I was recently invited to join Alessandro Berni gallery for representation in their online gallery. In the last few days we dotted the is and crossed the ts and this morning I was one of the new artists introduced in their mailing.
I recently was commissioned to recreate a version of ‘Rainflowers‘ in a larger size for a couple in Palm Desert. It was an odd size they needed, but I knew just where to go to get that made perfect – Jim Ciskowski at Blue Ribbon Art Support – he also makes wonderful cradle panels. We had the panel and painting created within a month, and I was delighted to be able to take it over and install it on Memorial Day. Here’s the painting, and in its forever home. Once I got in there, I totally understood the odd size, it needed to match their artwork on the other side of the tv!
I was pleased that working virtually meant I was able to enter the Women Painters West show ‘Hope Springs Eternal‘. And…. well you know those robo calls that we’ve all started getting again? I’m glad I picked up one with an LA area code whose number I didn’t recognize, because I was being congratulated for winning third place in show with one of my entries, Hope Rising. I’d had an interesting exchange with the lady who’d been setting up the virtual show, because I’d mentioned that my work has poetry in it and she was trying to find a way to best show this.
Then when I looked at the show link, I noticed something – I’d sent the wrong image for the other painting. Nevertheless, the one I’d sent was on theme so I emailed and explained what I’d done, and asked to change the name of the painting. There was a flurry of misunderstood emails where the lady thought it was the painting that had one. At the moment of writing, it looks like ‘Rising Together’ (the name is now corrected) won third prize, it was actually ‘Hope Rising’. Perhaps it will be fixed by the time you look at this! I hope so!
I was pleased to be accepted into the Grey Cube Gallery Skies show recently, with my refractured watercolor ‘Crimson Thread’. One of the things I’m enjoying about so many online shows is that it’s really practical for me to enter them! Enjoy the show!
I love seeing paintings in their ‘Foreverhome’ – brings closure to having sent your children out into the void, to see where they landed. One of my recent sales goes to a collector who now has a brood of five of my little ones, and he graced me with pictures of their new residence. His face really isn’t like that but as he ended up in one of the photos too, I gave him a little more anonymity!
Place as secret
Your presence is a mirror, taut and round,
a love letter from a time I can’t recall,
so much of me, it’s hardly there at all,
the surface of a depth far more profound
than space. You are the wind with which I run,
the movement in the sky, that which I breath,
the essence of the soul that I believe
conjoins us all, the shining of the sun
without being the sun itself. Mute voice
reciting all the poetry I write,
inverse dark matter cradling me in light.
We look into each other and rejoice.
We never knew that we would find a twin.
We reach our arms out and then step within.
There are so many species on the brink of extinction, hence this influence.
Of course I’m going to create a painting involving meteorites when there’s a meteorite shower in the offing, and of course as a poet I’m going to romanticize it.
Skyscapes for the Soul - Jeni Bate 