While getting ready for the open house we are having at the Stutz building, there has been a lot of working and reworking old images. Several will probably have a "do-over" in their future. This little chicken study is 6x8 -- a very friendly size to work with.

Still life with lemons and grapes is also a 6x8.

The Florida scene is of a Fort Meyers beach sunset. It is 11x14.

This is also a 6x8 painted on a cradled board. It is quite a different feel to paint on a smooth surface as opposed to textured canvas. Not so sure I like it as I prefer the tooth and paint-grabbing textures.

2008-2009 paintings

As plein air works and quick studies are my current focus, the painting formats are smaller. Most are now 6x8 to 11x14. In some ways that is easier because there is less canvas to fill, and you have to think more in terms of minimizing brush strokes. In other ways it is less forgiving because your eye sees the painting in one glance. The compositional errors pop out more because of this. Here are some more recent, smaller pieces:

The three paintings of Hawaii are scenes from Maui. The interesting feature of the scenery was not just the mountains, but the atmosphere above them. The clouds just seemed to hang on the mountain tops.

Another recent attempt is to believably capture snow scenes. More on this subject will certainly follow.

Archives part 2

This is 14 x 18.


A larger 18x24 size painting finished in 1974.

This is a small 6 x 8 painting. Probably the result of having some excess paint on the palette that "needed to be used up."


The tennis shoes were the result of a minimalist palette approach using primarily black, yellow, and white. The next painting in the shoe series had my husband's, our daughter's, and my sandals. When our second child was born, there was no time to paint anything, so the "series" remains incomplete. This one is 16 x 20 inches.



I believe at the time this one was painted, Richard Diebenkorn was a favorite painter. I still like the way he lays out his subject matter --- in an abstract, geometric kind of way. This is 16 x 20 inches.

Archives --- really old paintings...

This is one of the few portraits I did about 20 years ago. She looks pretty harsh. I think I would paint her with a little more softness now.

First Impressions

This one is a view from behind the Linden RR museum. This is a small study 7 x 9 inches. Probably needs more definition in terms of compositional values -- i.e. more interesting clumping of lights and darks. It is going to be 12 x 12 in the end, so the overall shapes may change somewhat.

A farm scene near Lafayette, IN . It is interesting to see one's art in this format. It really makes you better able to figure out what changes to make. For instance, that cloud in the upper right would come forward and "hang" over the foreground if it had a flatter, darker bottom. That is the change I will make next. This is 14 x 18. It was a remarkably sunny day, and the clouds were changing quickly.