Last night I was driving home and this song came on the radio. It was equal parts nostalgia and inspiration. REM does it again! Amazing how well this fits with my work. Since there’s not an official video, here’s a lyric version.
I raised the wall, and I will be the one to knock it down.

For the whole story, click here.  For more background info on what inspired this work, visit this page.

Coming soon! Selections from the Borderlands series will be showing at Gallery 219 in Mesquite, Texas. I will be giving a gallery talk on Thursday, January 24th from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. On Saturday, January 26th, a public reception will be held. See you there!

In an effort to return to a large canvas, I repurposed a stretcher frame from last year.  Space in the studio is limited so reuse is the best option.  On the left is the source image from NASA's Instagram account - a gorgeous shot taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of, as they say, "a monster young star."
I've only done four days of work so far and my star is starting to form.  It's daunting and difficult and I don't know how it's going to work out.  I just can't wait to get to the main event of taking a paint pen to the thing and drawing in the finishing touches.  So, between now and then is the glorious middle, which is the stuff of confusion and second guesses and sometimes boredom.  Into the abyss we go.

Jamaica Beach
48" x 60"   acyrlic on canvas

Sometimes I wrestle with a painting quite a bit.  The delicate balance of meaning + color + atmosphere + technique becomes a puzzle. 

In this piece I'm asking questions about personal power in addition to showing a natural disaster.  The original photo was taken at a mountaintop lake in Colorado, but the power just wasn't there.  So it sat to the side for a few weeks.  One of the many things I enjoy about a large painting is that I can make the scale of the elements closer to life size.  This is NOT a large painting, which is irksome AND a good challenge.  So, I did what I could do and enlarged the subject.  Then I added a volcano.  Better.

This piece still isn't done.  The components are not in balance the way I'd like.  I'm not giving up on her, just reworking the components until I feel like I've solved it in a way that makes me love it.
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Does the balance pass me by sometimes?  You bet.  Sometimes I repaint just to realize I should have left it alone.  That's why it's good to take some time off between reworkings.  Give it a rest and wait.  But then continue unafraid and keep trying to solve that darn puzzle.

I love to paint over pieces that aren't working anymore.  When I attended art school at Texas Tech University, there was a grad student who would carelessly let things go in her paintings.  I was in awe of her ability to let go.  She said she knew things would come back to her if they needed to.  I wish I could remember her name.

This was a painting that worked for me for a long time - until it didn't.  It didn't say enough but was merely a study.  I painted it according to the photograph I took (sans people) and left it there to be a pretty good rendering.  It needed more though.

In thinking about climate change and people who are seemingly unconcerned, I decided to create a large wave and complete the painting with the addition of my son, who was in the original photo.  As I zoomed in on the image I saw the mother and son in the background.  I loved the way they casually walked toward the wave, so I painted them instead.

​Nowadays I'm in awe of how people live in the world.  I can't decide if I'm angry that we keep on going about our lives as climate change worsens or if I appreciate how we live in the moment and enjoy the time we have while things are as they are.  Probably a mix of both.

​Last December we traveled to NYC for a week before the holidays.  It was my first adventure there.  One evening, we had plans to meet our friends at Ooviña before a show.  A few of us arrived early and the restaurant wasn't open yet.  It was freezing outside.  We found a hair salon/coffee shop down the street and settled in to have a drink and watch the passersby.

This was a scene I photographed.

This photo intrigued me the way the reflections inside blended with the outside, and I love the dark shape of the man walking by.  I took a painting of the ocean I had done last year and turned it upside down, then began an experiment.

​As in En Route, I didn't want the cars in the scene.  They date it and block the horizon line.  But then I also didn't want the buildings.  There was something so satisfying about letting the concrete mix with the sea/sky.  It didn't feel resolved though, so I let it sit in the background for a few weeks while I worked on another more complicated canvas.  

Last week it occurred to me that this horizon needed some fire.  It's the second time in recent weeks I've set fire to an object in a painting.  I can't tell you why except that it needed to happen.  I had this glorious warm color and it ended up causing a burn.

There is a new thing happening in my work.  The world is beset by ocean waves and fires and destruction, yet people walk on by or focus elsewhere.  It's how I feel about the world right now.

I took a break from painting. It wasn't as rewarding as sewing, so I stayed home and made a quilt. It was tiresome making these paintings that didn't seem useful or good enough to hang. A quilt will immediately be useful...once the Texas weather cools down!
Once the quilt was complete, I decided to just paint. I had this photo from the summer when we spent 20 minutes at a Galveston beach. It became lovely and happily free of the human form. This is a HUGE departure for me. I don't remember the last time I made a body of work without some part of a human or animal body. Maybe never? I usually have little interest in landscape painting or photography. Yet here we are. For now it feels great to have this freedom, movement, and enjoyment in the studio. We'll see where it goes! Until next time...

For the past few months I've had the pleasure of working with The Demigs on their upcoming album. This has indeed been a labor of love, as I think their music is smart and well-crafted.

Above is a promo photo we shot against a plain wall with a long exposure. This idea hit me one day and fortunately they were open to trying it out when I approached them.

Mostly we've been spending a lot of time with the album and CD layouts. Chris Demig made these exceptional collages on canvases painted by Annie Ramage, which we photographed and added the necessary elements. Check out this album cover:

One afternoon, we got together and all took turns writing the title with a stylus on the Wacom tablet. Then, we picked different letters from different handwriting until we had the right look. So this title was done by Alex, Merrie, Demig, Matthew, and me. Add that to this great collage on canvas, and it pretty much sums up the community and attention to detail that is this album.

The Demigs have been working on this double album for over two years. I think it's worth the effort. I have so much respect for the way they make every component of the work of art, from the images to the music.

Check them out at www.reverbnation.com/thedemigs
and come to the CD release event at Dan's Silver Leaf on February 28th. 

Finally, I want to give a shout out to Merrie Earnest, who takes such great photos and videos of the shows.  She goes above and beyond to support the band.