Tell Me Your Secrets
6″x36″ mixed media/encaustic painting on canvas. The sides are midnight blue and are 1.5″ deep.
Available HERE
Roald Dahl
Together
12″x36″ mixed media/encaustic painting on wood. The sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted red.
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
Helen Keller
This painting is available HERE
Available HERE
My Protector
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
In Confidence
10″x20″ mixed media/encaustic painting on wood cradle. The sides are 1.5″ and are painted red.
This painting is SOLD
Watch Her Fly
6.5″x17.5″ Mixed media painting on stone paper. There is a .25″ border.
This painting is available HERE
In less than a month I will have a ten year old. How did that happen? I must remember to let her fly. I know I am over protective and sometimes my first instinct is to keep her caged. I must learn how to support her flight, to encourage her to soar and to stand back and watch her fly.
Dream Warrior
6.5″x17.5 mixed media painting on stone paper. This painting has a .25″ border.
Available HERE
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
Thomas A. Edison
The Wonder Of It
6″x36″ mixed media painting on paper covered canvas. The sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted midnight blue.
This painting is available HERE
The Night Butterfly
8″x16″ mixed media painting on rag paper. This piece will need to be framed and matted by you. There is a .25″ border.
This painting is available HERE
Her Dreams Are Real
5.75″ x 15.5″ mixed media painting on rag paper. This painting with need to be matted and framed by you. There is a .25″ border.
This painting is available HERE
I Can See My Dreams
(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW)
This is a18″x 36″ mixed media painting on paper covered canvas. The sides are 2″ deep and are painted deep turquoise with some added butterflies and flower motif.
This painting is $1250 + shipping and is available HERE. It is being displayed at The Highlevel Diner currently.
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My dreams are just
there
In sight
Yet
slightly different than I imagined
Maybe better
I can see them
Like my breath
on the coldest day
Beautiful
Hopes And Desires
This is a 18″x14″ mixed media painting on paper covered canvas.
This painting is available HERE.
We have all experienced dream crushers in our life. Those people that think it is their job to inform us that are dreams are impractical or unrealistic. Growing up working for my parents at their small Inn in Victoria, I met many people, strangers really , the felt that it was up to them to tell me that my desire to be an artist was just plain silly.
‘Art is hobby’ one couple told my sixteen year old self as I poured them coffee for breakfast.
It is amazing to me, when I think back, at how many people told me this. It got to the point that I stopped telling people what I was studying or what my goals were.
Their comments did not changed my desire to be an artist but they did make me feel that it was perhaps a hopeless dream. After all, how do you BECOME an artist? Sure you can go to college and university but let me tell you a little secret, it is not much different there. My professors may have well been those people that I served at sixteen. They were actually teaching us that being an artist for a living was a crazy idea and not only THAT, but if you did manage to make an living as an artist, it must mean that you have sold out.
HUH?
It is no surprise that I remained confused about my desire to be an artist for a very long time. Until I turned forty, actually.
What changed when I turned forty? I was able to turn off those dream crusher voices in my head and realize that the way to become an artist is to create art. As often as possible. End of story. There is no great mystery here. Maybe I am not making as much money as some one with a ‘real job’ but holey moley, I am doing something that I LOVE TO DO.
There is value in that.
There is joy in that.
There is something so SACRED about that.
The thing that makes me so crazy is that, as a parent, I work so hard to cultivate and encourage my children’s dreams and yet one person can come along and destroy it all with a few ‘helpful’ words. So remember, next time a young person tells you what they want to do with their life, just listen, bite your tongue if you have to. Don’t be a dream crusher, be a dream cultivator. *************************************************************************************************
The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.
-Robert Kiyosak
Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.
-Kahlil Gibran
It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
-Francis Bacon, Viscount St Albans
Dream Me Up
This is a 6″x36″ mixed media painting on paper covered canvas. The the sides are 1.5″ are gold leaf and turquoise.
This painting is available HERE.
I am setting up at the Highlevel Diner tomorrow morning. My paintings will be there for the next three months so drop by and take a look.
