Workshop weekend with Michelle Chrisman

I had a fabulous weekend of painting and learning. My painting style had been getting pretty tight lately and I wanted to loosen up. Harwood Art Center was offering a workshop with Michelle Chrisman that looked like just what I needed. With only six students I got tons of personal attention. Michelle has a very calm, positive teaching style. I practiced using a pallet knife and finished the top painting of a Corrales front yard, 18 x 24, in just 3 hours.

Grand Canyon in "Monsoon Season"

The travel books are right, nothing prepares you for your first view of the Grand Canyon. We stayed on the South Rim for 3 days and were leaving as the Labor Day visitors were streaming in.
 I got to paint twice with my buddy Peg Usner who was visiting from Louisiana. Both times were in the afternoon rain but the rangers were very accomodating and let me paint on the lodge porch and in the geology museum.

Down By the Abita River

For this weeks class we met under the Rails-to-Trails bridge in Abita Springs. Just a block away there is the noise of a small town with big trucks barreling through town but here it was quiet and peaceful and we could just enjoy the moment.

October Plein Air Painting Class

Thursday was my first time teaching plein air. There were five students in the class and we met at Fountainbleau State Park. After a week of rain we were lucky to have a lovely sunny day. On Monday and Wednesday I had done some practice painting. I find rainy day paintings a little gloomy but several people liked my darkest version of the scene.

New Mexico Art

 I am privileged to be juried into the Placitas New Mexico Holiday Show and Sale the weekend before Thanksgiving.  I've got a little stockpile of art at my house there.
 The churches of New Mexico are always eye catching to artists. They are also wonderful to visit, especially the one in Chimayo. On a recent visit we met the priest who has been there for 50 years. What a wonderful giving man. He escaped the communists in Spain and has dedicated his life to the parishioners and to improving the sanctuary

grounds ever since. He pointed with pride to all the trees he had planted.

Fun with Torn Paper

In the Carol Nelson workshop I took this year we learned to create colorful papers and then turn them into paintings. At first I found it frustrating but now I am enjoying it. The first step is an acrylic underpainting. Once I am happy with the painting I can start glueing torn paper in matching colors on top of the painting. This probably takes 5 times longer than the acrylic underpainting did but the result is so cute and original

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Down on the Farm

A customer that had bought a cow painting asked me to do some companion pieces. She had many happy memories of summers on her Grandparents farm, a Mennonite dairy farm near the Blue Ridge Mountains. She was sad that her Grandmother had left the farm for a nursing home and that her children would not experience the farm. Someone just last week had

said to me that we buy things that remind us of where we want to be. I had never thought about that but she is right, since I made the decision to move to New Mexico I've been buying things like an antique horse collar and other rustic Western things.