My zoo........

I thought that we had enough pets but apparently, I am wrong. Yesterday we add three more for a grand total of eight. I think I stuttered when I tried to type that number. Anaïs has inherited Bumble a hermit crab and thought it was lonely so we picked up two more. She named them Fuzz Ball, and Shelly. They are rather fun and she keeps them in her room with Flicky her fish.

Anaïs is certain she had trained her fish, Flicky, to come to her when she calls him. I am under the impression that the fish really is trained to come up for food. She bought Flicky with her own money and washes his bowl every week. She takes very good care of him. If only she cleaned her room as well, I would be very happy.


Then in Parker's room we have Speedy a uromastyx. Last year Speedy got loose in the front yard and after many hours searching we thought he (or she) was gone for ever. It was a bad day in the house. Parker was mad at his sister for loosing him and I was mad at Verne for letting Anaïs take Speedy outside. Well, the anger was short lived because three days later he was found in the garage hiding behind a broom. He was happily returned to his sandy tank.

Then my two amazing cats. I am a cat person and I have had these two babies for YEARS. Homme is 20 this year and Kato (Homme's son) is going to be 18 on Labor day. I am not sure how much time Homme has left. It is going to be very hard for me to let him go.







Last but not least is Clifford, our rescue dog. He has decided that he must not ever be more than a few inches from me almost all day. He is lovable and cries at the top of the stairs if I do not let him come downstairs to the studio with me. This is how I am usually painting, in my PJs and with an 85# lab curled up next to me. I try to get him to move but he likes to be right next to me. Sometimes he gets some paint on him. In this photo he was painted with Dog Safe food coloring. The kids thought he needed some color.

Water Series....brought back

I thought I was done with my "Water Series". I loved it and at the time I was painting the series it had great meaning and an amazing calming effect when I needed it the most. The series was born right around the time Verne was laid off. I needed to paint it and it helped bring back a sense of being I was so very much lacking. I sold my last piece, "H20", and was happy to see it go to a good home.

Very early this year, I applied to a juried show with paintings from my "Water Series" and just found out that it was accepted for a very big show. Therefore, I am having to dust off the series and bring it back for the show. I am very happy with how this latest piece came out but it brought back those horrible memories of trying to keep the family afloat during that 2.5 years of no long term work, CRAPPY under-insurance of the self-insured, and never knowing if we would have enough to buy food for the week.

So I present "Aqua" in a very bittersweet return of a series. I only hope I can reclaim the feelings the series originally brought me

A death in my studio.....

Yes...it's true my favorite and only palette knife I paint with snapped today while I was cleaning it. I must have let out a very load "Oh No" because my kids came running in and asked if I was OK. I have at least 20 different palette knives that I use to grab paint, mix paint, but I never paint with them. They did not have the same feel and therefor were never considered worthy of using.




So I took my broken friend to Artmart and tried to find something that could replace my lost treasure. I felt like I was Goldilocks in the the three bears. Papa Bear's handle was to large for my grip. Mama Bear's handle was to soft, and baby Bears was just not right. I ended up buying all three to try them out. If I find a suitable replacement, I am going to go out and buy a duplicate so when it breaks ten years from now, I hopefully will not go into a panic. So far I have tried all three and am not too happy. The angle from the handle to the knife edge is different than my fallen friend. For all my fellow painters out there, I know you understand my pain. Because loosing a favorite brush feels just as bad.

So now my knife is sitting on my computer desk. Many a fine painting it has produced. So RIP my beautiful little paint covered friend.

A bird in my tent

Sunday morning I came back to my tent to find this cute but very scared bird in my tent. It must have been trying to seek shelter from the evening storms. See post below and you will some of the destruction from UN-weighted tents and poor ezup owners whom did weight but the water dumped their tents.

After I took off my front wall and put up the awning, it finally escaped. I only wish I could have gotten a better photo. It kept flying from place to place and would only land for a second or to.

Weights and Ez-ups ( and all similar tent ez designs)

I thought nothing could frustrate me more than an easy up with out weights but....I have found something that agrivates me more. The information tent, that is manned and put up by the show directors themselves was not weighted. It is very fortunate that the tent did not wipe out the very nice woodcarvers tent. It landed only a yard away from his tent and would have surely caused a lost wall or a bent frame.

