Yay! And yipes!

Yay! "Squid's Garden" sold!  According to the new owners, it will be hanging in their living room.  I won't be retiring on the proceeds of the sale, but tis better than the proverbial sharp stick in the eye.  I've now officially been paid to paint. 

In other visual news, because my computer died, and I am, at the moment, on an old version of Internet Explorer, I know that the blog looks darn ugly in 6.0.  Yipes.  It may be coming time to do an overall of my online presence. 

And for those of you keeping track, I haven't forgotten about the post on music...still settling into the new digs. And doing a little happy dance.

Yes, I'm ignoring you.

Blog has been sorely neglected in the interest of packing...I'm returning to Nuclear Free Zone Takoma Park, having signed a lease on a cute little apartment that may or may not be able to contain all the art supplies I've accumulated over the last few months.  The line between artist and packrat is very, very small as it turns out.  I'll be buff from moving all those boxes though. 

As part of the avoiding-packing project, I found some old framing that (miraculously) was just the right size for "Squid's Garden."  I only had to cut down one side. Now that it's looking so fancy (gold, no less), I might try to sell it in the estate sale on Saturday. You never know what folks might buy.

Upcoming blog (post move): Ruminating on my odd relationship with music. Random notes are as yet too incoherent even for me. 

Kid Canvas Transformation

It takes a certain amount of hutzpah to start a blog, to proclaim I am So Sure that people out there in the world want to hear what I have to say. In normal life, we can see people's eyes glaze over if we wander into murky territories and clam up, but here in blog land, the rambling never stops.

Of course, it also takes a certain amount of guts to step out on the stage and give folks opportunity to take pot shots at my art. On that note, this weekend, I went out to Lewes, DE, again, to the Novak beach house to collect some prints, walk on the beach, and (the most fun) play with oil paints in the studio there. I have permission to work on unfinished canvases, so I started with a canvas that was clearly identified as a Kid Canvas (that is, a canvas Karen donated over to her children, presumably so she could do a little of her own painting as well).

So it started out looking like this:

This is what I did to it:

It's, uh, abstract. I'm thinking about calling it Squid's Garden.  Oil paints are way more forgiving than arcrylics in some ways, as you have more time to mess around with them, and blend them into each other.  I haven't quite figured out how to work with all the mixing, stand oil, stinky turpentine, etc., and different kinds of consistencies and brushes and such, but I had a great time experimenting with the possibilities, and occassionally pausing to dance to some very bad pop music on the radio.  A good weekend all around.