It’s interesting to see these three self portraits all together. The self portrait on the far left is from 2009. The story is here about how it happened on the day it was painted. The self portrait in the middle is from 2010, and when it was painted, I wrote about it here. And, of course, the portrait on the far right is from a couple of weeks ago.

I suppose it looks a little conceited to have these three self portraits all in a row. To be sure, I’ve painted myself time and time again — not just these three. Why, you ask? Because it doesn’t matter to anyone but me what it looks like in the end. I can experiment with color and technique, painting to my heart’s content and no one complains. At the very least, with self portraits, it’s not a “commission”, which is, within reason, generally catered to the patron and is (or has been for me) more restrictive creatively to paint. Not that I’m complaining — I love painting portraits. If I could paint only portraits from this day forward I’d be a happy woman.

When I decided yesterday morning that a great way to spend my 50th birthday was by painting a self portrait, who knows what romantic notions were going through that humidity puffed head of mine? Next time I do this, the easel has GOT to be closer to the mirror, because it was really hard to see my features, hence my wearing glasses. And it’s not like the details need to be there exactly, but it is generally nice when a nose looks like a nose, and lips look like lips, and of course, that since it’s a self portrait, that those features look like the ones on my actual face. 

So, yep, this is how I spent my 50th birthday. It’s 14″ x 18″ oil on linen.

One of the recent guests to our home was the niece of Ray Bolger, who was the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. Her name is Chris, and she wrote a little memoir about her life, which was greatly influenced by her famous Uncle Ray. Reading Chris’ book became the catalyst for Reese and me watching YouTube videos of Chris’ Uncle Ray (in particular, a video of Judy Garland interviewing Ray Bolger – it’s absolutely charming), it led to us watching the movie again, and for our 29th anniversary last month, the Amazing Reese gave me the first book in the collection of stories about the land of Oz. Reese is even reading a chapter aloud to me each night as we go to bed. (Just another example of why he is the Amazing Reese.) It’s a fascinating book, and super interesting to get background information about how the Scarecrow became the Scarecrow, how the Tin Woodman became the Tin Woodman, and the stories of the flying monkeys, and well, everything. It’s a really great story and we’re both thoroughly enjoying it.

Because of the influence of Uncle Ray on my new friend and our consequent renewed interest in all things Oz, I’ve been thinking about how to create our own yellow brick road….because sometimes the quest and the journey and the destination are all the same. The journey sometimes becomes the destination, and consequently, the after looking back on ones life, the destination has evolved because of a quest filled journey. And really, there’s no place like home, so what better path for our yellow brick road to take than one that leads us home? But the timing for painting the bricks yellow has been off. Today, however, was the perfect day for it — pleasant weather, no rain in the forecast, and best of all, house work that can wait.

And by golly, I’m turning 50 tomorrow. This yellow brick road is a good reminder that this is my life, this is where it is, and this is where it goes….and it’s a happy place to be.

This is 22″ x 24″ oil on board.

Thinking that yesterday would be a good day to tackle a chore I’ve been planning for a while, I set about mixing colors to get just the right shade of yellow to paint our front door. For this project, I concocted my own mixture using Sherwin Williams Sunflower (yellow) and China Doll (soft white).

The door has been in pretty bad shape for some time.

The yellow is bright, but the right kind of happiness I want to convey when people walk up to our front door.

Now, normally, I use oil paints. But for this project, decided to use some house paint that I had gathered for a previous art project that never quite materialized. Turns out, yesterday was a little damp and humid, and even though I used a big fan to dry the door, since the paints were water based instead of oil based, after a few hours of rain this morning, this is what happened.

The paint is literally melting off the door! It’s a little sad, but if this is as sad as it gets for today, it’s still a pretty good day. The biggest bummer will be all of the adorable little trick or treaters tonight. It honestly wasn’t my intent to trick my treaters, but there will no doubt be some tiny little knuckles with yellow paint on them by the end of the night….and a front door that looks worse for the wear, but is more than happy to open, greet, and welcome each loved one, friend, neighbor, guest, and yes, the little goblins, too.

This. This is one of those paintings that happened organically. This was a challenge but not a struggle. This is what I’ve been working on for the past couple of days. This is a beautiful child.

This is 16″ x 20″ oil on linen.

