Parts of Art

   It's November, and every morning now there is frost on the ground. Even so, t his yucca plant is thriving in the middle of my herb garden. Although not an herb itself, it is surrounded by bee balm, lavender, spearmint, peppermint and catnip in the spring and summer months.  It's a robust perennial, so it stays put long after all the herbs around it have died with the frosty November air.         I love the view looking straight down from the top of the plant. I am also fascinated with the silvery white threads that swirl out playfully from the stalks. The tall stems that radiate from the center shoot out stately spikes of white flowers in the summer.        The yuccas are such a beautiful part of my herb garden that I decided to do some paintings of them. Here they are, along with some photos from my actual plants and a video of the painting process. See those cool white threads?! The paintings and more are ...

 Suddenly it's Autumn! Here's what that means to me:  Filling up my illustrated journal with sketches and paintings from my gardens Getting new art supplies watching the leaves as they  dance and flutter to the ground and attempting to capture it in watercolor Starting a fire in the woodstove next to my watercolor table and setting my coffee on top and last but not least, offering workshops in my art studio for fall and winter. Click here for the calendar Mask up and come make art!

   When my husband and I visited Bavaria in celebration of our 40th anniversary, we spent a few days in a delightful garden cottage in Gebsattel. Right outside the door was a patch of fragrant blossoming bushes that were absolutely populated with butterflies.     The whole garden space was alive, not only with plants, but with the fluttering activity of glorious winged creatures that covered the many blooms. I was inspired by this sight and wanted to capture it with my camera for future paintings. I determined that, once stateside, I would find out whatever this exotic flowering bush was.   Come spring, I started my quest to identify the flower. At my local nursery I showed the picture to the gardener. Her reply?  "I have no idea what the plant is, but the photograph is beautiful! You should be an artist!"        I chose not to go into detail about how I AM an artist, and that's the whole point here. That by then I had done sketches...

Yes, it’s an Indiana thing.  And in my salsa garden, the time is now. This is a recent entry in my illustrated garden journal.  And here’s tonight’s dinner:  Green Tomatoes paintings are available at my shop  here              

Want to learn how to paint right from the garden? Watch here as a garden grows on watercolor paper right before your eyes!  We have some classes and workshops coming up soon.  Stay tuned right here  for our class schedule.

Beautiful Day for Coneflowers  is my latest watercolor/acrylic painting.  It is available at my shop Sandyartparts.etsy.com

    My time in my peaceful country studio revolves around waiting for the paint to dry.         This expression implies mind-numbing boredom. After all, what could be more dumbing down than watching paint dry? I recently saw an experiment where a group of adults were tasked with watching paint dry, just to document how it affected them mentally. It’s pretty easy to guess what happened. Mind. Numbing. Boredom.     Because it actually does take time for paint to dry, it’s a good idea  to have other tasks and projects going on in the studio.  My day starts here, at the watercolor easel, with my current illustrated journal. It’s a new day, which translates into a new white, blank page.  The first thing I do is fill a brush with water, wet the paper, and add color.          One beautiful feature of watercolor paint is that it’s simply colored water. Its very nature is to bleed into the w...

       Shenanigans  | SHəˈnanəgənz |  pl. noun  informal  secret or dishonest activity or maneuvering :  “ widespread financial shenanigans had ruined the fortunes of many .” •  silly or high-spirited behavior;  mischief . ORIGIN  mid 19th cent. : of unknown  origin .         There will come a time when said shenanigans are over and our lives  will return to some version of normal. So what, until then, do we do?           This past year and a half, as you may already know, I have been immersed in a body of work called “Of the Woods ”. It has been quite an exercise of patient endurance for me, to come up with a series of new pieces and get them completed, photographed, and professionally framed. It’s been like planting seeds in ground that would produce fruit eventually, but its artwork instead of food. And because I had made the decision to give it a year and...

      As you probably have gathered, I am a lover of all things garden. Not only do I love to plant living things in the soil and watch them grow, but I love to then photograph, paint, draw and otherwise make art from my garden. My series “Of the Woods” is all about the exuberant plant life in which I am surrounded. It’s actually not only exuberant in the woods, but in the pastures, the yard, and the gardens.  So this life is literally overflowing on my canvases.       This week I planted an herb garden in what was formerly an overgrown and neglected planter that came with the place. I made these sweet little wooden markers with a Sharpie and some cast-offs from the wood pile, so as not to forget what’s what. I accidentally made an extra one for thyme, so for a minute  had extra thyme on my hands!                                   ...