November 2020

Piedmont Park

It’s time for my monthly round up. Let’s see ... I left off last month with the looming elections. As of today, it’s still not over for some of us. No comment :) There is good news on the vaccine front, though, so we have that going for us!

I turned 54 on the 19th. Scott made gumbo for me, which is exactly what I wanted. And we had a quiet, just the two of us (well, 4 of us if you include Otis and JuJu) Thanksgiving. It was a fun month. I walked a total of 63.5 miles, my favorite trees, gingkos, are turning yellow in the park and that also makes me happy. 

Piedmont Park (@turbophotos on Instagram)

On Tuesdays I’m in class with Elizabeth Floyd, working on still lifes, and on Wednesdays I’m with Elizabeth again for a 4-week floral workshop series. So that’s a total of 8 hours of instruction over two days. That kind of deep learning is a game changer. And I’m LOVING it. 

Otis and Julius love head bumping the iPad and make frequent cameo appearances.

I sold a painting via commission! How exciting is that? A local Chief of Police is a friend of mine and he asked me to paint their beach house/retirement home for his wife for Christmas. I absolutely loved doing this painting. It’s been a while since I’ve painted a landscape, but I went back and looked at some of the paintings I did with Bill Davidson and it all came back to me. So fun. 

As is my usual custom, I did my goal setting for the year. Instead of  New Year’s resolutions, I like to plan from birthday to birthday. It’s challenging to set goals at a time when so much feels out of our control, but the Stoics say that it’s important to turn dead time into alive time. I’m laser focused on improving my skills, painting my ass off, knowing that the rewards will eventually pay off.   

On November 6th we visited the High Museum, saw the Julie Mehretu exhibition and participated in a 2 hour drawing course, which was a lot of fun. 

Great exhibition!

Here’s some of my work from November:

Royal Academy Daily Doodles

This doodle of the whale sculpture saving the train received 208 likes! 

Drawing in person at Booth Art Academy is always a great experience. There was only one other artist in the studio with me. 

Drawing on Sunday mornings via Zoom with the Scottish Borders Drawing Club. I’ve been drawing on Mi Teintes paper so that I can wipe out with a cloth and draw over again on the same paper. My goal here is to improve my drawing skills, focus on accurate proportions as much as possible with Zoom distortions. Most of these poses are 10, 15, 20 minute poses, so you really have to work fast. I have to constantly remind myself to draw big shapes first.

 

 

**** EXHIBITION NEWS ****

Two of my paintings were selected for “The Art of Modern Life” exhibition at Colony Square in Midtown! These are both 24x24 and are available for purchase. The show runs through Jan/Feb 2021.

Art on view in Colony Square

While I was there, I dipped into the adjacent building to say hi to 4 of my abstract paintings that are currently on view in the lobby of Building 400. These are also available for purchase.

Paintings I worked on in November:

These are from my class with Elizabeth Floyd. Still have more work to do on the one with the orange bowl.

These two below are from my floral class with Elizabeth Floyd, more work to do on both.

This is a painting I did using what I’ve learned in class. I went for a walk on my birthday and picked a few random wildflowers, then put them in a glass that was made from the wine bottles we had leftover from our wedding reception. I’m really happy with how this turned out. It’s a 10h x 8w oil on panel.

I started a painting of peonies on blue, long ways to go on this one.

I finished this painting, which took quite a while to complete. It’s 20h x 16w oil on canvas.

I also painted a 20h x 16w abstract on canvas. This is a rework of an older painting that wasn’t really successful. I’m pleased with the improvements and especially happy with the pinks. Now that I see this with the peony painting above, I can see some overlap in color. I do love this color combo. 

Pretty sure that’s the art wrap up. If you’d like to see pics of my two sweet boys, keep reading. Our little wild kitty, Myrtle, is hanging around. We named her after one of the streets in our neighborhood, since she’s a street kitty. She shows up every afternoon around 4:30 and licks her lips until I bring her a bowl of food. I guess we’re not really supposed to feed feral cats, but it’s hard for me to ignore her. 

And here are my babies. We got them on Thanksgiving 2012. I can’t believe they’re 8 years old. They’re happy because they get to watch leaves fall and because the tree is up.

Happy Holidays. I’ll see you in about a month!