AND
While you are in line to get a table, you can pick up Mosaic magazine, I am the featured artist.
TOOT, TOOT.
Dream Magic
This is 6″x12″ mixed media painting on wood. The sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted red.
This painting is available HERE.
Technicolour Dreams
This is a 6″x8″ mixed media painting on wood. The sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted red.
This painting is available HERE.
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Lovely Dreamer
This is a 6″x8″ mixed media painting on wood. The sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted red.
This painting is $80 and is available HERE.
“Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me… Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
Shel Silverstein
I love my children so much. They are my dreams. When I look at them I can’t help but thinking that ‘anything’ truly can be. Thanks Mr. Silverstein for encouraging children to dream.
Aspirations
This is a mixed media diptych on wood.
The sides are 1″ deep and are turquoise.
SOLD
Painting, painting, painting….eating it, breathing it, living it …. these are my aspirations…but they are tiring.
Shopping In My Sleep (or The Phantom Wardrobe)
“Lace Coat” 8″x12″, mixed media painting on canvas, 2007
So this morning when I was getting dressed I wondered to myself where that perfect little black cardigan I just bought was. Then I realized I had only dreamt about buying that cardigan.
I was so bummed.
It all came flooding back to me.
I had dreamt about shopping for clothes and I’d found quite a few cute little numbers. I felt so jipped, I mean, a lot of these pieces that I acquired were classics that would have filled a lot of gaps in my wardrobe quite nicely . I felt like I’d got them for a good price too but that, I can’t be sure of. I know I’d tried on a lot of stuff so, to wake up and realize that it was all for nought, was just so unfair! (Now I sound like my five year old).
I still feel kind of robbed and I can’t help but think, that maybe, all the clothes that I purchased in the dream are actually hanging in my closet but are somehow, mysteriously INVISIBLE. Like a “phantom wardrobe”.
I am sure that it is going to make it even harder for me to decide what to wear ever day and kind of makes the expression, “I have nothing to wear”, even that much more literal.
Art Right Now
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso
When I was a little girl I would do art any chance I could get. I loved to be creative and was always encouraged by my Mum. It was fun. I enjoyed doing it. In fact, there was nothing I liked better. It was never a chore! It was never dull.
So, what happened? When I was a teenager I romanticised about a lot of things: Marriage, children, getting older.Visions of Picasso danced in my head. Like Picasso before me, I saw my future self eating dinner and then taking my fish bones and making a clay relief. I would have a bohemian house with piles of art and reference books on the dining room table. I would paint along side of my toddler. Look at us painting together for hours at a time. I won’t go as far as to say I imagined myself wearing a striped black and white t- shirt and shorts but I will say that I was totally out of touch with reality. First of all, toddlers require constant help when they do art, and their attention span is all of oh, lets say, 15 minutes. If you are lucky. Also, I can’t stand stuff all over the place, let alone my dining room table. I need that table to feed my kids and I don’t want their grubby little fingers all over my good books! Not to mention that I don’t even like fish very much, let alone a whole fish with bones.
I guess as I got older so much stuff got in the way of the pure process of creation. I had a constant dialogue going through my brain. Is it good enough? Who will like this? Is it too commercial or illustrative? or not enough? Is the palette to cold? Too dark? Too muddy? How could I tap into the pureness of what I was doing if the whole time I was doing it my head was questioning whether I should be doing it all. I don’t know who initially put these questions in my head. College, University, people of influence all played a part. Life isn’t the way I imagined it. The fun in art definitely was no longer part of my process. I no longer felt excited to create. It was just so much pressure: to create art that everybody likes is really hard.
Now, it has come full circle and as a Mother I watch my girls create and I am inspired by them. They don’t worry about the outcome. They just enjoy the act of making something. Anything. When it is done, it is done, and they move on to the next thing. They don’t dwell on it. It is about the process not the product. Sure we all want to create art that we like, and that other people like too, but if that is all we focus on it becomes a chore and where is the fun in that? It is so nice not to be in that angst ridden part of my life. At forty, it is so great to be able to reassociate art with fun, and know I can still learn new stuff even if it is stuff I knew at the age of three.
