Wild Woman with a brush

People always ask what I paint. I paint what I like. The day I painted these wonderful juicy trees, some dear friends invited me a sailing on there dream boat. It was a magically luminous day that glowed autumn colors. My camera clicked away. when I got home, I printed out the photos and arrnaged them across my work table. Then I squeezed out some paint and began to play. No, not one of those photos had an orange sky or turquoise trees, but my heart did and so the paper did. I gave the painting to my friends as slightly over sized thank you card. They seemed to like it. I want to paint another one like it and keep it for myself, I think.

Now this one is different, n'est pas ? I do enjoy still life..very much like landscapes, but tiny, tiny, tiny. I built this one on my work table. My husband wonders where things disappear to. the letters are part of a sign that says "Imagine". The bird is part of a collection of toys birds that live in my studio. the very lovely teacup I inherited from my Mother in Law. She collected them and the collection was divided between the siblings and this is one of the very lovliest of teacups. I have sketched and scribbled nearly all of them and now I am working on doing all of them in watercolor. some are becoming very abstract. This one remained very well behaved. I think the birdie kept everyone in line and well arranged.. I love the shadows in this one. Shadows are my new friends in still lifes. You can really dump a lot of color and composition in shadows. The gold trim was fun to do. I loved looking at gold things in Rennaisance paintings. they made things really look so golden without using any real gold. It's all about high and low lights.

From the detailed to the simple. In this one I wanted it to be all about what I left out. How simple could I be and still say all I needed to say. The little figure was pretty simple to begin with, but the shell was pretty complex. Colors needed to be simple. shapes needed to be simple. Light, simple. I studied Oriental painting in NYC for years. I loved Japanese scrolls, Sumi-e, the utter elegance of black ink painting. I literally scraped pennies together to pay for my lessons. I still love the elegance of those compostions. I can sit for hours in the scroll rooms at an art museum just soaking it in. I really like the concept of simple living and at times have aimed for it, but my love of books and art making and cooking and... and..... and....well, all that seems to come with stuff. The very nice thing about art is that on that wonderful pure sheet of paper you can create whatever world you want..a simple elegant haiku, a jazzy colorful song or a shadowed elegance. It is one of the many things I love. Lewis Carroll Knew well that Alice could find so many worlds down her rabbit hole. My rabbit hole has paint and paper and brushes and says "paint me".