Blog

Continuing our tour through Sojourn in Wonder Land, I’d like to show you the five “medium” sized paintings. All of these are 12×18 watercolor paintings with a touch of pastel. My favorite from this batch is the one called So Far Away Now, but I already told you all about how that one reminds me of my…

Let me take you on a virtual tour of the 17 paintings I made for my current show at Hotel Biron, Sojourn in Wonder Land I’ll start with the small ones, the five 9×12 watercolor paintings. Specifically, I’m going to focus on Falling Into You, because it opened up a whole new way of painting for me.…

Want to guess how big this one is? This is the largest watercolor painting I’ve made to date. I had a lot of space to fill at Hotel Biron, so I bought four larger watercolor papers to test out each of them and see which I liked best. This is the biggest of the four. I…

People ask me this question a lot, “why octopuses?” You’d think I would have a good, canned answer by now. But I struggle to express myself every time. It’s so much easier for me to draw something than to form words. I suppose my love for octopodes started back in my college days when I…

This one makes me think of my dog. I made 17 paintings, back to back, for my Sojourn in Wonder Land show over the course of a week or two. I was having so much fun playing with the watercolors and seeing how each piece turned out. One of them stopped me in my tracks and made…

I’m framing 17 paintings this week for the Hotel Biron show. Over the last couple years, I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I found nice affordable frames and I use the company so much that I actually got a 15% discount for my collectors (reply if you want the code)! For some of these, I’ve chosen protective acrylic instead of…

Does this look like fireworks? I think this is the closest my art might get to fireworks. Happy 4th of July! This is one of the 17 new pieces that I made recently for the show at Hotel Biron. Though the base for this one was made last year, I think. I’m calling it Creature Features. If…

Have you ever just wanted to run away and hide? Not forever. Just for a little while. Until the world gets quieter and the list gets shorter and everything stops being so much all at once. That’s where this painting came from. An octopus, tucked inside a jar. Not trapped, hiding. Her seal friend has…

The Gift That Came From the Heart (and the Artist) How one husband’s leap of faith turned into something truly one-of-a-kind Art That Tells a Story There’s something magical that happens when a piece of art is made specifically for “that special someone.” It goes beyond being just a decorative object and becomes a story.…

What do you do when you need to reset? For me, it’s painting. Not always with a plan. Sometimes I just need to make something. That’s how Hope III started. I sat down to get it going, and somewhere in the middle, I looked up, and the whole painting was done. That doesn’t happen to…

I’m not as patient as I used to be. Ask anyone who’s been in a car with me, or watched me wait for a delayed flight, or tried to explain something to me that could have been an email. But in the studio? Infinite patience. And I’ve been trying to figure out why. I have…

Did my dog’s fur secretly inspire me? I’ve been painting the same thing over and over recently. Powder watercolor abstracts, the ones that have a nebula or galaxy vibe. I couldn’t stop, I was having so much fun making them. I also discovered that I could add another layer on top of the first layer.…

I have several paintings started right now. They all began the same way, with my powder watercolor technique. I use them to create a fun, colorful, unpredictable background. Then try to figure out what kind of silhouette I can put on top of it. Maybe trees, a flower, or an animal. I tried some green…

I got into my first group art show since I started taking my art more seriously in 2023. One of my milestone goals has been accomplished! I’m sending “I think I’m in love” to d’Art Center in Virginia for a show titled “Word of Art”. They received 434 submissions from 119 artists from 20 states.…

The week before my show was a lot. I’d just gotten back from a family trip with no time to spread the load. The printer ran out of ink, and I ordered the wrong replacement. Lost two days right there. Labels, price sheets, art prints to prep, rails to hang, studio to clean, web design…

Red, yellow and… blue? Sabri showed up wanting three octopuses. But I only had a red one and a yellow one that went together. Naturally, we needed a blue one to go with them. So we decided to make one. I painted two, because that’s what I do, just in case. And then let him…

Grief doesn’t pause for joy. And joy doesn’t wait for grief to finish. I learned that the hard way. When my dog died 10 years ago, I was sadder than I have ever been in my entire life. That kind of sad that sits on your chest. And somewhere in the middle of my sadness,…

My show is tomorrow. The studio is still a mess right now, but it’s on its way to looking incredible. I spent weeks finding the perfect picture rails, my husband and I tried to wrestle them onto the walls, but had to call in a contractor friend when the white wall turned out to be…

I don’t let people in quickly. But when I do, I go all in. I test the waters first. Let a small, slightly ridiculous thought slip out and watch what happens. If you laugh, really laugh, you might be my people. And then I’m done holding back. I rush in, full speed, ready to play.…

Something nobody tells you about making art. Every painting starts with fear. Excitement too, they live right next door to each other. But fear shows up first. Fear that it won’t be good enough. That I’ll fail myself. That I’ll put in all that effort and hate what comes out. I’m a recovering perfectionist. Perfectionism…