. . . quit while ahead

Have you ever had a painting come together so quickly that you almost felt guilty about it? That is what happened to me with this one. I guess it's because of my strict Catholic upbringing, because I can manage to feel guilty about almost anything. But this painting involved no suffering; it just happened and I quit while I was ahead.

. . . were irrationally nervous

about posting my art on my blog. . . yeah, even after all this time. My inner critic is not just whispering, it's screaming at me. And since most of my blog readers are accomplished and talented artists, I am squeamish about showing my work.



(this one is upside down)



Nevertheless, here are a couple of long but narrow pieces, loosely using the colors of the previous painting. My readers are getting everything I've painted, the good, the bad, the ugly, the ones I know just won't work. The ones that will eventually be painted over, and in the meantime will just take up space. You know that old saying, "even a stopped clock is right twice a day" . . . or "even a blind pig . . ." Well, maybe somewhere in here are one or two pieces that are actually okay.

. . . used the lines

from the photos I took a few weeks ago. . . the power lines. . . in this painting. This is really a lousy photo of this painting. The colors are off, and I can't seem to get them corrected. It's crooked, too, so the section of green/gray is cut off the top and the black area on the botom is askew. But you get the general idea. . .


Yesterday was a "Betsy Day". . . Steph took a day off to spend with just Betsy, no other kids, and they invited me to see a movie with them. We went to see "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." I loved the cityscapes in the backgrounds of the movie. And we went to a theater that featured lunch with the movie. . . what an inspired idea. And there were the only three people in the theater. Excellent.


I can't even remember the last time I went to a movie in a theater. I'm sure it was with the kids. Maybe "Toy Story." I do remember that as soon as the lights went down, I fell asleep. Every time. So the experience was really wasted on me. Oh, I do remember being so tired all the time when the kids were young.

. . . painted a companion

piece to my previous painting. A really dark and highly textured companion. Same size, same experiment, slightly different results.


The weather has turned chilly, and that has brought a visitor. . . a huge mouse (well, it looked huge to me, but was probably just a normal mouse) ran from somewhere in the kitchen through the eating space while I sat at the kitchen island reading the paper and having my coffee. On two different days. The exact same route. It creeps me out to know I'm sharing my space with that thing, so I purchased some new-fangled nonpoisonous traps to catch it without having to actually look at or touch a dead mouse. I have set the traps in the most obvious places but so far no trapped mouse. The little plastic container is supposed to indicate a catch with a red arrow, at which point you toss the entire trap in the trash. I probably should just borrow Georgia, the neighbors' cat, for a couple of days, and let her handle the problem.

. . . experimented with texture

Faced with what I thought was a daunting deadline of creating five or more paintings in a couple of weeks, I set up another area in the basement so I could work on more than one painting at a time. I'm not adept at multi-tasking. But while I waited for one painting to dry, or for inspiration on how to continue with it, I was working on the others. This area became my experimental zone, and this is the first thing I created there. It also turned out to be a pretty good place to photograph the paintings. This is about 30 x 30". I almost gave up on it several times, but I became determined to finish it, or at least learn something in the process. And I did. The HVAC guy who came to fix my furnace really really like this painting. I wish I could have bartered it for a new motor for the furnace fan, but alas, I don't think the accounting procedures at the corporate entity that employed him allowed for that type of transaction.

. . . engaged the furnace

for the first time on Saturday. It was cold in here. . . I couldn't stand it one more minute, I thought. Of course, the furnace was not working. Of course it wasn't. Why would it be working? So I lit the fireplace, took a long hot shower, and dressed in my heavy winter sweat pants and shirt and waited until Monday for the repairman. Thankfully there wasn't too much wrong with the furnace, and now it's not too cold any more either.

This painting is the second one in what was supposed to be soothing colors. I tried, I really did, but some red still sneaked in there. It's really more rust than bright red. It's as big a canvas that I have room to work on, so the finished size will be about 44 x 44".

. . . have been painting

as though I were inspired. I have been asked to produce five large paintings by the middle of October, and up to fifteen more by the first of next year. The initial request was for quieter colors, pastel colors even, still with lots of texture. I did not commit to creating anything pastel. This is the first painting I completed. You can see that I am edging toward quieter colors. Stay tuned to check on my progress.