station after getting Ben from school, though I'm not certain if I will actually smoke them.

Business Card Dilemma

I just can't decide!! Dear Reader, what do you think? I can make a two sided business card-both sides color or just have info on the back and a color front. You know the drill.... I have to get my files to the printer by Monday. My last card had Geisha's hand on one side and the turquoise bird on the other. Should I stay with that or try to integrate an Animeople? My topics so often come back to all the diversity in my life. I paint many subjects- trees, birds, animeoples, figurative. Do I somehow try to represent them all? Should the front of the card match the colors of the back of the card. yee-gads. I have graphic designer block. (and yes yes- all these have the requisite bleed etc...these are the 'cut' images- and no border- thats my blogsite design))
here's the options:

A Watercolor, and Oil and a Website

A Watercolor, and Oil and a Website walk into a bar....
no but seriously kind reader- I finally updated my website! Do you know what this means! Can you imagine the consequences of actually having a website to show my work- both new and old??!
WELL let me tell you!! It means this blog can be what it was intended to be- a place to document the challenge of balancing being parent, artist, and home maker. Along with new art I can post silly pictures of my boys and their bento boxes, odd house projects and crafty doo-dads. I can rant about the art world and its trials and tribulations while a child stands upon my foot.
yay.
so go check it out!! www.sharoneisley.com I still have to tweak the site some- put in some roll overs on words and what have you but the images are there. And now its all organized so nicely with my series page, thanks to Alissa Feldman, who traded me ages ago. And Adrian-who put together the initial website- something like twelve years ago. Thanks!!


Flamingo's Masquerade
ummm-9" high? something like that. Oil on wood.
Don't you just love my professionalism? and don't you just love brown and pink together?

Peace Dove
8"x8" watercolor

based on a Sofonisba painting (Sofonisba as a lemur soon to follow-hee hee). The window is from Nelson Mandela's prison cell. Isn't it strange then that she is christian? But when one borrows from art history- there it is- all that christian and catholic imagery. Its the dove that is the point anyway. Take it as you will. I like that people will read it in different ways. Hopefully positive.

Freed By the Flame and Blind Faith

Freed By The Flame
ummm- oh shoot I dont know what size it is. Bigger than usual though. Maybe 20X30" plus the frame? I got this fabulous frame at the flea market. I live only three blocks from our best local flea. The kids eat and paint themselves with snow cones and get what they can with their dollar and I look for...well...fabulous frames. Like this one. Which originally had a really ugly flower painted on it. And now a moth- so much better- symbol of neurosis in my art. One of them has escaped. So look out world. But then, the moths never travel far from the flame.

Blind Faith
ummm...small again- maybe 8" high.
I painted Birds of Prey and then thought it would have been great to paint a hawk wearing his hawk hood and preying. I don't usually redo ideas but this one captivated me- and I like it when my paintings have some meaning- something to ponder. Is the painting a negative or positive take on blind faith? You decide. Oh- and he's a Peregrine falcon (not that it really matters but I just think falcons are neat).


my little dusty neurosis with its delicate feathered antennae. Only an inch high. Tiny brush.