Thank you to my Pacific Northwest collectors, friends and community. I had a very successful show at the Bellevue Museum Fair this year and am so appreciative for everyone’s support and patronage. Some of my favorite paintings sold at the show including the newly completed “Applegate Valley Vines” which sold on the first morning. Fortunately the collector let me hold onto that piece until Sunday so others could see it. I had finished it and had it framed just a few days before we left for the show so it was nice to be able to look at it for a few more days before having to part with it.
The Bellevue show is long hours (12 hour days) but when you are in the company of funny, friendly artists it is a lot of fun. On the way up and down we broke up our trip and stayed at a wonderful b&b in Eugene, Oregon called The Augusta House. If you are looking for a luxury inn in that area, I cannot recommend this place enough. It is truly a cut above and as frequent travellers we tend to be picky.
I’m back in the studio working on commissions from the show as well as preparing for the Sausalito Art Festival coming up over Labor Day weekend. I have some paintings that were nearly finished prior to Bellevue and will be posting those soon.
Its back to the studio for me. Until next time…..
Bellevue Booth Display
We’re in the process of loading up the Suburban to make the two day trek to Bellevue Washington for the Bellevue Museum Art Fair. We’ve been participating in this show since 2000, the first year I ever showed my work at an art fair. The Museum fair is a very cool event with a lot of very extraordinary fine art and contemporary craft to choose from. Getting ready is always a monumental task for some reason even though we’ve been doing this for years. Unlike many artists who do fairs, we have never fully succumbed to buying a state of the art van or groovy organizing system. We continue to load the paintings carefully into the Suburban separated by sheets of cardboard and held up with cables and the rest of our supplies and luggage…a perfectly imperfect system. We’ve chosen to participate in only a small selection of shows for the meantime, while there are kids still at home and the thought of travelling longer distances seeming too daunting but one day maybe we will and perhaps with a big van! For now, its all puzzled into the Suburban with the extended Yakima rack on top. My husband Bruce and I have it down to a system.
The Loaded Suburban
I’ll be bringing new work to the show that has not been seen in the Pacific Northwest. Included is a large scale Vineyard painting from the Applegate Valley in Oregon. The landscape is beautiful there. I’m looking forward to seeing my treasured Northwest collectors at the show and hopefully meeting some new ones. I’ve posted new paintings in the galleries so be sure to take a look. See you at the fair, this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, July 23-25!
"Applegate Valley Vines" 25x39" Pastel
"Collingwood Potting Shed" 12x12 Pastel
We spent this afternoon at a traditional summer garden party. Lots of fresh, organic food and plenty of margaritas to enjoy. It was relatively warm for the Humboldt County coast – holding steady in the 70’s with the sun shining. Our friends, the Collingwoods have a magnificent property that I have been expoloring and recently did this piece from their garden. I plan on continuing the series along with others I have in the works…..so many paintings, so little time. A lovely day in paradise on the north coast of California.
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The Artist with Sister Kitty and Brother Chris
June and half of July has come and gone. A brief illness followed by a wonderful vacation to Southern California absorbed the better part of the past 6 weeks. I celebrated my birthday on the 4th of July in southern California at the beach home of my dear sister Kitty and brother in law Jim. I am one of eleven children and it seems that a lot of the creativity in the family was concentrated in the middle 3 kids, including my brother, Chris, who works as a prop master and art director for commercials and has played guitar since he was a kid and my sister who has put her energies into becoming a great chef and master gardener. We were all together for the holiday and it was a lot of fun. So much creativity in one room infused with even more wit and humor. I bet there are a lot of reasons that the middle kids from a big family would become the creative ones….I’m just glad we did and that we enjoy each others company as much as we do.
Back to the studio and time to get ready for upcoming shows. I have some vineyard paintings in the works and ideas overflowing so check back for new work.
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Its festival season and this year I will be participating in three, starting with the Los Altos Rotary Fine Art Show this coming weekend, May 15&16. I have been participating in this show for a decade and in addition to having met a lot of incredible people, I’ve placed my work in more private collections than I can count in Los Altos and the surrounding area. Los Altos is very special to me and I’m looking forward to seeing all of my friends this weekend! If you are in the area I encourage you to come by. I’ll be in booth 310, not too far from the entrance to the show. “November Gold” is one of the new pastels I will be premiering at this event. Hope to see you there!
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"Green Roofs" Pastel
When I was a kid one of my favorite artists was Andrew Wyeth. I had a bookon his art and I remember studying it and admiring the beautiful starkness of mood he was able to create with his gorgeous watercolors and egg tempera paintings, two media that I myself delved into “back in the day.” Later it was Edward Hopper who I meditated on with abandon. My dear friend from art school, Terry Jane and I flew to San Francisco from L.A. to see his retrospective at SF’s MOMA in 1981. We still laugh because we had to carry our luggage through the museum. Apparently we would have done anything to see a once in a lifetime event like that. Hopper’s landscapes propelled the painter within me. The common thread between the two is the sense of stillness, of solitude these artists so beautifully achieve in their depictions of scenes from their surroundings and their travels.
In the series of work I have been developing over the past several years involving rural architecture, I feel a sense of going back to my roots as a painter to the initial inspirations that guided what my painting has always been about at its core. Though my earliest work was decidedly more suburban in subject matter – as was my actual surroundings, the thread of my early obsession with painting masters Wyeth and Hopper was always there.
In my work, and with pastel specifically there is a tendency for it to create a dreamlike atmospheric feeling in the finished work. Since I continue to play with the premise of a heightened sense of reality or a dreamlike version of same, it continues to be my favorite medium of choice. My latest completed pastel landscape painting in the rural architecture series is “Green Roofs.” I was very attracted to this composition for its sense of disquieting calm amidst a blaze of color, pattern and light.
And the journey continues…..
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