Work and Cats

The cats relax...they are an everyday pleasure to behold.

My crazy love for them brightens my days and they always say, in their way of saying things,  'relax'.  Working helps me relax, each day I create at least a tiny bit of work.  I'll share some soon.  

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
― Mary Oliver

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
― Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” 

― Mary Oliver

New Year, New Kitty, New Painting

This painting is inspired by photos from Maine lakes we enjoy.  This is my first try at using a fully gray sky, which naturally results in gray water...

'Lake Reflections'  8x6 oil on stretched canvas

When you are a cat person few things could start off a year better than an additional cat in the family.  Meet Moby.  He is a very big boy, at least 18 lbs., double my other little guy.

Happy Thanksgiving wishes & 'Black Dog'

Finally a new painting posted!

This is not my black dog, Remy, but Jon Katz's dog Lenore, or rather my loosely rendered work from his photo of her.  Anyway, his entertaining and inspiring blog, Bedlam Farm Journal  is one of my favorites (and he offered the personal use of his photos).

I tried to get a similar photo of my dog for fun (it it was not fun) but ended up with my much-more-easily-photographed little best friend Stormy instead.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year and I hope you do too!

Artist Adventures

One of Julie Cameron's tools in her book The Artist's Way is the Artist Date: a weekly, solo adventure into something or someplace that interests you.  Well, I've decided I'm on an extended one of those...my muse should be fully replenished and capable of helping me actually FINISH a painting some day...before too long.  In the mean time, here are some more pictures.

Playing on rocks with the dogs, Studies in progress, and We are expecting!

“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

George Bernard Shaw

I've done a few tulip studies and have a cat study going but they are rough and not ready for posting.  Why tulips when they are out of season?  Tulips are my favorite flower but I never see them planted, only in Publix supermarket, so they are always out of season for me :( (most fleshy/bulb  flowers don't survive Florida's harsh sun nor like the sandy soil). I'm working on some new ideas, slowly, too slowly.  

In other news,  my goat Phoebe has been bred and if all goes well I will have my first kid/s in late January's chill.  I'm excited about the kid and about having my own goat milk.  It all seems like it should be so natural and easy, but this new experience will involve a number of challenges.  My other doe will be bred soon too.  Once I have my own milk I think we will invest in a small fridge I can dedicate to aging cheeses so I can go beyond the fresh ones.

'The Dowitchers'

'The Dowitchers', surprise, more birds (8x8 oil on stretched canvas).

And Stormy at his sweetest, asleep.

Palms and Salt Marsh, Husband's handy-work

8x8 oil on canvas

Another painting of the Gulf Coast salt marshes with palm and cedar hammocks (Crystal River/Chassahowitzka area).

Last week my husband had a significant birthday and in his honor and in gratitude I am posting some of his handy-work (which was built for my birthday).   He built fences, gates, 2 benches (for sleeping & jumping), a 'summer' barn, milk stand, and hay manger for my goats...

At night I lock them in the smaller pen where, I slightly hesitate here to admit, I have a baby monitor to listen for any overnight issues like coyotes or loose dogs.  Our dogs are house dogs and no help as livestock guardians.  

Everyone who has goats has a story about dog attacks with injuries and often deaths (sadly I'm not exaggerating).  I don't want to let these girls down...would you?

Phoebe & Fame

drip....drip..drip and Schmid's color charts

Two gallons of chevre and one of feta dripping away their whey.  If anyone is interested in home cheese making but unsure where to start or just curious about it, this is the place to go...Ricki Carroll's blog, with links to her online supply store  

My fingers are crossed for this first try at feta.  Yesterday I did mozzarella two different ways with one good and one mediocre result.  The good news about that is I got the easy 30-minute way to work after a failure a few weeks ago.   Soooo I can discard the longer traditional mozzarella method I had been using.

In his book Alla Prima, Richard Schmid strongly suggests this rather exhaustive color chart exercise I have begun.  It may be nothing magical but I'm hoping it will help me fall back in love with become again intimate with my oil paints whom I have not spent enough time with recently, clear from recent posts.  Here I've started with one of my favorite color's chart, viridian (a blue-green, in its pure state in the left column, then mixed with yellows so far).   This requires a lot of drafting tape, time, and paint but beyond immediate therapy, I can refer back to them for many years.

Yearlings playing 'king of the hill'

Part play, part competition the yearlings (year-and-a-halflings really) are acting like kids.  Sorry about the fencing but if I go inside they stop and come see me.  These were taken from my kitchen window.

p.s. this blog will include art again...but just photography again today.

Gold (Phoebe) and silver (Fame) medalists take their positions..

