Energies of Creation

At last my book arrived. The big envelope appeared in my mail with all the usual markings from Quarto in London.
I looked at the envelope and wondered what I would find inside. The first few months after I was finished with my work on this book about painting flowers, I was so sick of the […]

The journey I have taken has been challenging but always interesting. Like many people I tried out a few dead ends before my own inner creative purposes asserted themselves.
I remember living in Canada as a young mother, leaving my educational pursuits to raise a child. I thought I was doing the right thing at the […]

Flower petals are flying everywhere! Stamens litter the floor. Stray leaves are caught in my hair and you can practically hear the sewing machine stripping its gears!
What on earth is going on?
Well, I am actually nowhere near any sewing machines and all the petals are flying in the form of pixels. I think I have […]

The weeds are growing like crazy in my gardens, but I painted a lot in the gallery today. My painting in progress is an experimental work featuring seashells, although I usually paint flowers. After painting so many flowers under such tight deadlines for the book, I was ready for something different.
So I am working with […]

The customer had a size 8 ½ finger, which is fairly small for a man, and wanted a 14k gold ring that weighed a minimum of five ounces. Consider that a thick and substantial gold ring may only weigh half an ounce and you immediately see the problem.
Cramming that much weight into a size 8 […]

Integrating our little border collie and spaniel mix puppy into a studio/gallery environment is challenging, to say the least. The first concern was that Cosmo not chew up the artwork on display. A second concern quickly developed, which was that he not chew up the gallery itself.
I find it disconcerting to be sketching on a […]

What energy goes into the painting when the artist touches brush to canvas? This may not be a common question, but much is revealed in the answers. I learned many times over that what I hold in my personal energy when I paint is what shows in the painting.
As a simple example, long ago in […]

Fear of failure stops success right in its tracks. Failure is an illusion of the ego with no basis in reality. This powerfully inhibiting fear is an illusion based on misunderstanding the creative process, the process of life itself.
What we call failure is actually a learning process, a method of gathering […]

These two paintings are a striking illustration of the contrast between painting with specific constraints and strictures and painting with complete creative freedom. You can probably tell at a glance which painting had the most restrictions placed upon it.
The peony on the left was the final painting for my book about how to paint flowers […]

As an artist I am discovering there indeed is life after writing a book. Months of intense immersion in paints and words have created their own compelling rhythm from which I slowly extricate myself.
In an unexpected career opportunity, over a year ago, Quarto in London contacted me. They had discovered my work on the internet […]