• Becoming a Painter

    Over the past several years I have been working with Michael Cooley (https://cooleystudios.com/) learning to draw and paint in oils. It has been a journey and a joy. All I can say is that I lose myself in my work. With all the talk of mindfulness these days, painting and drawing is definitely a time…

  • Wow, so much time

    I am apparently not good at this social media thing. I have been working on pieces. I finished my “dead wood” set of pieces and “practiced” on some portraits and then did a sunset. I like it all, so I don’t have a particular area that I want to concentrate on at this point. Currently,…

  • Still Here

    Again, I seem to be lax in my posting. I have been busy however. I have another still life for my portfolio and I have moved on to landscapes. I visted New Mexico last spring and took lots of pictures. I noticed a theme in my photographs of “dead wood.” This has a meaning for…

  • Portfolio

    It has once again been awhile since I have posted anything here. I have been working on my portfolio and now have finished the 2nd painting for it. My instructor is wanting me to work on several projects for a more official portfolio. My first project was a landscape that I really enjoyed doing. It…

  • Commission

    It has been awhile, I know. Over the summer I completed my first commission. It was for a researcher in nursing who works in the area of African American Caregivers for Alzheimer’s. Here is what Karen Moss the researcher had to say about the project: Family Caregiver Community Research (FamCare) Laboratory Established in 2019, the…

  • Loving landscapes and flowers

    Well, I have completed the conservatory painting. I have an image for this post but I’m not sure it does it justice. It really is amazing what a photograph will capture vs what the eye sees. Anyway, I have found that doing landscapes is much more enjoyable, in some ways, than doing portraits but I…

  • It is done, and moving to the next

    I have had a difficult few months with the loss of my mother, and working on her portrait with her sister. I spent months “perfecting” the skin tone and working through how to represent their hair etc. I learned quite a bit about painting portraits, number one being don’t try to make a black and…

  • Process vs Content

    It has been too long since I have made a post here. I have been working on a portrait but it is much more difficult than expected. Michael always says not to think of it as a face but as shapes with lights and darks. This has made me think about the idea of process…

  • First Draft

    It has been a busy few weeks for me and I haven’t gotten back to this. One of the things that I noticed as I showed a piece for the first time at an art show and auction was that people called me an artist. For some reason that feels uncomfortable to me. “Artist” means…

  • Start to Finish

    I usually work from photographs. The photographs are typically ones that I have taken, but sometimes others will send me a picture that really strikes me so I ask permission to paint it. The interesting things about photographs is that they show more than the eye actually sees, so the trick for the artist is…

  • Getting Better

    I often wonder if I actually get better at this. I rarely, if ever, paint the same thing twice, so it is difficult to tell whether or not my skills are improving. What I think I have gotten better at is “seeing.” Michael (my instructor), from the beginning said I needed to slow down, I…