I was up in the wine country – the Valley of the Moon in Sonoma late in the year.

My sweetie suggested I check out the Christmas tree farm on Moon Mountain.

Driving back down the road I saw along the way – someone’s home, not a big vineyard – grapes near the fence. The sun was coming through them so that the colorful leaves were it through. It was one of these moments I write about all the time in these painting stories. Something I see is so astonishingly beautiful, I must stop and take a bunch of pictures.

It’s curious to me why sometimes it takes a few years before then I make paintings from these photos. For whatever reason, I started it right after the Sausalito Art Festival over Labor Day weekend, in the hopes that I’d be able to jam to get it finished in 2 ½ weeks, to show it at the Healdsburg art festival, like I did the previous year with Zinoasis.

The name of this painting had already occurred to me. I liked the double meaning of  “rest” – both the remainder, the leftovers, the grapes passed by, and the season the vines were heading into, not working to push out new canes and leaves or ripen fruit, when they go to sleep.

This is something that I was finding myself craving more than ever before – deep, restful sleep – as well as some time to be not feeling like I need to be producing something – some rest! Given that I was considering calling this painting Rest, why would I bust my butt to paint it?  So about a week before the next festival I gave up.  I took another month to finish it, enjoying painting it in the spirit of its name.

October 2014 – 29″x29″ – Watercolor on paper

More Vineyards

AmaZin

AmaZin

The spirit of this painting has been patient and faithful. The grapes are Zinfandel, from my friend Sue's ranch in Cloverdale. After Zintopia, it's my second painting from there. The way this patch of grapes is postioned on the hill, the sunlight shows off their...

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Napa

Napa

It was late autumn, the day I drove home after a lunch at Greystone in St. Helena.  On the side of Highway 29, the main route through the Napa Valley, lies vinyard after vinyard. The afternoon sun was low in the sky and as it shone through the reds and yellows of the...

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Sonoma

Sonoma

The path to a painting is rarely direct—especially this one. It began with a photo I took in early fall 2008, just a year after I started showing my art. I was driving back from an errand at the North Bay Gallery in Sonoma when I spotted white grapes along Highway 12....

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Zintopia

Zintopia

Zinfandel grapes from a new vineyard! When my brother Mike and his wife Julie sold their house I lost my source of Zinfandel grapes to paint.  Where I was going to find them when I could no longer pop by to see my brother and sister-in-law.  I forgot that we live in...

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Juicyfruit

Juicyfruit

On a sunny Sunday morning, driving home from an overnight at a campout my husband goes on every August, in my peripheral vision on the side of River Road, were these grapes. Their orange color stood out - orange grapes?  I pulled over on the lumpy-grass shoulder and...

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Zinoasis

Zinoasis

These grapes grew in a tiny vineyard (29 plants) on a red-dirt hillside in my brother Mike's backyard in San Anselmo, where he and his wife Julie created a lovely idyll - table and chairs under a bright red umbrella and the canopy of a walnut tree. They had tomatoes...

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Summer Zinfandel

Summer Zinfandel

There's nothing like a deadline to light a fire under my butt. I really wanted to submit a painting to the California State Fair Art of Wine exhibit the summer of 2011. A painting of mine had been accepted in that category the previous three years in a row and I...

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Late Summer Zin

Late Summer Zin

Late in the summer of 2009 I visited Mike's yard to see what his zinfandel grapes were like when they were nearly ripe. BJ and I climbed all over his hill in the evening light, having to climb under the netting draped over them - more sugar in the grapes and the birds...

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Zin of Many Colors

Zin of Many Colors

Here's my first attempt to go big.  It is my second painting of my brother Mike's zinfandel grapes .  Mid-Summer Zin, my first, was a hard act to follow.  At the time I painted this, it was a huge stretch And I worked on it fiercely to get it done in time to be framed...

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Mid-Summer Zin

Mid-Summer Zin

My brother, Mike and his wife, Julie had a small hillside backyard in San Anselmo, terraced with stone and covered with rows of Zinfandel vines. Each autumn, he made the grapes into wine with our brother Matt, a winemaker. I had been waiting and wanting to paint...

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