March 10, 2015 – Where do ideas come from?

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Right now I’m working on a new, big (it’s 40”x40”) painting that is very different from anything else I’ve ever painted.  It’s a collage based on an image of me standing in front of one of the clocks inside the Museé d’Orsay in Paris, the beautiful museum in the old train station building which houses the French national collection of Impressionist art.  The original photo was nearly black and white – I took out the white and layered it over the image I used to paint “Paris Roses.”

Both of the photos were taken on the same trip to Paris in late spring of 1998.  I went with Karen, a friend of my brother Matt’s.  We were single ladies who wanted to go to Europe and didn’t have anyone to go with.  Matt connected us – we had dinner and went to a movie in Mill Valley and decided it would work to travel for two weeks together! I speak French and Karen speaks Castillian Spanish. We went to Paris, St. Remy in Provence and Barcelona.  It was one of the best two weeks of my life.

And our last day in Paris was one of the most memorable days. Karen is a tennis player and fan of the sport.  Roland Garros (the French Open) was just starting. We went out to see if we could get tickets and ended up with center court seats to see Martina Hingis and Pete Sampras play matches our last day in Paris. It was fun for me to experience the big-time tennis world and it was a thrill for Karen to watch these greats play.  Afterwards, we returned to Paris and ended up in a place called something like “Le Bar American” on rue Keller in the 11^th.  Frank Sinatra had recently died and they were playing his music all evening. Karen is trained opera singer with a beautiful voice and grew up in New Jersey singing all the old standards.  She sang along as we drank pretty colored drinks in lovely stemmed glasses.  I think we had charmed the bartenders – they didn’t want us to leave, so they went to the brasserie across the street to get menus and then shuttled our food over to us!

We left there – pretty looped – and made our way to the Gare de Lyon to take the night train to the south.  We shared our 4-couchette  compartment with just one other person – a sweet, young French guy. As we got underway, Karen decided to treat us by singing “O mio bambino caro” a very popular Puccini aria – it’s one I’m a sucker for!  She sang at full volume – I was transfixed with that I-can’t-believe this-is-actually-happening-to-me-feeling – a private opera, on a train leaving Paris.  The magic of this memory will live in me forever. Every time I recall the story, I feel it all over again.

I think the enchantment of this trip and that day is in this painting I’m now working on.  It’s remarkable for me to think that the silhouette in this photo Karen took of this clock is actually me.  She seems so elegant and feminine – timeless even.  I love how you can see my fingers hanging down from the railing.

As I’ve shown the resulting image and the painting on its way, I’ve been asked several times:  “where did you get this idea?”  I answer, I don’t know, it just came to me.  So, where do we get ideas?  We get inspiration, notions, nigglings, aha’s – but from where? Being the good search geek that I am, I went online last night and put the question “where do ideas come from?” into Google. What came out was a “playlist” of TED talks centered on just that question. Then I listened to them as I worked on the painting.  I heard some interesting thoughts on ideas and creativity.  These are the three talks I found the most compelling:

Steven Johnson talked about how the first coffee house in Oxford, England was the beginning of the Enlightenment – as before that people drank alcohol all day and were too drunk to think! He says it’s the free sharing of thoughts among groups of people that spawns great ideas. His talk also has a fun story about how the world got GPS technology.

Elizabeth Gilbert shared how she’s faced with the fact that her greatest work may very well be behind her in having written a mega-bestseller “Eat Pray Love” and how in ancient times creativity was attributed to daemons and muses, freeing us from the responsibility (and credit) for our success or failure – it’s not up to each of us – yay!

Matt Ridley’s really upbeat talk is about how diversification and specialization is an integral part of human evolution and how ideas come along because we communicate and cooperate and each do what we are best at.  If we aren’t consumed with doing everything necessary to survive, we can live easier and better lives. Love this!

