We will be at the Des Moines Arts Festival.
Booths LS18 and LS19.
June 27-29
First Show of the Year, Brookside Art Annual
May 2-4, we will be set up in the heart of Kansas City at the Brookside Art Annual.
The winter was long and harsh, for many reasons. Now spring blew in and brown gives into green. All the cliches are right. Life has been renewed, l have thawed. It feels wonderful. It’s a real shame that the world outside of the flowering garden has to be so unstable.
Every artist I know is worried about selling their work in this political and economical climate. We are no exception. I am sticking strong to my values of making quality, personal, sensitive paintings no matter what happens. If people have the means support art, I want them to know that I do my best to be self sustaining and community minded. We grow our own food, use recycled wood for frames and give back to the land with a 15 acre pollinator habitat prairie.
Thank you for doing your best and helping me do mine.
I promise I will update my Available Works page soon.
Grief and painting.
I've been gone, in a way....figuring out how things work without my mom. She died on November 9, in the hospital. Yet, it was sudden and without much build up. It was a death I'd been bracing for, on and off, over the years. Of course, the hit came just before the holidays of family gatherings, followed by the bleak solitude of a Wisconsin winter. There wasn't much to cushion the impact.
I dipped in and out of my studio. It was disheveled from the last fall's final push of the art fair season. Everything was in heaps. My head could not handle the chaos and my body was too exhausted to restore its' order. I hurt. On top of that, we had my mom's apartment to empty. Painting had to wait for me to catch up. I had tried to paint right away. I felt pressure to encapsulate my fresh grief. However, the attempt was overthought and lame. Then came the numbness. I'd push paint and water around on the surface of my paper but it was without passion, only something to prove that I was being productive.
Slowly, I began noticing pockets of clarity and genuine patience. For me, winter is a time to paint bones, feathers, nests, eggs and other such static subjects. But these things seemed too stagnant. They just lay there. Then, I got a blue jay. A friend had given it to me, after they found it newly dead. It was so perfect and undamaged and this allowed me to position it any which way. Unlike the other things, this bird had vitality, depth and soul.... even though it was perfectly not at all alive.
Touching the blue jay, combing back its' feathers reminded me of my mom. I was gentle with it like I was with her. My mom's body was her enemy and she fought it hard for a long time. I was one of her back ups. I caught her as she stumbled, helped guide her arms into and out of coats, scooped her off of the floor, hitched up her socks, her pants, fixed make up, buckled her in. I examined her arthritic knuckles to see if the swelling had gone up or down. My mother's hands made me nervous, because one day, they might be mine and they looked like trouble. I'd do the mental math to guess at how many more years of competent brush holding I have left on the timer. "Don't dawdle." I thought. "Get to work."
The paintings are starting to come together again. It has been slow but productive. I am searching more, planning less, and letting things reveal themselves. I ask for patience and will not be posting much available work because I can't handle the pressure of making a product right now.
Favorite Paintings of 2024
A year goes by too quickly to post all of my paintings as they come into being. I often frame, hang, and sell them with out giving them a spotlight on my website. So, here is a small collection of my personal favorites from 2024 that you may not have seen. They are sold and hopefully loved.
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| Tracing Back to the Roots |
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| Nothing Stays the Same |
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| Let it Begin |
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| White Bass Run |
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| The Last Bite |
A Full and Furious Spring
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| Suspended Harvest |
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| Spare Parts |
Old Town Art Fair, Chicago IL, June 8-9
Lakefront Festival of the Arts, Milwaukee WI, June 14-16
Des Moines Arts Festival, Des Moines IA, June 28-30
Ann Arbor Street Art Fair, The Original, Ann Arbor MI, July 18-20
Charlevoix Waterfront Art Fair, Charlevoix MI, August 10
Snooooooowed In
The farm is layered in roughly three feet of snow. There's not much to do but eat, sleep, drink, eat, play records and paint. Under the snow, our 15 acres hold new prairie seeds that are sleeping too. Soon enough, they will start their next phase of life and I'll have a lot more to paint. New things are happening. This is the time when I start the new crop of large work. It can be a tedious time strung together by many a late night in the winter darkness. So, reach out and see what's heating up.
Happy New Year.
Last Show, Louisville Kentucky
Okay, here it comes....
The last Art Fair of the Year! St. James in Louisville Kentucky, Oct 6-8. Booth 209.
When people ask how this year has been, I always pause. At first I think of all the loss we experienced during the first part of the year, and then I think of all the positive things that have happened as we try to move on. Then I realize that I have been taking too long to answer. The person inquiring gives me a look of concern and I have to decide how much to actually say. It's different every time.
But
Things are better. The shows have gone great. Everyone seems so supportive and I feel like I've grown especially close to some really extraordinary people in my life. The farm is coming along. The barns are now yellow and our first prairie plants have begun to flower. Also, I have buckets of sweet peppers coming out of the garden. Things are good.
Also, we are now on Instagram @paintingisdeadgallery
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