Bittersweet

Bittersweet
Watercolor, 5 x 7"
$100
to purchase this watercolor, email me

Fair Edge

Fair Edge
Watercolor, 5 x 7"
$100
to purchase this watercolor, email me

Little Breath

Little Breath
Watercolor, 3 1 2 x 5"
$75
to purchase this watercolor, email me

Dawn Call

Dawn Call
Watercolor, 5 x 7"
$100
email to purchase

Vermillion Splash

Vermillion Splash
Watercolor, 5 x 7"
$100
email to purchase

Celebrate Beatrix Potter's birthday at My Great Day today.

Clay path to the thicket

Clay path to the thicket
Watercolor, 9 x 12", no mat
$100
email to purchase

This is the painting that has pulled me back into the swing of things. After two shows, finishing a book, a very special new display of some of my prints and note cards and developing my workshop, I was really concerned about the painting. But there are only so many hours in a day and creative output has a rhythm of its own. And the truth is that if I'm spending my creative energy on writing, planning, music and all the other things I use it for, I certainly can't expect to always have some left for painting. But I'm back now and am glad of it.

Come over to My Great Day for the birds and the bees.

Lair

Lair
Watercolor,6 x 4"
$85
email to purchase

Well, once an idea is spoken aloud or written down, it's much easier to assess. It's best when that's done in private but it doesn't always work out that way. After my proclamation about unifying my drawings under this painting blog, I sat down to make a new painting (not the one above) and realized that these paintings, after all, need their own space. So they'll keep it!

The creative process is often unstable though I do like the illusion of order and when I feel at a loss in the midst of chaos, I often try to enforce some sort of order, if only for the sake of the illusion of security. That's what I was attempting to do in yesterday's post. However, the best creations often arise out of chaos and making art is, generally speaking, creating order out of chaos. That's not my idea but I forget right now where I read that. Robert Frost? Kenneth Clark? Anyway, once I sat down to make a new painting, my chaos cleared (for the moment) and I'm leaving my blogs as they are.

You can see the painting that cleared the chaos on Friday. Today's (and tomorrow's) paintings are out of the same palette I used for Source. Both crops from a larger piece that didn't quite work on its own.
Studies and Sketches continues along at its own pace, as does My Great Day.

Source

Source
Watercolor, 7 x 5"
$100
email to purchase

Simplify, simplify. I'll repeat that Thoreau remark a number of times in the near future and am applying the sentiment directly to my blogs. As those of you who've been following my various blogs have gathered, I've been concentrating mostly on pen and inks of late at Studies and Sketches. My inclination is to unify the drawings and all other art work that arises with these watercolor paintings. Once upon a time, presenting different sorts of work on different pages seemed logical and orderly. Now that approach seems unnecessarily cumbersome. Anyway, the impulse informing my drawing is relating more and more directly to my painting. This is a great thing and as it should be. At first, the postings may seem a mish-mash of sorts (maybe not!), and it'll take a while for me to rework the inner reaches of the blog presentation to my liking but that's of no concern for you.

I'll definitely keep posting art history and music essays, videos, photos and personal what-not at My Great Day so click over there to keep up with the sublime and mundane. Thanks for following along. The posts have been slow of late because of commitments to other delightful endeavors but will pick up shortly. Always glad to have you come visit.

Stay tuned!

Game Show Award

I am taking the liberty of changing my mind about posting here. Why not? I'm separating out this award post from the painting I originally posted with it. I was in too much of a hurry to post the award business while currently in the midst of considering changes in this blog. Just for the sake of order...

Nancy Standlee kindly passed the Arte y Pico award from Uruguay along to me. With this award, come the stipulations that each recipient:

Pick 5 blogs that deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and contribution to the international blogging community and list the names of those artists with links to their blogs.

Post the name of the award creator with a link to her blog and, finally,

Show the award



with the name and blog link to the artist who has given the award (in this case, me).

This is a slight variation on tagging but, what the heck, it's fun to get an award and the tagging game always seems to lead to new friends and admirers!

So here are the 5 artists I am passing this award to *with a caveat:

Mineke Reinders in Illinois who brings us watercolor jewels (mostly) from Turkey

Sarah Wimperis in England now, who's watercolors from Brittany and England continue to bring me great joy and inspiration

Werner Pfarr who's fabulous drawing posts (and gaming ideas) from Nice, France are always worth waiting for

Casey Toussaint, also in France, who's colored ink drawings are always a delight

Robin Purcell in California who makes marvelously unique and gorgeous watercolors

and wait ... I can't leave out

Dawn at The Vulture Café who brings us remarkable photographs of details from our natural world although I see she's already received the award.

* These awards and tags can be sometimes overwhelming, so none of the 5 of you are in any way obligated!

Furthermore, I've really gone along with this blogging game to help promote some fine blogging artists I truly enjoy. There are more in my sidebar and I encourage you to click on their links, too when you have some browsing time.

Sky Kissed

Sky Kissed
Watercolor, 9 x 12", no mat
$45
email to purchase

I could not stand to let another day go by without painting. With the biggest chores of my spring projects behind me (will report on those somewhere soon), I chose to not clean up my very messy studio — stacked with paperwork and project piles and god knows what hiding within those piles, old slimy water containers, open plates of leftover watercolors and dust bunnies of Tallulah fur — and instead, grabbed some paint brushes, set out some clean water and rustled up this picture with what was left of old watercolor laying about.

I have to spend some time fixing the innards of this blog so, if you'd like to purchase this painting (or any others on this blog), please
email me.

The Blue Yonder

The Blue Yonder
Watercolor, 9 x 12", no mat
$100
email to purchase

This blog is not inactive, the posts at this time are just few and far between. Why should I rush to post? I spent a lot of time setting up this blog and working at painting and posting those paintings for half a year. Now that it's established, I am posting at leisure for a while as I travel and work on other projects. As they say here in the South, I'm "sharpening my saw".

I did the above painting on the tail of Summer Fling (see below) but, apparently, had to look at it for a couple of weeks before deciding to post it.

I'm posting pen and inks daily on Studies and Sketches and will be picking back up at My Great Day shortly. Thanks for visiting and stay tuned....

If you'd like to buy this painting, or any of the others on this blog, please email me. Comments welcome!