What I heard had me see that the idea for this painting came about as a progression:

• It started with doing an exercise in color mixing many years ago. I saw how the relative lightness of the yellow squares created a pattern which gave me the idea that I might want to do something intentional with that at some point.
• Then two years ago when a couple of the painters in my group did this same color exercise, I saw how much fun they were having and remembered this idea. I decided to paint an image – our neighbors’ crab apple tree – one square at a time. Interesting! And a great way to experience that everything is abstract – we paint what we see, shape by shape.
• After this, I went looking for a filter that was more interesting than a grid of squares. I love maps and I love Paris, so why not paint this Parisian flower stall through the map of Paris?
• Which then had me searching through photos for others of Paris that I might paint. I landed on the picture of me and the clock. Pulled out of a scrap book, it was propped up on my desk for more than a year before the idea came to put Paris Roses behind it.
• And I have the beginnings of the next painting – one of me taken at the end of my Paris half-year, painted through the “filter” of the rose window in Saint Chappelle in Paris. I’m a bit shy about it – it seems somewhat self-absorbed. But I’m hardly the first artist to paint herself!

I know that being alive at this point in history and the support of my husband, my mom and millions of others doing what they do frees me to be creative – and that this idea came as a progression and as a product of interaction with the world and with other artists, and being in a safe environment.  But, I also subscribe to what Elizabeth Gilbert shared – which Stephen Pressfield also writes about towards the end of his kick-ass book “The War of Art” – there are unseen forces from the etheric world that feed us creative ideas.

Where we come in is twofold:  we must be available for these ideas to reach us – even intentionally put ourselves in the situations where we best receive them – which for me is often on my morning walks with Bo.  And then we must do something with them – which most likely will mean honing the craft, the skills to be able to use them.  Plus, if we are the channels, the vessels to make manifest these ideas, it takes us actually doing something! There we go, the masculine and the feminine – married again.

And it takes believing that each of us is a creative being, if your heart beats and you are breathing, you have the potential for ideas to come through you.

With my love,

Cara

February 24, 2015 – A season for everything

Wild irises from my hike up the hill with Bo this morning after writing – a bit early this year.

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When I was in my very early 20’s my brother Matt and I did the EST training. Our parents had gotten involved with EST and wanted for – I assume all four of us – to benefit from the value they gained from it.  It’s remarkable for me now to think that a couple of college students (Matt may have still been a teenager) would be willing to spend two weekends, in a meeting room in downtown San Diego with a bunch of mostly middle-aged people seeking transformation.  We were not forced to pee on ourselves and neither did anyone yell at us and tell us we were assholes, as I’ve been asked!  I do remember the exercise where we had to say emphatically “don’t you ever, ever, ever let me catch you brushing that dog’s teeth with my toothbrush again!!!”  Maybe because I was so young and maybe because we were raised in a house that was pretty well expressed, I don’t remember EST having an immediate impact.  But it was the start of what has ended up being a life-long process (so far) of learning about myself, growing my awareness and capacities.

After college, I did the EST Six-Day and then, when I was 23, I was Course Administrator for a subsequent Six-Day – my first real leadership experience. Several years later, I read the “Celestine Prophecy” which opened the door to there being another dimension to our existence.  I learned about the Enneagram and saw right away that I’m a type-two, Giver/Helper. That explained SO much!  I’ve taken the Myers Briggs – I went from an INTJ to years later an ENFJ – who knew you could change so much?!  I found out my top 5 strengths in Strengthsfinder (Connectedness, Developer, Individualization, Empathy and Input).  The last one, Input, explains my compulsion to looking stuff up online!  I read Dan Millman on numerology to find out I’m a 30/3 living a path of emotional expression. Speaking Circles healed my stage fright. I took The Coaches Training Institute’s coach training and their incredible 10-month leadership program that has brought me out of my shell for good!  As part of this, we learned how our essence might be described in our “I Am Type” – mine is: Beauty (think Audrey Hepburn or Jaqueline Onassis) with Charm, Fresh, Natural, and, get this, Smoldering!  (It was fun to realize that last one about myself!)   I uncovered my queenly Noble Qualities through my work with PAX and Alison Armstrong (Freedom, Connection, Illumination, Trust, Joy and Loveliness).  I had my Soul Map done (based on astrology) with Lissa Boles to learn that I’m here to teach that sensitivity is a really a superpower – which rings so true for me.

Add to all of this literally decades of one-on-one spiritual counseling and direction – I’m absolutely compelled to grow my consciousness and understanding of myself and how “it” works – and I’m a junkie for psycho-spiritual systems!  I have been hell-bent, or shall I say heaven-bent, to free myself from my limitations!

