New Series - Quiet Reflections- Mixed Media Wood Panels

I've been working full time as an artist since January 16th 2012. It's been quite the adventure already. Just this past weekend I hung a solo show at Adorn Salon and Boutique downtown Asheville. I'm starting my fifth large wood panel Thursday (the large panel I wrote about in August!), as tomorrow I am doing my weekly volenteering work at the Asheville Museum of Art.

I wanted to share with you my latest paining. I am calling it "There is no reason why" since with the death of my kitten Totoro, I have been asking this question... and the only answer is, there is no reason why he was in my life for only 5 months and died from a virus. There is no reason, just life. This piece reminded me of the afternoons I have spent gazing towards his grave in our backyard, missing him.

Time to paint, time to relax?

Today I am tired, and frustrated. Time is wasting away and I have not been able to start the wood panel my husband bought for my birthday, 3 months ago. 3 months! How can this be? I cried with joy when I first saw the panel. Its been resting, waiting quietly for me. The other night, at midnight I was up late sketching onto it with my new projector. I hated my sketch blown up! Now, I have to bring the 4' x 5' heavy panel outside to sand, ....another week? Two weeks? Before I can get to sanding it??? I feel like collaging it would be faster and more fun anyways. I was so pumped for it, now, sad.

I sigh with the lack of time I have. This Friday, my "painting day" is a meeting with a gallery, a dietician, and finally a back x-ray looking for RA in my spine! Again, no painting for me. I know Saturday is the LAAF festival, the AppleFest in Hendersonville on Sunday, and the free Asheville Symphony Orchester on Labor Day. Maybe I can paint then? Labor Day? The day to rest? or is it labor day, for laboring?

I need a joke, something to lift my spirits from this dull, aching carpol tunnel kind of a day....

Heather, and avant-garde painter got married.
Someone asked her husband a few weeks after the wedding, "How's married life, Paul?"
"It's great," he answered. "My wife paints, I cook; then we try to guess what she
painted and what I cooked."

The stars remind me to be humble and to make art

Last night me and my husband Paul grabbed a blanket and some pillows and lied down in our front lawn. The night, still breezy from Hurrican Irene, was pleasantly Fall like, and the stars were out. Brillant and clear we could make out the Milky Way. It wasn't the best I've ever seen, but it was pretty awesome being that it was my front yard. I remember thinking I could only count 7 stars back in West Newton, and here, I was not able to count for there was so many of them.

I thought about how the stars are so much bigger than our little lives, so much more permanent than our split second life spans here on earth. It reminds me, deep inside that nothing really matters. Perhaps someday one of my paintings will become a museum piece, and outlast me by a few hundred years. In time, all I create will melt back into the universe and all that I am, do or say will once again be hinted only in star dust drifting across the sky. Hope some of my dust makes another see a shooting star, and another wish, another dream is created on another starry night, far, far away in another galaxy.

Til then, I must remember my small little world, of disappointments, of frustrations means little. The only things that matter are being true to yourself, being strong against the tides, and above all to create love and beauty when all else fails.

Collaged Mixed Media Painting on Wood Panel

This is a sketch or study for a larger work that I am about to begin. This is one out of two girls.

I am very excited about this larger piece, as it will be on the largest wood panel to date, with another even larger one coming up behind it. Working large again is nice, having the studio space even nicer.

River of Blood - Wood Panel Painting

This is my latest painting, now on sale @ Woolworth Walk Fine Art Gallery, downtown Asheville, NC
Now creating archival prints, cards, and magnets as well.