Journey to the Southlands and a Zillion Projects

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Hello my hopeful readers. We are all so hopeful these days. Hoping to stay afloat on the receding financial waters of our economy, hoping to suddenly be discovered, hoping all the good things last, hoping Sharon will actual write another blog entry someday...
Well here it is! That's one thing checked off your crowded list.
I went away. To LA. That's Los Angeles. For the holiday. The OTHER holiday. not Christmas. Its like the Other white meat- only we don't eat pork. yup.
Almost all the galleries I'd earmarked for checking out while down south were gone, vacated, kaput. Obviously next time I better check how long they'd been around and call them to make sure they were still hanging in there (pun intended). I did get over to The Glass Garage, where I someday hope to show my work. Its fabulous, but out of my league. That is the league of artists who no one has heard of. But they show great surreal/magical realism styles paintings. They show the work of Margo Selski, who I want to emulate. I really hope she is older than I am because one might get to feeling bad about what one has or hasn't accomplished in comparison. Three young daughters and a professor of art and her awesome narrative paintings are selling for upwards of 16K. That seems like a good reality...if busy. Do you know her? Because I'd really love to get her on the phone and ask how the HECK she does it. And she manages to keep her backgrounds almost abstract, drawing ones eye to certain areas (instead of allll areas which I can't seem to get away from). But I was thrilled to visit the Glass Garage which its very kind currator on a rainy day. And I did find one other gallery down in Venice Beach that might be interested, maybe, in a year, maybe. I really need to talk to an artist that knows LA, to give me the shake down.
meanwhile, back at studio central I have three unfinished paintings, some in the throws of some really hard to look at underpainting tones, one painting drawn and waiting that needs to be finished by early January for a local competition, and I just got a bread and butter job painting personalized holiday ornaments. It'll buy the butter but not the bread. AND I have a cold.
But life is good and instead of working I got in the hot tub with the boys and plan to walk and look at all the lovely holiday lights this evening with good friends.
I hope you are well!

Craft Fair Production and two more Fairy Houses

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Please note the new fairy house workshop date is January 30th. That's a Saturday- from 10-2 including lunch. What a deal! Only a couple spaces left so please contact me to sign up now! (see flyer in my next blog entry).

Matching prints to vintage frames to sell at craft fairs. probably around 40 dollars each. So very reasonable! What a deal! These are the bigger ones. I have some true miniature sized frames- the fabulous old ones- mostly oval, as well. What do you think my readers, should I have black friday deals? First ten shoppers get 15% off! That's not bad for the Fairy Houses which are around a 100 each. Doors open at 6:30! Line up!;)

Another week another two fairy doll houses completed. Having fun with wood themes. The material really decides the final shape. Eucalyptus Oasis came out all upright and tall. I like craggy twisty trees, and feared Eucalyptus would not please me but in the end it has its own interesting character- its round skylight roof and regal beams. Redwood Retreat has more of the usual bends and twists, with the one amusing anecdote being that its main branch destroyed my clippers. my BIG clippers. and the bridge of my nose, swollen and a bit blue under foundation, since the metal of the clipper SNApped and flew back at me. The tree won. But I was able to snap the branch anyway. weird.




Redwood Retreat
front, close-up back, and another close-up
sorry the swing is hard to see as it is perpendicular to the front, and there is actually a third platform under the 'swinging lights'.




Eucalyptus Oasis
front, back, close up of swing

Fairy House Workshop

..Please note the new workshop date! I already have some people signed up so only two spaces left!

"Master Crafter!" Doesn't that sound swell?

Fairy Doll Houses

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Grape Vine Villa
2' Tall

Can you believe, dear reader, it has been an entire month since my last post. I do apologize! The holiday season has crept up on me, hiding behind blue skys and chicken eggs and suddenly I realized I needed to get with the times. That is, deal with this crap economy by spreading out even more than I already have. So Im on full time Fairy doll house construction mode. Empty tables at Craft Fairs await me. Im even trying to arrange a workshop on how to make your own fairy house. Join us if you like. Space is limited so write me asap! December 6th. Ill post the flier momentarily.