In the first part of my life, I could be extremely shy, I blushed painfully readily, and had unbearable stage fright.  I studied Computer Science in college and worked in the tech industry.  I was married to someone who struggled with addiction and could not truly meet me in any meaningful way.  Looking back, it seems I’ve had a complete life-transplant. Except for my beloved family, hardly anything is the same.   I’m so very grateful for the grace that has kept me on this path of transformation.

And then just a couple of days ago, I found myself saying to myself out loud “I’m so coached out” when looking at the emails in my inbox.  It was filled with personal growth teachers’ newsletters, about this telesummit and that program.  I’ve reached my limit, or at least a limit on how much looking at myself I can do.   My spiritual director Sister Mary Neill says that personal growth can actually be violent.   Sounds intense and extreme, but it rings true.  Last week I was talking to my friend Vicki and what came out of my mouth was something like “it seems there is a sweet spot, a balance, between having our heads in the sand, unaware of what else there is and being so focused on growing and changing who we are that we make ourselves wrong for not being “there” yet, which doesn’t honor the fact that evolution is the nature of the universe – where every stage is good and right. Even pain and suffering have their place. Words I’ve heard from Deepak Chopra guide me:  “everyone is doing the best they can at their level of awareness.” Including me.

Laying in bed early this morning, I was thinking about what to write and the word I’d spoken: “balance,” came to my mind.  And then something else right behind it:  “cycle.”  I questioned whether balance is really what we want, or even if it’s possible.  Cycle, or season feels more the nature of our lives.  When I’ve been painting intensely for a while, I need a break.  If that break goes on for too long, I feel the pull back to my work.  I love teaching – leading artists in their process with watercolor, it is what I’m made for.  And after four days in a row this past week, yesterday I was ready to enter receipts and reconcile checking accounts in Quickbooks!

When we were little kids in the 60’s, our parents listened to the folk music that was popular then – Peter Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, the Mama’s and the Papa’s.  Pete Seeger’s song, made popular by The Byrds comes to mind:

• To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
• A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted;
• A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
• A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
• A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
• A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
• A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
• A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
• A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

From a passage, said to be written by King Solomon, in Ecclesiastes – it is ancient wisdom that rings true to me today.  I read it’s the popular song with the oldest lyrics, though Pete Seeger said he did write the six words at the end: “I swear it’s not too late.”  This song was meant to be a call for peace in the Vietnam War era.  That it has come to mind, I’m taking it as a call for peace within me, which is where peace in the world is spawned – from the peace that resides in each of our hearts.

Love,

Cara

February 17, 2015 – Make art, change your life

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In November 2009, my mom and I flew to New York to see an exhibition of Joseph Raffael’s paintings at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in Chelsea.  Joseph and his family used to live in the San Geronimo Valley where I grew up and where my mom and dad still live.  When we were all kids, my older brother, Joe was friends with his son Matthew. They used to ride bikes and go fishing in the creeks together.  Joseph had a studio separate from their house up in the trees in San Geronimo.  I remember being inside it when he had one of his huge oil paintings of the rounded rocks from the bottom of a stream bed up on the wall.  His later watercolors of flowers were, more than anything else, what inspired my mom and I to learn to paint.

The Nancy Hoffman Gallery is in a modern, metal, concrete and glass building.  When we walked up to it, there was a sliver of a view inside where I saw the bright color of this painting. The bright yellow of the dahlia made my heart leap!  Walking in and being surrounded by this artwork was incredible.  His paintings are enormous – about 5 feet by 7 feet – and filled with color and aliveness. Astonishing to experience in person.    After about 45 minutes with them, though, I had this almost sick feeling. I had to leave.  It was so odd.  What I make of this feeling is that I knew that there was some version of these large paintings in me, my huge paintings. And the thought of that completely freaked me out.  I was terrified.

When I was first learning, I painted on a quarter sheet of watercolor paper (11”x15”).  It’s a good size to start with.  But more than fearing I’d be possibly “wasting” a large piece of paper, I was afraid of the larger impact I’d make with bigger paintings. What’s remarkable is that alongside that fear is – and has been – something in me that is called to do just that. I have this strong desire to make beautiful paintings – some of them very big.

In 2008 I went to see the glass artist, Dale Chihuly’s exhibition at the De Young in San Francisco. At the end there was a video about him and his work.  The video showed a whole team of people in silver heat suits handling huge pieces of molten glass.  I was struck by the incredible resources it takes for his work to become manifest – work from just one human being’s vision.  I had the thought that if he can allow himself to be a channel for such inspiration, that it takes so much more than just him to bring it into being, then that capacity is potentially in any of us – including me!  This insight lived in me when I experienced Joseph Raffael’s work in New York.

