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
Balance
8″ x16″ mixed media painting. The sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted red.
This painting is available HERE
“We come into this world head first and go out feet first; in between, it is all a matter of balance.”
My Protector
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
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.
Star Gazing
6″x24″ mixed media/encaustic painting on paper covered canvas. The sides are 1.5″ deep and are painted midnight blue.
This painting is available HERE
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
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
ACEO Joy 2
This is a new ACEO I did recently. I have been challenging myself trying to capture extreme expressions without having them look distorted or unatural. It is hard. I think I managed to do it. I love the way children really feel the joy with their whole body. Head back, mouth open. Just pure pleasure in the moment.
This one is available in my etsy shop.
Also, this painting was included in a new treasury on etsy called It’s A Dog’s Life
This one is called ‘My Red Guitar’ and is available on Etsy
ACEO Joy
SOLD
I’ve been feeling rather joyless lately about my art. Not for very long, just a few days but none the less, I started to think about why this last year I have been able to find such joy in painting. So much so that I couldn’t wait to get back to it. It has not always been like that. I used to torture myself throughout the process of doing a painting. I really never found much joy in the process, only the result. These last few days, I have been feeling like that again and it all has to do with that nasty old ego. It has stepped in and is trying to take over.
“Go away ego, I will continue to paint for the joy of it and if someone likes it along the way then that is just the icing.”
I did these two ACEOs tonight and it was fun. So there.
SOLD
