The magic of seeing San Miguel for the first time is an experience I will never forget. In 2010, my art teacher Jane Filer and her husband John and my sister flew to Leon and from there took the shuttle to San Miguel. We rented a cheap but beautiful home in the area of San Antonio and wandered the city…
In May, I attended a weekend retreat sponsored by Pine Island Audubon Sanctuary to sketch and paint native plants of the Outer Banks of NC. I was one of a small group of eighteen participants along with 3 experts: a naturalist, a botanist, and a botanical illustrator. We stayed in an historic hunting lodge built in 1913 that was gracious…
In the mountains of Millboro Springs, Virginia is an artists' and writers' resort area that has been a creative refuge for many years. Originally built in 1783 as a stagecoach stop, Camp Nimrod/Nimrod Hall has been a summer resort for people from all over the world since the 1930's. There are seven buildings consisting of the main house that acts as…
On Friday, April 14, four OCAG artists met at Blackwood Farm Park (off Highway 86) for a plein air painting session. The farmhouse, out buildings, and large barn are in a state of arrested decay, but it is surrounded by 152 acres of picturesque rolling farmland punctuated by magnificent trees. This is indeed a landscape artist's paradise. To describe this adventure,…
Over the years, I have enjoyed documenting experiences by painting my own renditions of various local activities. Recently viewed at a HARC Cooperative Pop-Up show on Franklin Street, the painting -- Citizens -- is the last in a series of nine paintings of various Moral Mondays protests in the spring of 2013 in Raleigh. The paintings were based on photographs by my…
For the past few years, I have been making collaborative mixed media paintings with another artist, Luna Lee Ray. Our process involves trading pieces back and forth continuously until we feel that the image is complete. The collaborative process is always an exciting one, especially when the layers of a piece begin to build and bring a piece to life!…
During the Renaissance, artistic ideals changed from a serious and formal way of depicting subjects, generally religious, to a much more realistic style incorporating scenes from common life. "Man is the measure of all things" was the motto of the time, and painters began to include details from daily life in their frescoes. With the invention of the perspective, paintings acquired a firm place…
As the Crow Flies Last summer, I began painting with an artist group at a friend’s studio. The tables we used were covered with white paper for protection of the surfaces, but by the end of two months the papers collected quite a mess of paint and marks. I didn’t see the beauty in those papers until I participated in…
I work in a variety of sketchbooks of varying sizes in my art making. A few years ago I realized that hundreds of books were headed for the landfill, so I began reclaiming some of them as sketchbooks to work in. In the first photo I have arranged a number of them on a table top along with my usual…
A Spanish dance troupe from Chicago on the outdoor stage at Jacob’s Pillow This summer, I returned to the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts to hear live music at Tanglewood and attend dance programs at Jacobs Pillow. As usual, I brought my journal-sketchbook with me like I do whenever I go on a trip or attend a concert, theatre or dance program. The…