The Possibilities of a Fabulous Garage Sale Find

Our old friend Mike stayed with us this weekend. He gave me a dollar every time I had to squeeze into the back seat between the kids two car seats. I don't much like mini-vans and I wouldn't buy an SUV but sometimes I do wish we had a bigger car. Still, I made almost ten dollars over two days by insisting we stop at every garage sale we came to (and then squeezing back into my squish spot). On one of these stops Mike persuaded me to purchase this fabulous Tampax dispenser. I plan to weld on groves so I can drop a board/sign down the front listing what I want to dispense. Won't it be superb?! After it is filled with small rolled up photo copies I shall put it up at art shows and make a whopping 50 cents per piece (or sell the whole thing for some exorbitant amount). Every tenth try will still be a Tampax.

But there are just so many choices of what to dispense with! So you, kind reader, must help me out by voting for what you think I should start with. Or if you have some other brilliant idea please comment. Thanks!

The Art of Mothering

What do you mean I have been focusing on painting more than on parenting lately??
actually it's amazing Benjamin can even fit into Phin's clothes at all.

Tea With The Advesary, a Chicken Coop and Critique

A better name for this painting might have been Tax Write-Off. Or perhaps Which Came First-the Chicken or the Egg, because although I really enjoyed this painting I also really wanted to get chickens and to paint chickens (that is- to make paintings of chickens, not to actually paint a chicken which would fall more into the performance art field- who was that guy that swung the chicken about and covered himself in feathers?). And so so so conveniently all my chickens, chicken supplies and what coop materials I had to buy (mostly they came from Freecycle and Craigslist free stuff), were all a tax write off. And for a bonus we, hopefully in a month or two, will get a wonderfully colored selection of fresh, free range, organic eggs (not to mention fabulous chores for the boys to do- the fabulous fun of mucking out the chicken coop).

At any rate- please look for the implements of death somewhat hidden in this rather narrative painting. Next chicken Piece will be a Baba yaga style house-but Victorian- with chicken legs, and it will be hatching a fifties style house. If I only paint the legs can I write off the whole chicken?


The coop leader, alpha hen, and most outgoing of our chickens is Bellina (also known as Chickie). She and the others lived in a refrigerator box in my studio while the coop was being built. Bellina was first to discover she could fly up and roost on the edge of the box. For two weeks every time Id go to paint she would watch me critically from her perch. Some people get Dore Ashton as their critic...I get a chicken.

Noble Egret, A Foppish Bird and the Back of Art

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And also a whole other series I'm working on! Are my energies a bit spread out or am I in a creative typhoon? Whatever the case, I have already painted a couple of these miniatures. Clever clever me, I thought I ought to work smaller so as to make my art more affordable to the masses, so I came up with the most detailed little pieces I could conjure thereby making my time worth very little.

In Elizabethan times, lacking a camera, people carried about portraits of their loved ones. For some inexplicable reason taking these and painting them with animal (mostly bird) heads seemed a good idea. Tennie Tiny bits of lace done with negative 1 size brush? But I like them. They are so wonderfully odd with their human hands and fancy frippery. I should like to paint all the old Egyptian Gods this way. I already have Ibis done (soon to be shown here). Jackal will most likely be next. And then I'll paint all the Egyptian gods in punk clothes.

But Im not really showing you, kind reader, any integration am I. So here's a bit of a secret. Many of my paintings have a bonus drawing on their backside by little elves that sneak down into my studio and draw on the wood sitting about- just like Mommy! So I always face the less desirable side out, thus leaving the good grain for my painting and giving buyers a little surprise when they turn the painting around.

Squirrel, Squirrel, Squirrel, Squirrel

Another doosie of an art reproduction nightmare! This little box hangs from the rafters or sits on four little acorn feet. It's from my box series but another experiment (Ha HA my brother, there is secretly more than one mad scientist in the family). Theres a little antique key sealed up inside. One of those 'just for fun' kinda pieces. If I'm painting something less than serious does it mean I'm not a serious artist? get real. That's one voice anyway. There's other annoying little voices in my head that say silly things like "you'd never see THAT at MOMA". Of course, that in itself may be a reason to paint it. The four views, like my other pieces of this ilk represent different realities. One is the 'paper tiger' or Oragami reality, one realist, one carved, and one cartoon (my most lived in reality?). And of course, I have to wonder if I'm painting partly cartoon images because I've been influenced by living with little kids or if I would have gone that way anyway. Suffice to say, this is one of Benjamin's and Phineas's favorites currently still in my studio.

Children's Portraits

For the last 2 years or so I’ve been experimenting with painting children’s portraits on commission. When in Rome. Might as well tap into the community that I find myself hovering around the perifery of. Children's portraits are quite a challenge! I can paint a reasonably good likeness but the piece has to be affordable, which is why using oils wasn’t the best first choice. None the less, in usual fashion, I went that direction and regretted it after realizing I wasn’t making enough to justify the detail and hours I was putting in. In fact I misquoted an amount to a playdate friends mom, who although usually a seemingly easygoing lady, decided that telling her I couldn't paint her two children in oils for 300 dollars was grounds for never speaking to me again. Pricing is the ingrown toenail of being an artist.

Finally I switched to watercolor. My old friend!! Watercolors were my first love and I almost wish I’d never cheated on them with oils and printmaking (exept they are such lovely affairs). So light and optimistic watercolors are. So unpretentious! (Of course I still have three other bodies of work coming out- two of which are done in oil with all its buttery goodness).

This little guy was really into planets and was just calling out to be the little prince.

My client, a mom at my son's preschool, was thrilled with the finished piece. Always a nice feeling. I’d like to charge more but everyone is so destitute these days and Im happy just to paint with the light filled watercolor pigments. So Im thinking of creating a sliding scale. Somewhere between 150 and 400. Is that rediculous? Who would rather give me 400 than 150? But actually I'm happy with 150 so long as I don't have to make any 'alterations'. I even put an ad in the school newsletter. I'm advertising now? but no takers. 150 bucks?! Come ON thats such a DEAL. I need to tap into a wealthier community (do they still exist?) and charge 500. Hmph.

Inside-Out House

I want to create more of these house themed “night-light” paintings (theres a light inside that lights up just the bird at night-check out the second photo). They are rather challenging to reproduce two dimensionally though (art reproduction is my nemesis- so here I am, throwing everything onto a 2D blog surface-great-just great). It’s fun to paint this way but it takes more time-is it worth it-all the cutting and gluing to make an art piece that has multiple levels? And is this type of box art all that interesting? It is a good challenge making the inside work with the outside. Am I just trying to create something new and original when all art has already been explored? Do I really believe that there isn’t anything new? And does it really matter either way?

Well…better to just PAINT than to sit about smashing oneself in the head with a critical hammer. Bam bam bam. And better to paint than to blog. Blog blog blog. Actually I need to go pick up the boys from their once a week 3 hour daycare. Artist stepping down, Mom stepping up.