Distractions from painting...

If making goat cheese from someone else's goats' milk and selling a bit of it were not enough of a distraction from painting, these new arrivals are more.  They are attention sponges.

(I'll take that spanish moss!)

'Brown Tabby'

'Brown Tabby' 6x8 oil painting

Brown and gray tabbies are among the most common of cats but they are all special individuals with their own personalities.  This small girl is from a picture I found in the creative commons but I really liked her profile.  Another in the cat series...to be continued.

The cats may be followed soon by a goats!  I'm about to get two of my own; I'm very excited and a bit nervous.   Dairy goats are not animals you fence in the brush and forget about, far from that.  Much more than you want to hear on this to come.

'Grey' Cat Painting

6x8 oil painting, available at Earth Pets Organic Feed and Garden.

Painting who and what I love!

'Love is work made visible. '    Kahlil Gibran

Fire plans, knitting, and goat cheese

This quote sort of  explains my personal experience with the Melrose paint-out this year...


"When a picture isn't realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another." (Paul Cezanne) 


I've hung one from Melrose but I don't like it enough to post it...maybe it should really burn...it will be a very long time before I paint palm trees again.


However I have a painting of my cat that I will indeed post soon.  He is such a cutie it is hard to mess him up, or so it seems so far.  What do you think?

If you are by chance like me and admire fluffy dogs, but don't yet live with one, here is something you should know...Chow and his winter coat...and this is only pile #1, pile #2 was almost as big.  He is a really great dog and we do love him very much!

Happenings in our 1 acre, spring bird scene:  Carolina Wrens fledged 4 little short-tailed cuties from the shoe box we taped in the rafters of our pole barn/carport, Bluebirds are feeding chicks, 3 Purple Martins have moved into the gourds,  Chickadees chicks are in 2 boxes, the non-stop-coach-like whistle of a Great Crested Flycatcher make our yard sound like a playing field,  murder of 6 crows visits regularly looking for hand-outs, Northern Parulas are our tinyest and cutest bird-bath-bathers.


Oh yes, looking back at the (draft's) title,  I have learned to knit, albeit haphazardly...and have started making goat cheese which is currently, as of today, available for sale at Earth Pets Organic Feed and Garden in downtown Gainesville 'For Pet Consumption Only'.

Melrose 'Paint Out'

I'm working outside this week at the Melrose Open Air Arts event.  If you are in the area stop by the info tent to find out where we are painting.  Click here to go to the online catalog, flip it open and you will see a detailed schedule.

Last of the "Chicks"

I'm moving on to landscapes from the chickens for now but I couldn't resist giving these chicks a shot.

8x8 oil on stretched canvas

I hope you are all enjoying spring flowers, lime-green leaves, or at least snow-melt.  One week of official winter left.

'Red Hen' and Spring Flowers

This painting and the one below of the brahmas are going to be displayed at Earth Pets Organic Feed and Garden (Gainesville, FL) starting tomorrow.  I understand they have real, live chicks on the way and a celebratory event too?  

I want some chicks of my own very badly but as long as we are migratory birds ourselves it is not to be.  Its unlikely they will fit in the car with the 2 dogs, cat, and luggage, nor would they be happy.  Ditto for the dairy goat kids...

8x8 oil on stretched canvas (sold)

If this works you will see spring flowers from my yard below...Early, lovely, yes but we have many evergreen oaks here that have the effect of muting the impact of spring.  No big bang of lime green like in the North (no tulips, daffodils, crocus).  In some spots where deciduous trees dominate there are indeed little red (maple) and green bursts, mainly in swamps, lakesides, and in sinks.

Azaleas, buckeye, wild columbine, camelia (came with the house - why plant one that doesn't smell!),  yellow jessamine, wild plum with someones honeybee, swiss chard (no, not a bloom, but colorful right?  my husband's yummy winter project), Simpson's stopper, and another not-a-bloom: budding red maple.

'Light Brahmas'

8x8 oil on stretched canvas

This is one of the breeds of chicken I would like to have. They are very docile but I'm not sure about the feathered legs and feet they have...




With the windows closed to keep the too warm air out, Stormy sleeps through his visitors at the window.

'The Sandhills'

11x14 original oil on hardbord

This is a actually a family group I photographed on UF's beef research pasture.  The non-migratory Sandhill Cranes we have here are usually in pairs or family groups, as these were.  I took the liberty to 'mature' the juvenile who still had a plain gray head, I'm not sure why.  Okay, it was just too much fun to paint those bright red crowns.

