The last couple of days have been busy with birthday parties, Mayo Clinic visits, house keeping, and back to school shopping, so I haven’t had much time for home projects or for posting here on the blog!  I thought I would pop in, though, just to give an update on my oil painting. I started oil painting last September and the journey has been such a gift to my creative soul.  I don’t paint with any grand aspirations.  I paint because I love it and I’m thoroughly enjoying the progress I am seeing in my work.  The excitement at the visible progress keeps me coming back for more.  I still have so far to go, but I am “getting it” more and more with each painting and book and tutorial. I decided a few months ago that I would like to further nurture this new love and take an art

Before I lose you altogether, at least hear me out, okay? Painting is a learned skill, meaning you can learn to do it and get better and better as you practice.  Even just a couple of years ago, if you had asked me to paint an apple on a canvas with oil paints, I would’ve laughed and told you I could never do that.  I’ve never been confident in my drawing abilities and I’ve never thought of myself as a “fine art” sort of person.  You might want me on your team in a game of Pictionary, but the drawing talent stops there. A large part of the problem was that I was looking at art produced by people who had been painting for years or decades and thinking my first works had to look as good as theirs or I had no talent for it.  That’s just ridiculous!  We

If you follow my on Instagram, you know I have started my next art challenge!  I am much more focused when I have a challenge before me, so when the 100 meadows project ended, I needed a new one.  I initially thought I would paint faces/portraits, but I realized I would be painting off of photographs again and, after painting 100 landscapes from photographs, I was starting to see (and experience) the issues and limitations that come with painting with a 2D image.  This led me to still life.  I can set up a scene in my studio, control the light, look at it, and paint it. Here are the first twenty paintings in the series… (The ones that have a “buy here” link underneath are for sale via auction.  The rest have already sold or have not been listed yet.) No. One I knew the benefits of painting a

I have had mixed feelings about selling my paintings from the 100 Meadows Project.  I knew I would be embarrassed by some of them.  Many of them.  Would I regret sending them out into the world?  Would I regret that my “practice” is hung on someone’s wall? I haven’t found a definitive answer to that question, but, while I may someday regret it, I am glad I sold them.  Yep.  Gladness and regret mingling in oxymoronic fashion. It made me think back to the first few years of my business and I realized that I’ve been selling services and created goods while refining my craft all along.  Even as I was just learning to paint murals, I sold them to people.  My early upholstery pieces, with all of their puckers and imperfections, were sold.  As I was learning which paints and stains and finishes I liked, all of those guinea