The Moon Project

"WANING GIBBOUS" 48X48

Between preparing for Beaux Arts Gallery's 1st Annual Small Works Show, daily painting, holidays and other prior commitments, I have been excitedly working on what I call "the Moon project". This is a public art project in collaboration with metal sculpture artist Robert Woods.

The piece pictured here is the first of 6 moon phase tables which Rob created and I am painting. These 6 pieces will be installed around a 30ft. high helix sculpture, also created by Rob, becoming the main focus of a new courtyard entrance at Hillsbourough Community College in Brandon.

This is my first public art experience, and I met with the gentleman in charge of this project this week. He assures me that he is delighted with the first two finished pieces, which have already been delivered. He projects the ribbon cutting for sometime in March.

Meanwhile, there is Beaux Arts Gallery and dailypaintworks!

"THE YOUNG 'UN"

"The Young 'Un" Oil 6X6 $110.00

I just want to take a moment to thank all of YOU who share in my art journey. I love painting so much and having friends who often enjoy the art piece nearly as much as I enjoy the process makes me truly grateful. God has surely blessed me through you. Thank you.

"LOOKS LIKE CLEAR SKIES"

"Looks Like Clear Skies" Oil 6X6 $110.00

There are many reasons that I love painting. But what I love MOST is the sense of discovery! Every painting begins with a blank surface and I get to DISCOVER the means of creating the person, place or thing that belongs there.
In the case of "Looks Like Clear Skies", I wanted to paint a small portrait, loosely with lots of color. I chose a turquoise ground to complement the reddish orange flesh tones and allowed some of the ground color to remain. Voila! This fisherman exploded onto the panel. Bold beginnings beget bold paintings.

"Butchering Paint Tubes"

Today I finally broke down and butchered my four "empty" paint tubes. Over the past few months, I had wrung them all the way to the shoulder, and squeezed all the paint I could get from them. Looking at the tubes here, you can see I had even squeezed up the shoulder of the tubes before beginning this process. Today I decided to dissect them and scoop out the remaining paint from the shoulders. David Darrow taught me this little trick, using an exacto knife to slice at the shoulder and small palette knife to scoop the paint out. You can see the Cadmium Yellow Light is still in the tube, and the others are all scooped out.

This is the amount of paint I salvaged from my "empty" tubes! I purchase the 150ml tubes from Utrecht, and you can see it's quite a substantial amount of paint saved. Don't worry, I ordered replacement tubes over a month ago. I NEVER run out of paint!

"SPARE CHANGE"

"Spare Change" Oil 6X6 $110.00

It's finally becoming much more comfortable outdoors, but I have been stuck inside working on commission works......grrrrr! Just as the weather was starting to break, a project I had been waiting on for 2 months, finally was set in front of me...with a deadline. So I have been painting small, just to fit in what I want to paint.
This is the change jar which sits on the shelf over the clothes dryer. All the change that falls out in the laundry goes into this little Ball jar. Fun stuff, but I'll never get rich this way!