So some alternate personality I have of crafty mom has taken over my studio. Bark and bits of moss, scavenged from graveyard stone and pruned trees litters the floor. The boys play with the branches and pieces even as I attempt to organize them and there is more than the usual chaos. Still- as impractical as these all natural doll houses are, I am really loving sculpting again. I have flashbacks to being a kid with a couple nails and my fathers hammer in the wood pile. Its terribly fun, though my three unfinished paintings glare at me from their easel perches and I long also to finish them.



Madrone Manor
2' Tall






Chateau de Curly Willow
2' Tall

Chateau de Curly Willow -back view
2' Tall
Pricing these houses, like anything else I do (darn my obsessive detailing!) is a pain in the *!*. It takes five or six hours to finish one, not including collecti0n times. Other people sell theirs for upward of 200 but I'm trying to keep them down around a hundred. Who knows if they'll sell. I'm putting them in the window at Kidspot at Coddingtown mall tomorrow until early December when they'll join their warm fuzzy friends at school craft fairs.
Wish me luck...

New Miniature Painting - The Hunter

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Hunter
9.5" X 7"

Another miniture portrait for you, kind reader, to view. Is it odd I am, in part, coping work from the past? I HATE actually copying works- like artists that hover before some masterpiece at the museum trying to emulate the work. how dull. Sure you can learn so much but, hello- yawn. These don't feel that way. Maybe the animal head makes it mine?
I want to do a whole family portrait of deer. At first I thought to borrow the figures from Las Mininas by Velasquez (I love the little girl but a dwarf deer?), but I want something less roomy. Any ideas?

Works in Progress and Magical Realism

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Rower 2'x4'
click on image to enlarge

Generally, when my painting is done it's done, but every now and then I get a challenging piece that just won't finish, darn it. So it is with "Rower". The teal chair just wasn't vibing with the rest. A case of really liking a part but knowing that that part really wasn't working in the whole picture. It had to go to get to a better place. Sorta like life, eh kind reader? Certain relationships? It just wasn't happening, persnickety thing, so I attacked it with a sander. Please don't think I'm suggesting you do this to your boyfriend.

Anyway- the painting almost seems a bit spooky small like this, especially since I sanded her face off. Ill have to let it sit a couple weeks before I know where to go next. Even like this though its so much more interesting. So much art out there is just plum boring. I fear being dull or not unique or too trendy, which is equally boring. I want to give my pieces all a magical air. I like the concept of magical realism created by many South and Latin American writers (Marquez, Borges, even Calvino)- just a stretch of life- symbolism and the metaphorical layered onto real life.

And another miniature almost done- a sneak peek at my desk! The three wooden boxes are rolling about in my head waiting for their tripich images to magically appear. Perhaps a mobile?

The Rower and Other Challenges like Religion

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Rower
2'X4'

Wouldn't it be nice if just because a painting pushed our abilities it was also a masterpiece? Sometimes in the past I have felt this to be the case but not this time. I worked from an older sketch I had. What works when it is only 4" X 8" doesn't not necessarily work when it is 2' X 4'. Ironically shrinking it down again for the blog makes it look better again. Perhaps I will go back into the painting in a few months or perhaps it will grow on me. Parts of The Rower make me happy. The child God rowing in the sky over wood-grain Buddhist clouds. The feet (which are my squat little feet).


My son entered Saturday school and its been in my brain- I always saw a lot of really great kids come out of various religions weekend youth groups, but then again it is religion in all its crazy doctrine and all the good and bad that religious groups have done in the past. All that history sure muddies the spiritual waters. And I am wary. I've never painted God. Goodness gracious why take up that one? Next I'll be doing illustrations for kids bible books with old men Gods and God Light (actually there have been some awesome religious illustrations not to mention..oh that entire history of Italian Renaissance art!). But it snuck up on me-really. I didn't realize the child might be God until after I'd painted it. And no i don't think of God as a person at all yet to be anthropomorphic He got a bit sneaky this time, and I don't really mind. Oh and I am actually planning to paint a piece called Beware of God that will in fact have a surreal sort of Old Man God and god light as well!
Happy Roshashana!