A few months after the trip to New York, I was in Perry’s Art Supplies and saw heavy sheets of Arches watercolor paper that were 60” by 40.”  I had no idea sheet paper even came that big! (Joseph paints on rolls of lighter-weight paper.)  My heart literally started pounding!  I bought all 5 sheets they had in stock.  It took until the year after that for my biggest painting (to-date!) to come through – Hallelujah.  Here I am standing next to it, so you can get an idea of its scale.

These experiences are part of my unfolding, not just in my creative life, but as a being alive on this planet. Learning the skills of working with our materials – learning our craft – is an integral part of what we do. Painting watercolor is our particular means to an end beyond the artwork it allows us to make.  What resides in our hearts, what we respond to in the world and the messages we receive as we witness creativity in others helps us discover our voice.  There is no one else who is ever going to make the art that is in each of us – not the way we paint when we first start out, not when we’ve been painting for many years.  Every time we put our brush into a pool of paint and touch it to our paper, it’s us.  It carries our mark, like the tone of our voice and the way we sign our name.  Learning to paint gives us a way to show the world who we are.  And the more we do it, the more refined our expression becomes, the more vivid is the illumination of our essence onto watercolor paper.  The consciousness and the spirit of each of us lives in the work we make.

(For the record, watercolor is just one of the uncountable forms this can take. It’s just the one that has chosen me!  Our voice can come through not just other ways of making art, but any act of creation.)

Since I’ve begun to paint and have heeded the call to evolve as a painter, a teacher/guide and as a person – I see and hold myself altogether differently. I experience a level of freedom that I couldn’t imagine was possible for me.  I am more myself than ever.  I have grown through my paintings.  The desire in me to paint carries a wisdom for my life.  Early on it led me out of the grief and disappointment at not having children. Now it is the “why” of my life.  There is an instrument in the center of my chest that registers inspiring beauty – it’s a particular kind of energy.  That energy must be translated into paintings representing how I see it and feel it.  It’s what I’m here for.  It’s why I’m alive.  And it’s made who I am today.

I believe it is the same for all of us.  While we are painting, learning, exploring, operating in the face of our own fears and resistance, we are being transformed. There’s nothing we need to say or do for this to be, it just happens!  Eventually the desire in us to make art that astonishes us, fuels us to do just that. We are changed by revealing ourselves in this way.  And by doing this, we bless others with this view into us.

I invite you to join in.

Love,

Cara

December 9, 2014 – Stepping back

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One of my most treasured friendships is with an extraordinary woman named Randi. We met at the start of her first, my second year of college. We were suite-mates in the dorm El Conquistador in San Diego. She was not quite 17, I was not quite 19.  Though over the decades (!) we have woven in and out of being in regular communication, this is one of those friendships that picks right up where it left off, the closeness and ease never abating. Life took Randi east, to business school at Wharton and a brilliantly successful career in the health-related business world.  She is married to one of the most unique and special guys I know and together they have a remarkable daughter, now in college.  I love that though our life circumstances and even the filters through which we take life in are so incredibly different, we have such a deep appreciation for each other.  She said yesterday in a message to me that she grounds me and I inspire her. What a blessing.

We had a chat on New Year’s Day not quite a year ago that resulted in her coming out in March to learn to paint.  I love sharing painting with her. And she mentors me in how I run my art and teaching business. She’s just unflappable, always looking for the strategy or solution for my current “problem.”

Last week, on the way to the Thursday group, my tall latte cup full of roobois tea and milk went flying all over the front of my car, my pant leg and my new white jacket!  I had slammed on the breaks after looking down for one second and the cars in front of me had stopped for a bus pulling out.  I had gotten myself all frazzled with all that was on my plate: I had six cases of new mugs to put in individual boxes, art to bring in to hang for the open house on the weekend, prints to prepare, the announcement email to craft and send. The calendar orders were coming in along with the questions and problems with the online system. Instead of walking Bo (and myself) I’d spent all morning responding to these emails.  I now have a whole new appreciation for customer service departments!  So, I didn’t think straight about putting my tea in one of my new steel travel mugs with a lid before getting on the road!

