Paintings With Soul

  My newest art journaling lesson is a drawing based one, which should come as no surprise given my current obsession with it. In this session I share how to take a full color image - whether it be your own artwork or a photograph - and convert it into a 2 value design which you can then easily draw (err, trace). I even provide copies of the full color image (my painting Snowshoe , which happens to also be available for purchase) and my modified value scale for you to work from (and there are complete instructions on taking one of your own photos/artworks and doing the same with it). You know art journaling requires zero prior art experience, right? just clarifying in case you forgot. And if that isn't enough, I then walk you through how to take that drawing and add symmetry or mirrored sections to it. creating something entirely new. Yup, entirely new. This lesson does not require any special materials - the image shown was created with a singular colored pencil, some glue, and d

  Fox Remnant I, 16"x20" original painting, acrylic on panel, $850 plus s&h to the first asking nicely.  Link to purchase is below.  Please reach out  with any questions.   In a nutshell, I start the majority of my paintings with a contour drawing. I particularly appreciate the tracery of linework that results from delineating the shapes that build the form. Then I add some painted marks (think about form), return to draw the shapes again (the lines are a wee bit different this time), and continue to go back and forth for the most part until I feel as though the piece is finished. With this Remnant series I am drawing with my eyes closed, both hands on the surface of the painting. I am feeling my way into a form - Fox - that I have drawn hundreds of time. I imagine her, how my hands might cup her cheek or stroke her shoulder (Fox isn't tame, but she allows gentle contact), and I roll my tool through my fingers and across the surface while she comes to life inside my h

  It doesn't seem right that the holidays are here. I keep looking at the calendar, thinking it's not true, but here we are, mid November. Along with every other small business owner, today I began executing holiday centric marketing, putting together a schedule for upcoming newsletters and gift giving, and I had a Big Serious Realization. I don't want any excess messages to deal with at the busiest time of year. I just spent my morning deleting far too many from my own inbox. So why am I assuming that my community wants more noise, more emails, more things to wade through when life is so very very busy already?! So here you go - consider this singular pre-Thanksgiving email my gift to you. I will summarize the various offerings I have that you might appreciate knowing about as you begin your own holiday preparations. And then I will duck away (well, you will hear from me when I have a new painting or something exciting to share, I do promise that! but no more blatant self

  Trust, 20"x24" original painting, acrylic on panel, $1000 plus s&h to the first asking nicely.  Link to purchase is below.  Please reach out  with any questions. Trust is a tough thing to hold anymore. In a world with so many broken systems, a world where dynamics and truths shift and rewrite themselves on a moment, trust takes a beating. I consciously continue to reach for it though, not because I am a glutton for punishment, but because I believe that it is one of the most critical components of a balanced life. I have to lean in and believe that I have the means to build what's important in the space I have been given. (Take note Anxiety - I am inviting Trust over, which means less room for you!) Trust in the vastness of the sky - she wraps us all in her embrace no matter the time of day. Trust in the ancient wisdom of the trees. They grow in whatever direction is available to them, no matter what storm (or human designed ravages) is at hand. Trust in the wild. T

  Koi, 18"x24" original painting, acrylic on panel, $1000 plus s&h to the first asking nicely.  Link to purchase is below.   Please reach out   with any questions. Did you know that the animals in my paintings come from my dreams? and that I dream of foxes several times a week? This time around I was walking my dogs at The Biltmore Estate. We were mostly alone - nobody else physically present, but I could feel a palpable energy swirling about. If I squinted really hard, I could see faint silhouettes of people in the sky, murmering to each other. Their voices harmonized with birdsong and the fountain. And there was a little fox walking with us - she was dancing about with the three dogs, teaching them how to disapparate with a little head movement and tail flick. Oddly enough I wasn't worried about them running off or disappearing altogether. There was something so pleasant about being there in the gardens, wrapped up in sky. It was a rare and welcome moment of complet

  Coexist, 36"x48" original painting, acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas. Coexist will be available through   University Liggett Schools   as part of my upcoming exhibition Fox, which runs November 10 - December 13. Coexist is $5000, with the purchaser collecting her in person at the end of the exhibition (Liggett does not offer shipping). And, yes, if she ends up coming back to the studio, I will offer her (along with other Fox inventory) to collectors requesting shipment.  Please reach out  with any questions. I don't think I have ever gone a full two weeks without a newsletter before! Typically I send them out when I have new work to offer, and I currently have a good amount of that at the moment, as I am putting together the final touches for my next solo show. But the thing with exhibitions is that the work has to be available for purchase. Which means I ceased sending newsletters out because I did not want to tease you by sharing paintings that I could not ship out.