Kiwi Vine

In this painting I wanted to keep a very simple composition, but also to have a portion of the painting be detailed but quiet and subtle. Outside my living room window is a huge kiwi vine that I planted several years ago. The wind blows and the branches of this plant are always waving at me. When winter comes all the leaves die and blow, one by one, away.

Delivery Guys

One of the hard parts, for me anyway, about being an artist is all the time alone. I can get busy and not leave the house for several days. Things start to become weird after about a day and a half... sooner if I don't change out of my pajamas till lunch...but why bother dressing - no one is around. We live in a rural area, so apart from the dog, it can become pretty quiet. Then the dog barks and a truck pulls up. The crunch of gravel, a door slam and footsteps up to my door. Normally they just knock and leave it, but today I open it before he has a chance to knock. A UPS delivery person breathing hard from trudging up my driveway with a huge roll of paper ( we make art prints sometimes) is standing at my door. We talk - anything to have a conversation- a bit of news, a remark exchanged about a baseball game that I actually have not seen or particularly care about, but feign I do just to enjoy the banter on the subject. We talk for a few minutes then "See ya! "off he goes. Today I ran with three women friends and they all were talking about how the UPS drivers are really by FAR the most attractive of all the delivery guys because they wear those cute brown shorts. I wondered if UPS figured this dress code would increase their business with their women customers.

Sometimes it's just better to leave the studio and go out into the world.

Collages

I have been making these tiny paper collages in preparation for doing 3 of them quite large on panel. These are about 3" or 4" I have so far made 10. These three seem to go together and are my favorite ones so far.