My thoughts were all over the place, like flies buzzing around the kitchen, suddenly switching directions!  I knew I had to shift my energy, so I called Randi.

With humor and wisdom, she met me where I was and reinforced something I’ve known – that ultimately, what I need to be doing is primarily painting and teaching –the two things that no one else can do.  Yes.  I need help. Ten minutes into the conversation, I felt like a different person. Even though there wasn’t any help on the way, I had another perspective on the situation. I was no longer down in it, where all I could see were the thick trees. She helped me rise up and see the forest.

It occurred to me that this is parallel to what I see happen in the artists in my groups – and in me – when we paint.  It’s so easy to pick apart what we are doing when we are close in, intimate with the detail.  The critical voice in my head is telling me that the shapes are awkward, the colors are off, that it looks contrived and not natural like the thing I’m attempting to represent. I said all these things to myself about the in-progress painting of persimmons I’m slowly working on above. What it takes is stepping back.  I put the painting across the room and it can be astonishing how different it looks.  It allows me to see the painting that is emerging, in its entirety.  From here I can also see what’s needed – where I want it to be darker or softer or more vibrant.

I love my Thursdays and Fridays. I walk around our space while everyone is working on their paintings, exclaiming how incredible their work is.  They often look at me in faint disbelief.   So, I ask if I can hold up their paintings for them.  Without fail, the rest of the group responds with great appreciation and often specific feedback about what they like.  And then I see on the painter’s face a dawning of the vision that the rest of us have for their work.

It’s a bummer that this is how it goes!  We cannot appreciate our work in the way that others can.  It’s like all the cooks I know (me included) who can’t enjoy the food we’ve prepared like the rest of the diners do.  For me it takes not just physical distance, stepping back, but also time.  Generally it’s a few months after finishing a painting, when it’s up and framed, that the parts of it that still bug me start to fade and I begin to see what everyone else does.

Being down in the details of our paintings, our work is necessary.  It’s being engaged – getting stuff done – the rubber and the road.  But a life-diet of nothing but engagement brings on monotony, tedium, boredom, hyper-criticism and overwhelm. In talking about how we view our artwork, when we are working intently on it, I find myself using the analogy that it’s like looking at our chin with a 10x mirror (yikes), instead of looking back and taking in our whole face, including our shining eyes.  We need perspective to take in the broad view, to see it in context. From here we can see whole other possibilities and respond in a much more useful way.

It’s powerful for me to me to think about my life as a creation, just like a painting.  My moment last week was a 10x mirror moment, and I’m grateful for Randi helping me to step back.  We need each other for this.  As a connection-oriented being, I love that it’s set up this way – that our best life doesn’t come out of operating completely independently (as if that’s really possible, anyway).  We are channels for creation. When we are in the process, as whatever we are creating is actively coming through us, it takes others to reflect to us the beauty of our hard work – or at least to remind us to step back and take a breath.  As we wind up the year it’s a good time to do just this. Yes, I am listening to myself as I write this!

Wishing you moments of reflection in the midst of what can be a busy season.

Love,

Cara

November 4, 2014 – I started the day really crabby…

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I woke up yesterday morning in the worst, dark funk.  I’ve not been sleeping well, but that’s been the case on and off for over two years now.  This felt like something else.  I spent a lot of the weekend doing things that needed doing – stocking the larder (Costco, Trader Joe’s…), laundry, cooking for a family dinner – all things we  have to do – and that I do all the time, quite happily. I’m a very domestic lady and I really like keeping house.  But the studio has been still and dark a whole lot in the last weeks. With preparing for, leading and then recovering my energies from my first retreat and what seems like more teaching/leading than ever, I’ve found the impetus to go make my own art languishing. For the second weekend in a row, I told myself at the start I’d spend a lot of time painting, drawing, playing with color.  And I didn’t.  I just found myself pulled away by other things, with a remote sense that I wasn’t in my studio…

Sunday morning, just after awaking, I found myself tossing about in my head how I might set up a color mixing panel to play with the colors that can be made with three paints/pigments. It’s something I started in the color class that I led in October and has been a puzzle ever since. So hopped out of bed, made my warm lemon water and cozied up in my chair at my painting table.  I sat there in my fuzzy pink bathrobe and furry slippers playing with color arrangements.  I hadn’t even brushed my teeth! It’s something my logic brain loves – a puzzle! I spent an hour sorting out what to do and then mixing colors. Heaven.

