In art. And in life.

Wow. It’s been a really long time since I last posted. Every winter, once the New Year’s festivities are over and all the fun of the holidays is behind us, I always start a mental countdown to spring. And my mental countdown always seems to move.so.slowly, punctuated by snowstorm upon icestorm. Not this year. We’ve had the same bad weather but this year I feel like I could use a little (or a lot) more time. I feel like my life has been a blur since January. At first I tried to keep up with everything, but eventually I had to prioritize, and my blog posts took a bit of a hit.

The big news – I have accepted a new job and we are in the midst of packing up our house and moving across the country! We just sold our home this past weekend which was like finding a place for one of the most giant pieces in the entire puzzle. In a few weeks we will load our animals and an overnight bag each into the car and head east. And even though some of the stress over the past few weeks has made me question, “Why am I blowing my life up like this?” I am so excited for this adventure and so grateful for this amazing opportunity.

I had to pack up my art supplies for our home showings, but now that we’ve sold I took a bit of time this weekend to finish up Wiggis on the Green Couch. I think this will be my last large scale painting before the move, and then my stuff will be in storage while we’re looking for a new home. So I may be focusing on my sketchbook for the next little while.

This painting and everything going on lately has me thinking a lot about time – how quickly it passes, how you can never predict quite where you’ll end up. A year ago, I was in a totally different place, with no idea of all the change to come.

At the same time, Wiggis deserved a new portrait since his last painting was this cartoony tryptich acrylic on canvas from 2008:

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This painting has been displayed in our last three homes, and it will have a place in our east-coast house too, but it was time for an update. I can honestly say that back then, I think this was the best I could achieve with acrylic paints. I found the heavy-bodied paints really difficult to work with, and they controlled me more than the other way around. And what a difference a little time makes. For his new portrait I used oil paints (of course) and focused on realism. I’m so happy with the results and so proud of my progress.

I painted this over the past two months, with a really long interruption due to our home staging (always a huge life upheaval that I find extremely difficult to deal with). Old Holland Oil Paints, 12 x 24″ gallery-stretched canvas.

Some progress pictures:

And up close:

Altogether now:

I think the next few weeks are going to be really up and down with our to-do lists around here. I have some posts that were intended to be written but in the mayhem from the past few weeks got pushed to the side. So when I have some time I’ll check-in to write, and I’ll focus on sketching and packing up the art room as safely as possible. I’ll miss this space that I’ve built for myself here, but I’m so excited at the possibility of a new home with an even better room for an art studio. And the arts community in our new city is really thriving and inspiring. I’m really looking forward to immersing myself in it and hopefully putting my work “out there”.

Thank you all for reading!