Color, cars, Cuba! I recently spent a long weekend in Havana, satisfying an urge that's been itching me for years. My hope was to immerse myself in a colorful, energizing place that would inspire a new series of paintings, and it did. What an experience! Nothing really adequately prepared me, though I read guide books and […]
It seems I paint the way I cook, decorate and garden, which makes sense in that they are all creative endeavors. To my mind, they all require imagination, which sometimes works and is sometimes less successful, but you learn from it. While you can do those activities without creativity – follow a recipe exactly, plant what somebody […]
If you think you're not a poetry fan, you haven't read Billy Collins. Whether waxing eloquent about jazz, old age, travel, Three Blind Mice, or the annoying linguistic mannerisms of teenage girls, he points out the humor in everyday situations. This quote from a recent interview with him struck me as painfully true: "Once a pleasurable activity […]
Playing with pure pigment is, for me, the best part of pastel painting. It's me and a soft stick of vibrant color, no brush or turpentine to interfere. Pastel sticks allow me to work in broad strokes, avoiding too much realistic detail. Instead, I show how it felt to be there. I'm not a camera, I'm […]
Painting is surprisingly hard work, much as I love it. Of course, I am standing the whole time – I simply can't paint while sitting. And I'm waving my arms around the easel and my pastel box, trying to decide which colors to pick up next. Then I'll choose a color, apply it, stand back […]
Painting makes me hungry. Really hungry. Almost as much as heavy duty yard work or aerobic exercise does. Which I found kind of surprising. While it takes a lot of concentration to think about next steps in a painting, expending mental energy normally doesn't build a large appetite. I can run a meeting, write a […]
Apples to oranges, you might say? Book clubs have nothing to do with painting? Not true for someone like me, who loves reading as much as she does art and who never seems to have an idle hour. Fortunately, both activities can serve similar purposes. Reading a novel puts me into another world. I get […]
Nope, this isn't a philosophical discussion about race, but a brief explanation of why I never use those colors in my paintings. Mostly because they aren't really colors. Black is the absence of color or light. This is the opposite of what I hope to convey in my art, where I want to show energy through […]