The cardinal Rules for ez-up easy down owners.

1. Invest in clamps - theses will help you in a rain storm
2. Always take your art out if there is a possibility of storms
3. WEIGHTS WEIGHTS WEIGHTS
4. Unique things that due work for rain - hula hoops - pool tube floats - See number 1. for the easiest soulution. Anything that will pull your tent top taught so water does not pool. The water fills up the top and drops your tent.

This seasons weather has been insain and anyone doing shows in the midwest have scene tons of distruction. Even the more heavy duty tents are going down. Please everyone ban together and demand your neighbors tent is weighted. Personlly, I can forgive a weighted tent for running into mine but an unweighted tent is unforgivable. Check out my bottom picture. They did not weight this lite-dome and it broke the poor neighbors tent. Sadly, most of their work was ruined.

I just got my happifeet ( heavy duty tent weights) and love them all except they were not designed for pro-panels in mind but I will figure out how to make it work. So if anyone is interested I will sell my PVC/concrete weights at a bargin price.

Art Fair

I just returned from a art fair and I had a great time despite the pouring rain we set up in. Yes, I said we. My son Parker got to come along with me. He has begged for years to come and I told him he needed to be 10 before he could come. He is actually a great help and I love the company. We had tons of laughs on the trip.

I had three different people come up and ask me about the red painting I had hanging on my front wall when I was there in 2007. After looking at records I believe it is the one pictured above. It is titled "Good Night Nin" and sold a little bit later in Louisville, KY. I really should start taking pictures of my booth at each event but I am sure that I will forget to do it or forget to label where it was taken.

It was great seeing some of my clients from the past and meeting new ones. I met a wonderful couple again. The husband is still sad about a painting that got away. I was fortunate enough to visit their house and see their fantastic art collection. I loved hearing about each piece and what captured their eye about it. There are so many people that want the art to match something in their room with out ever thinking outside of the box and seeing that yes, a red painting would look good in a predominately tan room. Or hearing that they love my work but their style of furniture is to traditional for abstract art. For the later, I usually ask them if they have ever looked at a Architectural Digest? I have scene so many images of a wingback chair with a Pollock, Richter, or other equally non-objectional abstract painting hanging above it and they look great together. So thank you Matt and Judith for being the type of collectors that let the art speak to you and could care less if the art matched a certain throw pillow on your couch!!!


PS.........I changed the photo out. A client of mine took a picture of it last year and sent me the jpeg....Thank you- Jack!

the new iphone

I bought my iphone in April this year and I love it. But, I am a little ticked off that the new one came out for $199 and I paid $399 back in April. I contacted the At&T store the same day the new price had been posted and they said that they would not give a rebate or trade for the new iphone.

New Painting from my line series

I am finally trying to catch up with photos on my art work. I had a ton of fun with this. I love it and hope you all do as well. It is simply titled "Lined". This is a beginning of a new series based on a commission painting I did for a wonderful lady living in the Sheraton Hotel in St. Louis. She loves color and had a large majority of art that carried hearts in them. I came up with the idea to do a large heart all out of multiple colors of lines out of twelve 12x12 canvases. I cannot wait to see where this series goes.

Lewis Black

OK OK OK.... I cannot believe it. I love Lewis Black and have been waiting forever to see him. Well, he has finally made it to St. Louis and I will not be home. The only thing that is making this better is that I will be in Chicago for my favorite event of the year. If it had been any other event I would have canceled to see him.

Since I cannot make it, I ask all St Louis people to go for me. The way I figure it is if he gets a huge St. Louis audience he might come back again sometime. So buy tickets here and then let me know how great it was.

The Fish

Well....I do know the fish have nothing to do with my art. But, I like them and after hours of debating what my blog redo should look like and looking at thousands of templates I came across these fish. They made me happy. In a way, they are apart of my art. I paint best when I am happy so fish it is.

I also like that the picture poses a question. Are the fish jumping to a glass that is more than half full or are they jumping to the glass that is half empty? The optimist in me believes they are jumping to freedom and their glass is half empty.

So what do you think of the fish??