What’s New
March 2025
After a great start to 2025, the second month of the year was rough. Now that I’m more or less back to normal, I’m realizing that 1) loss can be creatively draining, and 2) the time it takes to restore creative juices can be disproportionately greater than the amount of time you were away from art. What I already knew, however, is that the point always comes where I have to make myself paint. But, it’s not all struggle: it’s helpful to remember that this is simply about being creative and getting paint on paper, not attempting to make things perfect before even beginning. – Hey, that sounds a lot like how life is.
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