I ended up figuring out a way to fill the 12×6 squares in a logical way to explore the range of color.  Who knew that we could make all these gorgeous and varied colors with just three pigments?  There is a part of me that loves just looking at the colors and another loves creating structure out of a jumble.  I’m an organizer-artist!  I had so much fun!  But then the rest of the day, I never circled back.

What all this showed me is that I must, must, must have some kind of play in my art-life, as well as simply giving myself the time to immerse in what I want to paint. I’ve been so focused on my desire to help others free their creativity that I’ve been starving mine in a way. I did finish “Rest” recently, and have been working in bits here and there on a sweet doggy portrait.  I’ve got four paintings that have been started over the past year or so and are nagging me to finish them. This is not what I’m craving. Maybe it’s what is keeping me from painting – and making me crabby – my telling myself I ought to finish them – like finishing my homework, rather than sink my brushes into the rain-dropped Fuyu persimmons that I took while up in Healdsburg, the day after the retreat.  This is the *photo* below (the painting will come):

Tomorrow I am teaching a Photoshop Elements for Artists class for the first time, and I’m not yet all ready (I’m one who gives merit to the saying “if it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done” – it’s just how I roll!).  So, today will hold more time on the computer – so that I can help others do the fun and satisfying composition work with software, before starting to draw and paint.  I did a bunch of work on the persimmon image above. It’s a key part of my process.  I love using technology to compose.  These tools are here at our disposal, so why not?

But – AND, I know that unless I carve out time to play with my brushes, or at least draw the persimmons, I will not be who I need to be tomorrow for them.

Sometime last year, I had this insight:  after having been a teacher and guide for other watercolorists for a few years now, my experience is that this is what I’m made for. There are lots of skilled and inspiring artists in the world.  If I think about how I was put together and the life that has lead me to where I am, being with people in their creative journeys (which are really their life journeys) is what I’m “meant” to do.  What followed was that I knew I must continue to paint my own paintings, because I need to stay in my own art-making process in order to best serve them in theirs, otherwise I’d be out of touch and could not have integrity in what I said to them, especially when it gets hard, which is often!

Today, this insight expands. Yes, I’m meant to teach, but there are paintings in me and they want out!  And when they are not let out, I am a very unhappy human.  There is a quote from a chapter heading in Dawna Markova’s “I Will Not Die an Unlived Life,” attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of St. Thomas.  I recently wrote it out, all colorful and playful.

It’s a bit intense, but Jesus was intense!  I have loved this idea, been emboldened by it, but yesterday and today, I feel it.  I started yesterday by making a huge, long to-do list, and ended up getting hardly any of it got done.  The art-maker had blockaded my “productivity” in protest!  I think it’s worse once we have given our lives, ourselves to our creative expression, once the flow gets really going, it’s much more painful when it’s stopped.  Take heed of that art-maker! She/He is quite a force!

To your creative expression –

Cara

October 14, 2014 – “Rest” – a video progression

[youtube=http://youtu.be/e8JUUO200ec&w=600]

A new *big* painting for the spring – cherry blossoms!

It may be hard to see what’s going on here, but it’s the faint light of the projector on the watercolor paper after I finished drawing. It’s only a small piece of the painting.

Just one layer of the blue sky background in. I think it’s too blue! I used three pigments to make the color more rich: cobalt blue, manganese blue hue and ultramarine violet.

Here’s a corner of the blurry, out of focus parts of the paiting just starting in:

Peonies, roses, a terra cotta pot – “Lustina” accompied me through the winter

Completed painting on 2-26-2014:

Grapes – Finished in time for the Healdsburg art festival

The final progression of the painting I call “Zinoasis:”

September 17, 2013 – New square of grapes

Here’s where I am today – pretty much all the leaves are done (may need to make changes after all else is painted). Working on the vine branches. Scroll down to see the various stages over the past two weeks.

September 11 – All the background done – starting in on leaves.

September 10 – Almost all the background painted.

August 30 – Sausalito Art Festival Gala this evening – just finished “Imagine” (water lily). Starting in on the far background – the central Marin hills from Mike and Julie’s place (former place, they’ve sold and moved to the city). I’m going to have to make friends with the new owner to keep painting her grapes!