Then I decided to pick up a few watercolor pencils, and add them to my sketches… I’ll spare you the eleven other sketches, but the bottom line is:  I’m having so much fun I have to tear myself away from my sketchbook – and my dog – and get back to the easel!

Painting all those little birds — 11 in all — really paid off, because they provided me with great practice.   I was creating this painting with palette knives (the underpainting as well), adding an acrylic skin of a portion of a bird’s nest at the bottom, with decorative paper here and there, and stamps with a flourish…and then a bird simply called out to be put on the canvas.  Not the smaller songbirds I had been painting, but a more dramatic rose-breasted grossbeak.   He and the branch simply flowed off my brush; it was almost an other-worldly experience, like my hand was being guided.  As a spiritual person, and I have to say that something more powerful than I created that bird.

And I believe that even more because the painting was selected by the juror to be in the show.  This bird has a message for me…

The painting is called “I Rule.”  He just looks like he is the ruler of all he surveys; elephants and nests and trees and berries galore — and mysteries yet to be discovered.

Okay then – I made it!  Now there is another deadline tomorrow:  Art On Paper, a national juried exhibition, also through the MFA.  Wish me luck!

Deciding to paint Shannon was an easy distraction though – she’s beautiful, and I needed a gift for her loving walker/sitter (I call her Shannon’s nanny!).  She’s a minimalist, and lives an uncluttered life (aren’t you envious?!), so I could think of nothing better as a Christmas gift than a painting of a beloved pooch!

Let’s hope the next post provides progress towards one of my immediate goals, or I will have to admit to a slight problem with focus.  (Me?  Lose focus?  Never!  I’m absolutely certain there is an excellent reason for painting cartoon lambs and giraffes when the deadline for the juried competition I want to enter is tomorrow…)

Anyone have any suggestions for staying creatively on track?  I’d love to hear them!

I currently have a piece  - The Dancer – “hanging” in a virtual show;  the MFA Online Member Juried Exhibition, juried by Sue Ann Lasher of West Annapolis Artworks & Fine Framing.

I was honored to have one of my paintings selected for Maryland Federation of Art‘s National Juried competition “Strokes of Genius,” juried by Daniel Shay of the National Gallery of Art in DC. We had a lovely chat about my painting, and when I asked what he responded to, he said it was poetic and cerebral. Wonderful comments! For this series, I put my brain in the passenger seat and let my heart take the wheel. And while I was surprised at the descriptor of cerebral, I did plan this series and how each painting would develop, which was a first for me with the abstracts. The freedom from extensive planning is what drew me away from representational work and toward abstraction. Now that I’ve had my bout with wild abandon, I can happily blend planning and spontaneity.

I am encouraged to continue in the direction of this recent series. Getting feedback is important at this stage, as it is harder to know if I am truly developing and growing with my abstracts than it is with my representational work. Thank you, Mr. Shay, for your time and gracious conversation.