A tiny Daily Painting to start the week! A dear friend gave me a mug on which was printed paintings she had done that featured the color red (her favorite color), and it was filled with cherry hershey kisses (Oh, HELP me!). I am making good progress on my larger pieces, which are all 30x30 or 30x40, and have skies as subjects. I'll post the first truly finished one on the Studio Blog.
There's a show coming up with a 'tea' theme, and since I love tea I've been dying to start painting for it. Yesterday I didn't get a Daily Painting in, but I did a semi-abstract about the fogbound river, and put it in my Studio Blog. This teapot is one I 'inherited' from my Dad. I actually bought it for him, thinking he'd like the deep brown color. I, on the other hand, haven't bought anything brown in decades. So I hesitated to paint this boring brown teapot, but as I painted it I saw that it acted like a mini mirror, and the 'brown-ness' just supported all the other things (cloth, windows, etc) in the room. Every time I make tea in this I think of my dad, how I miss him, and *chuckle* how he never, ever made his daily tea in this pot! The gift seemed like a good idea at the time:)
The top image is a little injection of levity... a photo of a gnome a friend 'doctored up' for me, changing the rake to a paintbrush, and now he's my 'studio gnome' for luck - and who couldn't use that? (See the paint smudges all over him? :) 
Today I gave this little bird another try. It's funny, but it's like figure drawing, you have to keep doing it to be ABLE to do it! And I love the shapes of birds. So I think this one's a little better, but I don't think I'm 'there' yet!
This little sparrow was a gift this week, and I thought it would be a good subject for the first day of Spring. I haven't done a bird painting in a while, and I think I'll do more of these to get comfortable again with bird shapes and gestures (not that a resin bird can have a 'gesture').
I painted at Denise Zompa's studio today, and didn't bring anything to paint - but she fortunately had these beautiful tulips in a pitcher. I'm 85% happy with this - I may re-do the right two flowers.
My son Conor bought me a bunch of tulips for my birthday, and I snuck one out and put it in a little jar. The jar didn't come out exactly as I planned, but glass is so endlessly fascinating to me! I can't wait for the Spring tulips to bloom! Makes me want to go to Holland!
I took a couple of days off to celebrate my birthday (something I highly recommend) with my family, but at the end of the week last week, instead of the usual little Daily Paintings I became fascinated with silhouettes. Now, I couldn't have told you that's what I was thinking of, I was thinking 'shapes' against a background. The top image was from a photo I took from a hotel room last year looking down in the early a.m. with filtered light - no shadows - of an intersection and a lone pedestrian crossing. The dark shape of the man, with the grid and cross patterns behind him was something I really liked. I could definitely do more with this, but I just liked doing it to this point. The bottom photo is of a family at the beach last year, and they were back lit. When I was done what I really liked was the water, surprisingly!
Just fooling around with this painting of my cats hesitating at the doorway, when they see snow still on the ground. I'm calling it "Who's The Decider?" Acrylic, 20x24.
My son named this one for me. I'm back in the saddle, back at the studio (well, I was there yesterday, too, but 3 wipe-offs later I called it a day). I want to thank all of you who commented on my last post, on the blog and through email - it was overwhelming, the wonderful support from all of you, artists and non-artists alike. What a wonderful community the blogsphere is. It meant so much to me. I have centered myself, and am focusing on painting what I like, with an EYE to doing a series, and I'm just going to see where that leads. I'll post one of these on my Studio Blog.
Ever feel lost artistically? I've been floundering for the past few days. I had a few really good, happy days in the studio last week, and then Friday I had a very nice woman who runs a local gallery, and is a good artist herself, come by and look over my work, for possible portfolio submission. She was as nice as could be, and gentle (for the most part ;) in her criticism but I saw my work through fresh eyes and said to myself "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?????". I seem to be all over the place in subject matter, style, etc. I used to joke and say I had MSD (Multiple style disorder) but it seems less funny now. There's a local art league that I tried for last year and didn't get into (2nd submission). Their advice: paint, paint, paint and don't give up. ( Ok. If one more person now tells me I'm "prolific" I'm going to run screaming from the room. They say "prolific"... not 'good'.) 
