This is a larger format painting (12"H x 16"W) from a photo I took while at a painting workshop in the Skagit Valley; a gorgeous farming community in Washington State,  crisscrossed with sloughs and dotted with classic old barns.

I started with a sepia India ink underpainting with a colorful watercolor underpainting laid on top. Then I added pastel and hit a wall harder than a crash dummy!

What went wrong? Is this a trash bin candidate? Will I ever paint another landscape again? Oh the insecurities of the artist!

Several wise artist friends kindly said, "When a painting is not working, it is usually a composition problem." So I set it aside and took another look at it several months later. Being a wee bit stubborn and loving the feel of this scene, I scrubbed off the pastel and started again.

This was feeling better but the composition is still off. My eye would go to the water spot and "fall in a hole", staying there rather than moving around the painting. And if my eye did move off the water, the composition led me zipping off the page to the left. Poopers!

Luckily, adding the tall grass, flowers and a dramatic sky did the trick! Sometimes, stubbornness pays off!

I send an image of each of my paintings as soon as I finish to a dear friend as a structure to help keep me creating in my studio. She fell in love with "Winter Solstice"  and "had to have it", purchasing it before I could get it on the website. How fun!

It's ironic. All my life I dreamed of "someday I will have time to have fun/play/do what I really want" though I never could put my finger on what that would look like.  Now that I have discovered creating art and interpreting beauty is what I was looking for, I sometimes have trouble getting myself into my studio. Hard to believe that balancing my checkbook or doing the dishes will get done before my art. Checking in with my friend when I finish a painting - and now checking in with you! - is a gentle nudge to get me in my studio.

Do you ever struggle to make a priority those activities that make your heart sing? How do you make sure they stay at the top of your list?

During the holidays, I read this beautiful book built around a 350 year old painting, The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius. Malcolm Jones writes a thoughtful article about the book and seeing the original painting in "Face to Face With ‘The Goldfinch".

Having been so business/production/goal oriented all my life, I struggle with my wee small (mean) voice that says, "Producing art is, at best, a selfish act and, at worse, a frivolous waste of time." A very wise friend asked me if, during the many days I spent this June in art museums in Paris and Vienna, whether at any point I thought "What a waste of space" or "That guy should have gotten a real job"? I answered a horrified "Of course not!". Added to my admiration of the talent, heart, passion and courage evidenced in the art I was lucky to see in person, was the awe I felt that these fragile works of art had survived for hundreds of years.



As the author says, "For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time -- so too has love... It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next."

We had a wonderful time at the Northwest Pastel Society's Exhibition opening last Friday evening. With a large group in attendance, there was great food, conversation and new friends made.

The art was amazing. We have such talented pastel artists here in the Northwest and I was honored to participate.

Kudos to the show organizers - they did a beautiful job!

Please join me for the opening reception of the Northwest Pastel Society 2013 Member Exhibition on November 21st from 5pm to 8pm. I am honored to have two of my original paintings included in this exhibition which will run November 21 through December 28, 2013. Check out my blog postings "Summer Blooms Inspiration" and "Creating Peonies" to see the how the two paintings evolved.

The exhibit will be held at the Schack Art Center in Everett, WA which opened in 2011 as the new home of the 38 years old Arts Council of Snohomish County. Inside the Schack Art Center, you will find exhibits with diverse artwork from locally and internationally known professional artists, a wonderful gift shop and a state of the art glassblowing studio.

Established in 1988, the Northwest Pastel Society has grown from a small nucleus of Seattle area artists interested in promoting pastel as a fine art medium to a membership drawn from throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. It is wonderful to have my work exhibited with these talented artists! I hope to see you there!

I love to garden. It is like painting but you get to play in the dirt. I never know what is going to come up from year to year (I am a very random gardener!) just like I never know where my paintings will lead me.

I sketched this scene in late summer when the hydrangeas were the stars of my garden. I loved how they framed the fountain and climbed up through the tree limbs. The late afternoon sun lit up the maple tree while the rest of the garden was in cool shadow - sort of a spotlight on mystery.

I did a quick sketch  to create a composition I liked, laid in some darker values with a pastel pencil and fixed the drawing so that adding the watercolor underpainting would not make the drawing run down the page. Then I went a little crazy with the watercolor, letting the colors drip and run together to see what would happen (just like the way I garden!).

Allowing the underpainting to lead me to the pastel colors needed, I started filling in general areas, working on all parts of the painting. With my butterfly personality (oh no, another garden metaphor!) moving around the painting keeps me from getting bored or too focused in one spot.

The best part is filling in the detail and watching the painting emerge. The hardest part is knowing when to stop!

Several years ago I planted peonies around the fountain in my garden. When they were in riotous bloom for the first time, I took a photo to remind me how amazing the colors were. How could I capture that? How could I make it feel like you wanted to crawl into the bloom, like a honeybee?

Looking closely at the picture, I sketched in the flowers on sanded paper. I often use sanded paper (yep, feels like sandpaper!) which grabs the pastel pigment and allows multiple layers of color to be added.

I then used soft pastels to create an underpainting, which helps set the tone of the painting and establishes the basic values (light and dark) that give it a sense of depth.

Then the fun part - playing with each petal, how to make the colors jump off the page, how to make the negative space (the dark behind the flower) become an element in its own right - which involved music and (I admit) some dancing in my studio. I hope you enjoy the results!

Make your plans now to spend a delightful fall weekend driving through the region’s historic communities and meandering along back roads while enjoying wonderful art, talking to the artists  and watching them at work in their studios. Gather a carload of friends, share the gas, see how and where the artists work, find your favorite pieces of art and discover Southwest Washington.