Paintings With Soul

I spent today at The Tulsa Boys' Home, and what an honor it was to get some time with their students and learn more about their program. This is a facility that houses, educates, counsels, mentors, and fiercely loves the wards of the state placed in their care. They also have a substance abuse program. And their equine therapy program is a pioneer model - it partners with other non profit groups, reaching out and working with populations not directly on site. I painted with a group this morning, but clearly, once again, I did more talking I think than active mark making. They were engaging, asked fabulous questions, and quite simply won me over.  My heart hurts for these students, but it also soars, for anything becomes possible with love and respect and patience. Tomorrow I'll be attending their annual fundraiser, The Run for The Roses Gala. Again, such an honor to be donating my time and efforts to a school that is working tremendously hard to make a...

Artist Eugene Clark demonstrated his process of layering imagery at this evening's Romeo Guild of Art meeting. I was mesmerized, inspired and ready to run to my own easel afterwards.  The earlier part of my day was spent figuring out all sorts of computer issues - internet connectivity, runaway processes, program lockups, and the like. Not how I like to burn calories, that's for sure, but my brain was churning away madly. I rewarded myself with a little easel time (it was productive!), then some family time (dinner was a wonderful black bean salad with corn, peas, avocado, mango, quinoa, and cilantro) then a trip out to Romeo for my monthly art guild meeting. I was especially looking forward to meeting our guest artist, Eugene Clark, who's reputation had preceded him - he's been teaching locally and jurying exhibitions and crossing my radar frequently, but we had not yet met (and, as things sometimes work out in this ever shrinking wor...