If I were one to expound on my painting method this might be a post for it.  I could go on and on about how one as a painter has to make a choice between doing photo realism and doing painterly, impressionistic sort of work.  I could say that if you want your painting to look like a photo then why not buy/frame a photo?  Why even paint it?  Just to get a bit of texture?

The postures I chose were taken from three different photos.  I chose them because I hoped to bring movement, and with luck, some of their grace, to the painting.  The background is meant to be lacking in detail and loose.  There is little mystery in the cranes themselves but there is purposely no feather by feather detail.  Maybe you are familiar with overgrown meadows with the mauve sort of color of the common weed dog-fennel in winter?

This painting is being shown at the Gainesville Fine Arts Association, Central Park Medical Center Show, 'Affairs of the Heart' through early May.

When at the Charleston Southeastern Wildlife Art Exposition (coming up this weekend) a few years ago I was astonished by the prevalence of photo realism.  The most revered wildlife painters painted this way, just very large.  I'm sorry to say that, in my opinion, almost anyone can indeed paint photo realism, it is just a matter of how quickly.  Since then I've seen that wildlife and animal art in general has a bad name among many fine art artist because of the prevalence of photo realism in the field.  Nevertheless, this is a lovely and enjoyable event to attend in charming Charleston.

'On Winter Pasture'

8x8 original oil on stretched canvas (sold)

A belted galloway calf with adults.   The reference photo I took in summer but this feels like a more natural setting to paint in February, even in N. FL.

A few days ago I saw a small redbud tree in bloom, my yellow jessamine is about to pop, a few purple martins are back in town (not mine), and the cardinals are singing with renewed vigor.  They never stopped entirely.  I am not ready to give up the chilly blanket weather!

p.s.  I remove the middle-ground cow (with the stretched rectangle of a body!) and changed the color scheme to spring, doctored the calve's head/face, these were all helpful to this painting.

'Red Beltie'

A large, red, belted galloway calf from a photo I took last summer.  He was dun but I took the liberty of painting him red instead. 6x8 original oil on stretched canvas, muted yellow sides (yellow ochre)

Stormy helping me out today...

Thanks to the very talented artist Kim VanDerHoek who generously sent me several beautiful notecards from her blog giveaway.

'Two Nubians' and Attention Cat Lovers Like Me!

Are Nubian goats born with their ears full size?  When I see the kids I always wonder.  These two are yearlings I think.  I took the photo for this at the Union Fair in Maine.
8x8 original oil on stretched canvas, sides painted gray

Displaying paintings on a log cabin wall poses clear challenges...but the little historic building has a certain charm.  Here are my most recent paintings hung at the little gallery in Micanopy (albeit a poor photo).

If you are in the Gainesville area, or even not, I recommend you check out the blog of Earth Pets Organic Feed and Garden.  Especially since I won a $25 gift card from their latest drawing!!

If you are a cat lover, you must see the poster they included in the post 'Dear Cat Lovers'.  Have you ever wondered if it is really possible to tell a blue mackerel cap and saddle silver shade from a caramel classic point mitted golden shade??  No, well you'll still love this poster...

'Light Rooster' and Eggs

8x10 original oil on hardboard

Painting chickens is very enjoyable for several reasons.  Their feathers are colorful, iridescent, loose, flexible, and variable, which frees me to push color and push lots of paint around.  Also, they are large and always in motion; that helps lessen my tendency to make stiff, statuary-like bird paintings.  But fun they are, stiff-looking or not.

Who knew buying eggs could be fun?  Several months ago I started getting my eggs from a local lady who has Cuckoo Marans (terra cotta eggs), Araucanas (blue/green eggs), and New Hampshire Reds (cream eggs).  Opening the carton is always a pleasure.  I especially love the variable shades of the blue/green eggs.

Some day I'll have my own chickens, and certainly Araucanas, but until then I enjoy several farm blogs and visit the HenCam by Terry Golson.

'Dark Rooster Strutting'

8x10 original oil on hardboard (Gessobord)

This rooster painting is inspired by a rooster that lived on the beach at a cottage we rented in Tobago in '05.  He's in the lower left with a buddy, rummaging in beach wrack...my husband is on the porch.

The beach there looked like this...

There were incredibly colorful native birds, this blue-crowned motmot was my favorite...he was a flashy guy but very shy.  A good photo of him eluded me.

Just past sunset these fruit-eating bats would come right through the porch to the same sugar feeder (hanging in the middle of the porch shown above). I watched them for hours sitting very near.

Looking back through these photos makes me wonder why we haven't considered returning?  We survived the drivers in Trinidad once, perhaps we could again?

Another 8x10 rooster is in progress.