June Bloom Day

Here's what's abloom in June!


Cannas look so exotic and Victorian to me. What a pleasure to leave them in the ground and have them survive the winter. I have two varieties in my yard--I'd love to have a few more.




Spiderwort. I know, I know, it's a weed around here...but it's also a beautiful, hardy native. Love the little blue faces.



Cherry Tomatoes Sweet 100. I think the tomatoes look gorgeous against the brick--although they don't much like this soil.



More cannas. This doesn't really show the flowers....but it does, to me, convey the feel of the garden on a hot summer day.

Summer Vegetable still life painting

Summer Vegetables, 15 x 10 inches, soft pastel on paper. Available.

This piece was done for the Week 37 & 38 Challenge on Karin Jurick's awesome blog Different Strokes From Different Folks. Every two weeks, Karin provides a reference photo, and artists of every stripe, from all over the world, submit their interpretations. This is the first time I've participated. I'm sure I'll become a regular!

Gardens at the American Rose Society

Took a little road trip the other day and stopped in at the American Rose Society gardens near Shreveport, Louisiana. We missed peak bloom by a couple of weeks, but there was still much to enjoy!

Moo! (New business cards)

I ordered these fun new business cards from Moo.com. (Apologies for the lousy photo.) You can print lots of different images in each pack. This is the assortment I chose, based on which images best fit the format. They are all cropped at least a little, but I like that too--it leaves people wanting to see more.



Each has the same flip side, featuring my contact information on solid black.



I love them! It's like carrying a tiny portfolio in my purse.

She actually finished another painting!

Orange Slice, 13 x 13 inches, soft pastel on paper.

At long last. I needed a break, but this was getting ridiculous. I had a lot of fun with this one; now I'm dying to do more.

It looks a lot better on a white background; click the image to pop it out.

Finally, I can ship all the pieces for my May 30 show.

and it rained, and rained, and rained

When it rains in Louisiana, it rains HARD. The air is all water and the ground is all water and everything shimmers silver. There is a splash haze three feet high. Here are some shots from Sunday's downpour, when my yard was submerged.




The garden (and the mosquitos) loved it. We had more of the same today.



It was beautiful.

How do you read your Pastel Journal?

My new Pastel Journal arrived the other day. I love to see it glowing amid the bills and junk and throwaways. It's like getting chocolate in the mail (except you can't actually swallow it).

As with M&Ms and Oreos, there is a technique to savoring the Pastel Journal. Actually, there are several. I've employed them all. The first method is where you drop everything and page straight through, devouring the illustrations and leaving the text for later. This is a lot like licking the frosting off a cupcake. (Canadian realist and workshop guru Dianna Ponting calls pastel the chocolate of painting mediums. I love Dianna.) While this is a real sugar rush, it ends all too soon, and the rest of the magazine is sadly anticlimactic. Alternatively, you can wait until you've changed your clothes, gotten the house in order, and found a quiet moment before you open it up to the feature articles and read them start to finish, not turning to the next illustration until you've read the accompanying text. This approach requires more self-discipline, akin to eating a nutritious dinner before bringing out the dessert. Then there is the method I practiced today. I did not let myself look at the magazine until the weekend, when I took it out to the garden with a glass of iced tea and read it cover to cover, turning backwards and forwards to look at the pictures and follow the text, not skipping anything. It was marvelous. Even the ads were enjoyable. Forget M&Ms and Oreos; this was a Lindt truffle, nibbled at leisure.

Next I need to get a gift subscription for my best friend. We used to read PJ together before I moved away, and I miss sharing it with someone; soon we'll be able to share it over the phone. We'll discuss each artist and every image, and probably have at least one argument in which I will cite the Coke-bottle thickness of her eyeglasses. It'll be great.

I know, I know, it's a lot of fuss about a little niche art magazine. But it's my niche and I love to read about it. No art world ravings in Pastel Journal, just plain, honest writing from people who love the medium as much as I do. It's like visiting old friends who happen to have a fabulous, ever-changing all-pastel art collection. Or at least I think it is--none of my friends has a fabulous, ever-changing, all-pastel art collection (except those who read PJ, of course).

How do you read your Pastel Journal?



[Reading this, you may conclude that I am a sadly addicted chocoholic. Not true. I love the stuff, but eat it rarely. Really good chocolate may not do much to nourish the body, but it is surely food for the soul.]

studio cats

This afternoon I grabbed the camera to shoot some reference images in the fabulous light coming through my front window when Margaret appointed herself artistic director. She hadn't the slightest interest in anything in, around or near this window until I trained the camera on it...and then she couldn't tear herself away. (Excuse me for just a minute while I blow the cat hair off the keyboard. Now just let me go back and fix those typos...Lavender was standing in front of the monitor so I couldn't see what I was saying. Okay, good, now we can proceed.)

Cats love art and the artistic process. They soak up that creative energy like little furry (shedding) sponges. Here's Margaret as a baby with her old friend Rosie, showing an early familiarity with pastels. Margaret has always found painting to be a very relaxing pastime. It's the photo shoots that pique her interest.



Margaret's daughter Lavender is fascinated with writing utensils. She likes it when I draw in ballpoint pen. Actually, she likes it when I throw ballpoint pens; they are her favorite objects to retrieve. She brings them to me while I'm sleeping and I wake up in the morning with strange hieroglyphics scrawled on the pillowcases. (Yes, my nice Egyptian cotton pillowcases. If anyone knows a source for fine bedding in Bic blue, please do let me know.) I don't have a photo of Lavender with pen in hand--er, mouth--but here's a shot from the height of her adorable kittenhood:



Who can resist?

They may drive me crazy sometimes, but who else will ever take such a profound interest in all my doings? And every day my dear cat friends remind me to pause and bask in the sunshine of the moment...and maybe even take a nice, leisurely bath.




(That's Prudence bathing. Lavender is waiting for me to throw something.)

thinking about painting

I've been taking a little break from the easel. This is the busy season at work--I'm a manager at Home Depot, and springtime at Home Depot is like Christmas at the mall. We really don't get a chance to breathe. It's FUN, but tiring. I confess I have crawled home some days and fed myself tuna fish straight from the can.

I only have one piece left to complete for my upcoming show, and I should be able to get that done soon. Right now I am down with a sinus infection--no fun at all. But there is work in progress; I promise you that. And I have so many ideas I want to start on! My plan is to do a lot of fast, loose pieces this summer and then buckle down again in the fall. I'm going to try out some new styles and see how they fit before I go back to my usual. I may even pick up a brush! (shh, don't tell my pastels...) Then we can see how my 'usual' has changed! It 'll be fun. Stay tuned.

Now I need to go get some Kleenex. My poor nose is ready to abandon my face entirely.

they want my photos!

I'll be donating some of my photographs of the Genesee Country Village, a living history museum near Rochester, NY, to their new website. I'm a huge fan of GCV, and I have a number of photos of it on my Flickrstream. I've been going there since I was a child, and continue to visit whenever I'm in the area. It has grown and grown over the years and become an amazing historical resource. Yesterday I was contacted by someone from the organization asking if they could use some of my photos for the new website they are developing. I said sure! I'm delighted to contribute to Genesee Country Village. I wish I still lived nearby so I could drop in (with my camera) for a visit.