The View Out Back

Sometimes God gives you blessings that you can't believe. Wayne and I have been so blessed to live in this wonderful place. The view out our back door is really beautiful. Usually, you can see a doe and her fawns grazing across the yard, or sometimes the big bucks come out of the woods to pay us a visit. During the long hot summer we have had, we kept a trough of water for them next to the fence.

This painting is also a challenge painting from Polly to paint some part of your house.

Betsy

This little cow is a challenge painting from Polly Jackson. She gave us the challenge a couple of months ago, and I put off painting it - I guess mainly because I was not very inspired, or I had my doubts about being able to do it very well.

Well, I think she is beautiful, and I don't know why I waited so long!

Campbell's Forest

My granddaughter, Campbell, turned 13 recently, and her mom and dad have given her a newly decorated room. She was missing some art, so of course Mimi said she would paint something. Trying to reach a balance between something an adult would like and something a teen would like is pretty hard. I hope I succeeded.

Figs in a Bowl

Figs are an interesting part of my childhood. Granddad used to plant fig trees everywhere he lived. They grew to be magnificent things 10 or 12 feet high, and just as wide. The fruit would come each summer and rippen to a golden rust, with some purple mixed in. When you broke them open, the salmon cololored flesh would be a feast for the eyes and the tastebuds. There was only one problem -- yellow jackets loved to build their nests in the trees. The large green leaves hid them from view, and I always wound up with a sting or two. Definitely not worth the effort in my view!

These figs have already escaped and found their way to a bowl, so I painted them to pay homage to my Granddad. More about him later.

Perilous Crossing

My friend, Patti Smith, takes wonderful vacations around the world. She recently went to Peru and did the Machu Pichu thing. But while she was there, she captured some magnificent images of the Andes that have captured my imagination and made me long to follow in her footsteps. Being quite broke, that will never happen in this lifetime, but at least I can paint them.

High Meadow

I have been wanting to do some collage pieces lately, and have had this rattling around in my head for a while. It's been a long time since my collage days, and I'd forgotten how much fun they are to create. I have this wonderful stash of papers that I made in those days, all sorted by color in bins. My friend, Anne Heinrichs (www.anneheinrichs.com) is jealous of this bountiful stash. There are papers made from rice paper, wax and watercolor, acrylic on tissue, stamps, inks, even paper towels that sopped up the mess. Too much fun!

Wayne and Camille

Sometimes you create something that you know has meaning, but you're just not sure what. That's the case of this painting. I did this work about two years ago as a companion piece to a collage that I did of "orchid" people performing alla cirque de soliel. It languished in my studio, kind of on the back wall, never taking a spotlight, but never quite ready for the dreaded paint out either. Then one day some friends came from Houston to visit, and the first thing Amy said upon seeing this painting was, " Wow! is that you and Wayne?" Never thought of it like that!

Then Polly gave us our next assignment to paint a self portrait. I was preparing canvasses for that assignment, waiting for the paint to dry, when I began studying that painting on the back wall. The more I looked, the more I thought, yeah, it is a portrait of my husband and me. So, back on the easel it went, and new paint was mixed, glasses added to Wayne and more color added to my face. I love the painting now, and think it will have to come inside.