This years retablo offering for Lawndale Art Center‘s 26th annual Dia de los Muertos gala is…well, this. Interpret it as you wish.

It is 8″ x 10″  “strawberry margarita” nail polish and Sharpie on sheet metal. Opening bid is $50.

1.  Yesterday, I was very good at not managing my time well. Not on purpose, it just happened that way. Maybe after several weeks of being super efficient with work related activities, my brain rebelled. Whatever it was, when I mentioned it to the Amazing Reese at the end of the poorly managed day, he said, “That doesn’t bother me one bit.”
2.  The first thing that happened to me yesterday was that a bird pooped on my leg. I know Italians believe that bird pooping on humans is good luck, but I’m not Italian. Maybe the bird poop incident is why it was such a wonky day. (?)
3.  I wonder if the smell of cooking bacon ever tempts vegetarians to not be vegetarians anymore. (?)
4.  If God didn’t want us to eat animals, why did he make them taste so good?
5.  Beef stew.
6.  I laughed out loud when Reese said, “When the knock on the door said alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, I naturally thought it was a delivery.” 
7.  The last two times I went to the farmer’s market, I bought myself white flour chocolate chip cookies. I’m pretty sure that is not the healthiest-for-you item to buy at a farmer’s market.
8.  Speaking of which, today is farmer’s market day. I find it weird that all I can think about is those cookies. I love locally grown super fresh veggies and farm raised meats and eggs. Why  am I only thinking about those cookies?
9.  As much as I love and appreciate delicious craft beer, I don’t actually consider it to be a breakfast juice. It’s just not something I drink with my bacon and eggs in the morning.
10.  I’m in a bit of a creative dry spell as far as painting goes though I’m happy to report that I did just paint….my toenails. Hey. At least I’m painting again.

There was a little bit of an issue tying the bow of the sash on Hilary’s wedding dress. First of all, the ribbon was made of satin and kept coming loose. So, I used a small safety pin to pin the bow to itself, so it wouldn’t come undone. After that, the sash/belt kept slipping down, so I borrowed another safety pin and pinned the sash and bow to the dress. But the big eye of the safety pin was still visible. Now, when our daughters were small, there were a LOT of bows and ribbons in our house. The Amazing Reese became the official bow tie-er in our house.  Because I had done such a mediocre (lousy) job with the wedding dress bow, the Amazing Reese came in to save the day. He was able to turn the big eye so that it was not visible in the back! Most excellent. But in the process, he pricked his finger, which wouldn’t have been a problem, except he was bleeding all over Hilary’s bow and sash! The entire room of ladies in waiting (bridesmaids and friends) freaked out. Someone yelled, “Get some club soda!” Another yelled, “Use cold water!” Then bless her heart, the maid of honor pulled out of her maid of honor emergency kit and yelled, “I have a Tide to Go stick!” Someone yelled, “It doesn’t work on blood!” But hey, we were running out of options. Amidst the frenzied “discussions,” someone yelled, “Try it anyway!” So the maid of honor unscrewed the Tide to Go stick cap, dabbed it on the blood droplets, and guess what? IT WORKED! 

This is a clever little boy, full of purpose and delight. It’s a portrait commission that I’ve been working on for his grandmother. It’s 16″ x 20″ oil on linen. He’s one of three. His two sisters are here and here.

My original intent was to have all three portraits finished before our daughter’s wedding last weekend, but I spent so much time shopping for shoes (just kidding, but not really –it’s been a super busy summer) that I just couldn’t squeeze out a big enough chunk of time to devote to it. This week, I finally had three days in a row, enough time to complete the sketch I had originally drawn for this about three months ago. The first day of painting went OK, but I ended up scraping off a large portion of what I had painted – many many hours worth of work. Yesterday I put in a FULL day – morning until bedtime – literally. The light was lousy at the end, well, it was full on night time, there was no light, even with all of the lights on in the studio, but I was making such good progress that I hated to quit. And then today…..another several hours of working with tiny brushes  and voila.

People ask me all the time how long it takes to paint something. This portrait started with several (at least three) photo shoots for reference, trips to the photo lab, several initial portrait sketches, one final loose sketch, and hours and hours of actual brush to canvas, plus all of the clean up and running back and forth to the store to buy art supplies. Suffice it to say, I work hard at this….and I LOVE it!