Wild Turkeys and the flu

laying on the couch checkin email a glance out the sliding doors reveals these two birds plus a few more off in the brush.
this flu is no fun! i ache, i cough, i sleep. uggghh.

1 below zero 7:30 am

yesterday morning COLD and exquisitely beautiful this shot captures a bit of what our little spot on this earth looked like for a short while

Started last October

This painting was started last October. I liked how I started it and I wasn't certain about how to complete it. So it sat for a while and was stared at until last week when I figured out how to complete it. It was a matter of the trees in the background--how to deal with the form... along with the tops of the grouping of trees. I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep the turquoisey bottom, ultimately I decided I liked it.





This is another one that's been sitting for a while. First I should say the sky is more purple than it looks here. Ali (my daughter) really loves this, although she liked it before I worked into it today...so maybe she doesn't really love it anymore! I have mixed feeling about it...it's one of those things. Sometimes I love a painting immediately upon completion, other times they grow on me. Other times, I'm not satisfied with a painting, and I don't look at it for a long time (months or more), then I either like it or can figure out what I'm not happy with and work into the piece or just put it in the pile of paintings that get gessoed and re-used.

Juxtaposition and Progression

This hibiscus was a gift from my children for Mother's Day last year. (I posted some pics of it this summer.) A few days ago, I noticed it had the beginnings of a bloom. Today (such a shame...I was home.. no school again...this time due to ice) it bloomed! Very odd and beautiful contrast to the gray day.
This barn is down the road and is something I look at every morning on my way to work. I took a couple of pics w/ my cell phone, then printed out the pics. The so-so quality of the pics lent themselves nicely to artistic license and freedom with paint application and color decisions. So this one is kindof a study...loosening up, getting familiar w/ the territory. This is the second painting of "the barn down the road". Loosening up some more and I played with scratching into the paint to show the tree branches. The blues are more purple in real life.
Third painting. Simplification of subject. The sky was busier, but I changed it.