Parts of 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              

     This is a re-post of an article from 2015, which I wrote during my Florida show circuit. Since then my home, my city, my color palette and the subject matter of my art has changed, but the concept remains.    What is it that makes art happen? Does it happen because the preliminary sketch has every painstaking detail? Or does it just flow out of the fingertips of the artist? Or is it somewhere in between? Serendipity: noun.  1. An aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.  2. Good fortune; luck. Plan: noun. 1. a scheme or method of acting, doing, proceeding making, etc, developed in advance: battle plans. Like I always say, there is a balance in there somewhere.         Once I was at an art show which was not very well attended and I had time on my hands. I was showing mixed media collage. It was a beautiful venue in Florida and the weather was spectacular. I don't know where the customers were, but...

      About a year ago I started keeping an illustrated journal. It’s just a simple watercolor pad sketch book, about $5 at the local art supply store. I love it because it’s watercolor paper and I can paint on it, draw with pencils,  markers, pen and ink, I can write, I can do mixed media collage, and then repeat. And the thing about keeping an illustrated journal is, it’s not for finished art to sell.  It’s really pretty private, just a place to start ideas. It’s not about showing it to people. It’s about having a place to record thoughts, plans projects, ideas, etc, and then illustrating them.     My winter morning routine involves going out to the studio, starting the fire in the wood stove, feeding the cats, and then opening my journal to a new page and giving it a fresh wash of watercolor.  It just gets the juices flowing, so to speak, to get some color on a plain page.       I don’t even like the a...

  What is it that makes art happen? Does it happen because the preliminary sketch has every painstaking detail? Or does it just flow out of the fingertips of the artist? Or is it somewhere in between? Serendipity: noun.  1. An aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.  2. Good fortune; luck. Plan: noun. 1. a scheme or method of acting, doing, proceeding making, etc, developed in advance: battle plans. Like I always say, there is a balance in there somewhere.         Once I was at an art show which was not very well attended and I had time on my hands. I was showing mixed media collage. It was a beautiful venue in Florida and the weather was spectacular. I don't know where the customers were, but dang it, I needed something to do. I found some white typing paper and a ballpoint pen and starting sketching the palm tree across from my booth. I sketched in a very stylized, doodling kind of way. And since I had nothing else to do and...