Ashlyn and Isabel

My childhood friend Carrie, who along with her brother lived across the street from me when we were kids, now lives in Arizona, got married last year, and had twin girls who were born prematurely in February. They've been having all kinds of problems and I keep up by reading her blog and checking up on facebook. She recently snapped a photo of the girls with her cell phone, and I fell so in love with this particular photo that I messaged her and asked if I could paint it, and then just mail it to her. She teared up and said of course I could.


I started it yesterday and finished today.


  

Kicking it into high geer

Vanessa and Ashley, my friends who are identical twins

So I gotta bring my paintings over to the art store where I'm showing at the end of this month. I'm working on three paintings between now and then. I just banged this one out in a matter of hours. It's funny how some take way longer than others. I had started another one before this, then decided to move on and get a start on this one and just ended up finishing it too. Now I gotta go back and finish the first one. And start the last one.

I've been working in the studio all during my weekends and squeezing in time before and after work too. Not only that but I have all these other obligations (gotta dog/house sit for someone in a couple weeks) and invitations (bbq's, birthday parties, etc etc) and I am pretty overwhelmed. This art show though is my first priority. I sincerely wish I had all the time in the world to be able to accommodate every opportunity that ever comes my way but it's just not like that for me right now.

All I can say is, I CANNOT WAIT for vacation in a little over a month. I don't think I've ever needed one this badly in my life.

Better!

Feeling better this week! Gonna be starting several paintings at once this week if I wanna get a move-on! Can't wait to get back to the studio and into my oil paints...

I'm glad I was born with a built-in sense of guilt and anxiety if I haven't been painting in a while. HA!

Life Without Painting Class

Well hello there, all my legions of readers.

It's my second week in to "summer vacation."  Life feels incredibly more laid back, even though I still work a full-time schedule.  So laid back even, that my body decided that this was a prime opportunity to get sick. So I had a fever for a couple days and missed work. But even though the fever went away a few days ago, I am still faintly congested, and I have never been more exhausted in my life. Really, I cannot remember ever feeling this tired and I'm not exaggerating. Mentally I'm great; I'm looking forward to my art show, going away on vacation, and just life being awesome. But physically I'm completely wiped out. I think of all the paintings I need to get finished before July, but my body basically forces me to lay low. I'll get up in the morning after having slept like the dead, make coffee, do a couple things around the house and then after a couple of hours of being up, I just want to go back to bed. It's weird and I want to snap out of it so I can get things done. It's even crossed my mind that what if I have mono? I suppose I'll wait a few days and if I still feel exhausted I'll go to the doctor.

Hopefully by next week I'll feel energized enough to get these things started:

-Commission for a friend
-Painting of the twins
-Sink series

Until then I'm going to listen to my body and rest up.

ohhhhh yeah baby

bittersweet

so it's the last day of the semester. i feel both a huge sense of relief and a little sad. i think in some ways this has been the best semester, even if it was really challenging overall. i made the most friends and painting class was pretty much just like going to hang out with my friends (teacher included) and paint together.

tomorrow's the opening of the student art show.  we all plan on staying an hour, then going out to this cafe in hartford afterwards. i'm looking forward to it.

this sink painting was my final painting for class. the teacher basically let us go free for the last assignment and i had this idea that i wanted to paint at least one kitchen sink full of dishes. but i think i'm actually going to go ahead and make it a series.

now that it's summer, i get to paint whatever the hell i want. i painted more than a couple of paintings that sucked this semester, mostly because i wasn't too crazy about the topic, or i was tired and didn't give it my all, or whatever. but now that it's summer, i'm excited to paint this portrait of my friends from class who are identical twins. i have a nice, giant canvas to put it on, too. i also have to paint a commission for a friend that's been hanging over my head since january.  i hope to have at least 3 new pieces by july, for my art show that month. i'm just glad to be keeping busy with painting. i want to paint forever.

other than that, life is confusing. i'm unsure about a lot of things. it's good to have this one thing in my life that is a constant, and can come with me, wherever i end up.

not high art. high on art.

i was just thinking today about that book, i know why the caged bird sings by maya angelou. i was thinking about its title and how profound and beautiful it is. why does the caged bird sing? to make life worth living perhaps....

i read that book once when i was 20. i'll always remember because i was living in southern california at the time, and i was on a bus from los angeles to las vegas. i was going to meet my younger sister, christine, who just arrived at the university of nevada at las vegas, it was the first weekend of her freshman year, and it was orientation time, and no one else from our family besides me could feasibly be there with her. so i took the hours-long bus ride to be with her. i didn't mind one bit. i chalked it up to adventure, another experience to add to my list.

i'll always remember being on that bus for hours and hours, just driving through desert with literally nothing around, and then BAM, arriving in las vegas. you could see las vegas in the far distance, miles away.  all the land was flat with nothing around, so obviously you could see it coming for miles and miles. it was so surreal to be surrounded by nothing for so long, then suddenly to be surrounded by bustling city life, everything there so out of place and odd.  what a surreal fucking city.

and walking around with my sis. it was like walking around in an oven. the heat was almost too much to bear and it was DRY, man. i'd never experienced anything like it.