Monthly Newsletter

Posting my monthly newsletter promptly seems to be a good item to have on the New Year’s Resolution list.

A poem born on the back porch.

September 7th

I loved those dark September nights
sitting on the swing
remembering your first delicious kiss
like it would ever happen.

We looked up at the diamonds
spilled on night’s blue-black velvet
so we could choose which ones
would go in our wedding bands.

I loved the last smudge of milky way,
a thumbprint on heaven
before the rabbit brush bloomed.

I loved those damp September mornings
hanging onto pre-dawn
with a cloud full of anticipation,
a present as gray as an area of future.

We looked into each other’s eyes,
mutual sapphires of the soul
and listened to the silence
as if it were the only space between our heartbeats.

You took my hand and promised to speak to the council
within the month about our future together.
Like it would ever happen.

Last Stop

Last Stop. Refractured watercolor on panel. 11×14″. Will need a frame.

I had the hardest time naming this piece.  I painted the watercolor some time ago and only in the last couple days got to cutting and mounting it.  Then I couldn’t decide what to name it…. eventually I went with ‘Last Stop’, because I think the birds are making their last stop before migration, and the phone/power poles have reached the end of the line too.  All that’s left is the sky to fly in.

 

Framing… or not

Mesquite Dawn.

I don’t really like framing – in part because I’m not very good at it.  I use plain frames so that the buyer can re-frame if desired, without having spent half the value of the artwork on the frame.

When I’m framing, I can check so closely that there is no dust between the glass and the mat/painting before I put in the staples, then after I’ve stapled…. where do all those bits of whatever come from???  That is one of the things that I enjoy about moving to work that doesn’t need to be framed.

Last fall when I was at the Rancho Mirage art show, a wonderful helper and I dropped a couple pieces framed under glass out of the back of the truck.  Onto concrete.  They were boxed, so the frames survived but the glass didn’t.  One was a standard size frame, so I just had to pick up a piece of glass and reframe.  The second wasn’t, and I’ve already wasted one piece of plexi-glass attempting to teach myself how to cut this.  I’m going to have another go this week… but perhaps before I do…. someone would be interested in this refractured watercolor unframed – and then choose a nice frame for it that you like.  It frames to 34×24″ frame.

Special deal – $490 (+ tax if applicable) and if I need to ship, I’ll include USPS shipping, or you can pick it up from me at a show, or we’ll figure out if I can deliver. (Master/Visa/Discover/Cash/Check on US bank).  Let me know before Feb 20th!

Going round in circles

“Bright Morning” – refractured watercolor on flat panel with acrylic edges. 12″x12″. $180

I had been very much looking forward to demonstrating refractured watercolors at Red Brick Gallery on the Sunday just past – but was disappointed that I only created one refractured watercolor and almost completed one collage.  I looked at the work on the wall behind me and saw that I didn’t have any up that were created with circles.

So, I went with my usual next-step, what do I have that’s round, to make a template.  The bottom of the acrylic spray was the answer, so I  drew circles on the back, and set to cutting them out.  Quite a few people were impressed that I was able to cut such neat circles freehand – of course they could only see the front of the painting, not the pencil marks on the back!

Sadly circle cutting takes a long time, hence only creating one painting, but here it is!  In some ways it was good to have a the other two watercolors so I could show people an example start point, more difficult to envision when I was on the assembly stage and it’s less obvious I started with a whole painting, rather than a set of individually painted circles.

During the course of my work, David Yamamoto from the Ventura County Star took some photos: with a potential client and putting the foreground on the painting.

Feedback

“Comma Moon”. Watercolor collage on panel, 12×9″. $135.

It’s always interesting to get feedback from viewers of my artwork.  Sometimes they will see faces or other items ‘hidden’ in the clouds – that I never intended to put there.  I remember in particular a painting of a winter solstice dawn in Salton City, the time of year that the sun comes up out of the water, it seems.  In the painting the sun was about halfway above the horizon, and the long bright reflection reached towards the viewer, getting narrower as it came closer.  It was one that I particularly liked.  One day a little girl (about three) came in the booth holding her father’s hand and pointed to this painting, which was on the lower half of the wall, just at three-year old eye level.  “Oh Daddy, look at the ice-cream!”  Of course after that I could never un-see the ice-cream.  The painting did sell not too long after, and I hope the new owner never sees the ice-cream, it did detract from the view.

Recently I had one follower comment that she liked my paintings that included moons, and is currently considering a purchase, but I seem to have pretty much sold out of moons.  Indeed it was true – there were only two.  Well, red rag to a bull, now there are three.

The song in your heart

“When the Morning Comes”. Refractured watercolor on wraparound panel. 24″x30″. $1260

Today my cd player went the way of all things mechanical and my wonderfully adept neighbor, George, rescued a cd from the clutches of its half-open jaws for what I swear will be the last time.  It is now a one-cd player without a front cover, rather than a three-cd player.  iPod purchase, here I come.  I actually ‘inherited’ the cd player about seven years ago when my then boyfriend got a job on the east coast and when he packed, we both forgot he left it at my house – so I sure got value for money out of it…

When I went to pick up my new trash item, George and Christina (his girlfriend) and I sat chatting for a while and somehow the conversation got round to death sentences.  Christina said she wouldn’t like to get a state funeral – you don’t get to choose your song. We also bemoaned the difficulties of health care and dental expenses, and the joys of aging.  Gums receding like the tide, hairlines disappearing into the sunset and joints sticking with every change in the weather, like cds sticking in a player, or songs sticking in your head.

Fortunately the cd player’s last song before it croaked was one of my favorites – by a band called Bliss – for whom I sadly can find only the one cd.   The last couple of lines of the song are ‘When the morning comes, Will you remember my name?’. The song is so stuck in my head, I’m going to name the painting I completed today ‘When the morning comes…’