Walking my dog I saw this bit of graffiti on a post near my home. This little bit of joy made my day.
Evening
This is my neighborhood — Carroll Creek linear park is right by my home. I walk my dog in this area a lot. It’s such a fun and interesting place to live. There’s always something going on or something to see.
Art on the wall
My white-on-white piece, Restored, is on display at the Frederick Art Center gallery, as part of a group show called ephemera/enduring. I am quite new at showing my art and get a kick out of seeing it on the wall!
Born and hastening
Sometimes a painting makes me think of something, and then I find a poem about that something to develop a title. This one made me think of a spring rain.
In Christina Rosetti’s poem Spring Rain, I found these lines:
There is no time like Spring that passes by,
Now newly born, and now
Hastening to die.
The quick transition between birth and hastiness is compelling — it’s hard to remember to slow down in between. I titled this painting “Born and Hastening.”
My notebooks
I write all kinds of things in notebooks. Small ones that I keep in my purse, larger ones on my desk, one with fancy paper in my studio, and a spiral bound one for work. I love to write in notebooks. I made a commonplace book for what I wrote in notebooks in 2023.
Cleaning Day
My dog and I spent a couple hours in the studio today — he napped and I cleaned. I found this pallette in a drawer. When I decided to try painting, I bought some supplies from someone on Facebook Marketplace who was giving up painting. Among paint, brushes, some canvases, there was this pallette. I knew from the bit of painting I had done that I would never use it — and it already has some paint dried on it. So I painted the whole thing white and then added some more splats of paints. I dusted it off, and I think I’ll hang it on the door to great visitors to the studio!
How many coats?
3 hours of studio work, and this is what I have to show for it. I paint on wood. These have been sanded and “primed” with gesso, a type of paint that is extra sticky and has some tooth and chalkiness that both seals the wood and gives the coming layers of paint something to grab onto. I alternate sanding with gesso, layer after layer, until I can no longer see the wood grain underneath and the surface is smooth. These all need at least one more coat of gesso before they are ready. A couple of them will probably need as many as 3 more coats. I like this work and having these beautiful surfaces to paint on is exciting!