What’s New
January 2025
What’s on my desk these days is more mess than art…but such is life, in some seasons. However, I’ve gotten in some time with a new art venture (more on that soon!) and finished a few pieces. I suppose for every artist in the Pacific Northwest, the mountains are going to be their constant muse. Will we ever stop working from scenes like these? I keep learning from them, so why not keep painting them!
January 2025
Merry Christmas from Banff…or at least, I wish! Canada is definitely on my future-travels bucket list. In the meantime, I take inspiration and do some armchair traveling thanks to a friends’ excellent photography of places all over America (and Iceland!) Check out his amazing prints for sale here.
December 2024
“Thumbnails” are a great way to figure out color, layout, or balance before committing to painting bigger. And it’s also a great challenge to sit down, go through your camera roll, sketch what you see, and then watercolor it. I’ve found this to be a very helpful exercise when I hit the art doldrums.
December 2024
Eleanor Roosevelt once said “Do one thing every day that scares you.” Alpenglow was my “one thing” for a few days, actually, but I’m happy with how it turned out. Besides the normal flaws that happen with watercoloring, it was an exciting challenge for me. I foresee more sunset-hour mountainscapes!
November 2024
Some of my favorite paintings have come from old family photos on film. Not far from where I grew up is the lovely little Old Point Loma Lighthouse (ca. 1855), now a museum where you can climb the stairs to look out the glass top. The views are wonderful on a sunny day, with OPL formerly claiming the record for being the highest-elevation lighthouse in the U.S. – a distinction which proved problematic. Since fog is frequent in the area, the light was often obscured and the keeper occasionally had to use a shotgun instead to warn away ships. Its light was officially extinguished in 1891, and the New Point Loma Lighthouse now guards the coastline at a lower elevation. Both are worth a visit, and Point Loma on Film certainly made me miss this scenery.
November 2024
Navigator is something I thought would be outside my comfort zone, since it required reworking layer after layer of tree-line. It turned out to be one of my favorites to work on. (And “Take 2” is on my work desk right now!) Having become something of a tree connoisseur since moving to Washington state, this is a combined love-letter to both the scenery and the people who first pioneered it.
October 2024
I’m all for multi-tasking but there are some distractions I’ve learned to remove while painting. (Such as coffee, which I nearly drank after absent-mindedly rinsing my brushes in. Oops!) At other times, though, I find it helpful to challenge myself with a little distraction. This seascape was the happy result of an art night with friends, and I think having that pleasant distraction relaxed me enough to attempt this one I’d been wanting to work on, yet avoiding because I was nervous about messing up. So yes, some amount of distraction is good if it helps take your mind off obsessing over perfection. Credit thanks to a beautiful little film photo my parents took on a roadtrip of yore to Heceta Head Light, Oregon.
May 2024
A while back in art class, my tutor told me about having thrifted a giant canvas and various shades of interior paint. The resulting wave artwork – a foray into the abstract – was so fun that I had to try it as well. (It helps that this just might be some of my favorite shades of aquamarine!) Ocean Abstract is good sample of what results when I just have fun with my brush and don’t try to be too serious.
“We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.”
-Bob Ross