Catching Up!

After many months "off" of blogging, I'm back at it.  I have many reasons for letting things slide since I started this blog almost a year ago.  The major one is a bummer, to put it mildly.  My sweet granddaughter, Lily, relapsed with leukemia last fall - after over 5 years of being off treatment from the first go round.  There was such a minuscule chance of relapse happening after that long off treatment - but still, it happened.  She will go through over two years of treatment.  I hate that her childhood and now teen years have been so affected by cancer.  However, as we all learn, there are things we cannot control.  I would take the cancer for her if I only could.  I can't, though, and so all I can do is be there for her and for my other granddaughters and for my children.

And while I have certainly painted since then, I just haven't had the heart to write much about it.  So I will do some catching up here about projects I've done in the past few month.  I've taken some art classes and had some art lessons.  I've painted a good bit - trying new techniques and styles.

What got me back to blogging was reading and thinking about daily painting - painting small sizes, with limited content - and daily.  Alla prima - completed in one session.  By not investing a lot of time and effort into each painting, the artist is able to do more experimentation, and thus learns what works and what doesn't work much more quickly.  I will grow into my "style" of painting more quickly as well.  I read recently that an artist must paint regularly for at least three years before even beginning to discover his/her own unique style.  If that is true, then I'd best get busy!

One of my favorite paintings so far is a small painting of a Carolina Wren.  I have it hanging in my newly designed upstairs art studio.

"Carolina Wren" - oil on 5 x 7 canvas panel,  February 2017

It's on a small 5 x 7 canvas panel.  I like the background of this painting - the bright colors make me happy.  He a chubby little wren - peering out at the world with new eyes and planning his adventures.  I like it!  This little Carolina Wren is the first painting I'm willing to sell.  It's original, and I like it.