Summer Painting

The view from my studio window

As expected, Texas summers are HOT.  Even the cacti in my garden are starting to look a little burned out.  A local told me that you never get over the Texas heat, you just learn to live with it.  This is the first summer in a long time (high school?) that I've had a true summer break.  No side jobs, nothing but my studio work to focus on.  I am excited to announce that I begin a full time teaching appointment mid-August!

The 36" x 36" canvas for my newest painting spent two months leaning against the wall outside my studio, waiting for inspiration to strike.  I recently wrote to my friend Kelly about how I wasn't sure what to do, but I was going to get started anyways.  The background came first and I worked with a 1" brush to blend (wet-on-wet) patches of white, pink & yellow.

Next, I transferred the origami pattern and blocked it in with paint.  Origami has been appearing in my work since a residency in 2010.  I really liked the background of my previous painting and wanted to reuse it here to make a more joyful piece.  After all, the strands of origami served as the backdrop for our wedding ceremony.



Here are a few sketches for this painting (as yet unnamed), sparrows and caladium drawn from the garden. Sparrows were in several of my drawings last summer & ever present in our yard.  The caladium were planted as bulbs late February.  I patiently waited for them to grow and was about to give up when one day in late April they began to push up through the ground.