New works completed this month:

Studio updates:
Bringing in the new year with a new website! Completely new design and new host. I’m happy with the results, and highly recommend Weebly for its intuitive design-interface and professional user-experience—but I really hope it stays that way because moving websites is a “please never again” thing.

Also in the middle of a huge photography studio upgrade, pending some shipping delays, so stay posted next month for some vastly improved image quality. But in the meantime, I am at least happy to have upgraded my paint storage from a literal box to something sane:

Some of these are not much to look at so far...but give it time!

"You don't need to get it perfect. You just need to get it going."

​In a rather encouraging first week of December and “return to art”, I submitted these pieces to two juried shows, and was accepted by both! “Zuko” was awarded 5th Place for Traditional Art in Fusion Art’s 8th Annual Animal Kingdom juried show, and “You Again?” was awarded Special Recognition Finalist in Light Space & Time Art’s 13th Annual Nature juried show. Is it maybe the most important thing that ever happened? Possibly. But what excites me even more is that even still, there is more art to create.

All silliness aside, there is controversy regarding the validity of artists paying to have their art judged by a stranger, or the contrived nature of “beating” other paintings. I’ll never forget though, a college art professor, the wise gray-haired type that’s forgotten more than I will every learn. An artist should always keep entering juried shows, he said. It has nothing to do with winning, or shaping what you create. It’s about committing to a deadline so that you actually finish your work.     

Incidentally, I don’t find the categories of juried shows to be constricting, or the arbitrary nature of a stranger’s judgment to be discouraging (yet). I’m inspired to see art better than my own, artists more skilled than myself, and I’m grateful for the chance to reflect on whether my work fell short or lacked impact. Im looking forward for more opportunities to submit to juried shows, so stay tuned for that sort of thing. 
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However, if you are an orb of untainted light that finds competition sullying to art, please instead direct your attention to previews of a few WIPs carrying over into January:

Much of December 2023 here has been spent behind the scenes on ongoing studio and website organization, not to mention the black-hole time-vortex that is ballet performance season, and the ensuing holidays. In January, snow conditions in Alaska are promising for a busy mushing season. My huskies have patiently waited their turn during the last four months of endless rehearsals, so I will owe them a bit of my time—but there is no better company for painting than tired huskies sleeping underfoot! I have planned so far for 2024 over twenty (!) paintings and two illustration projects, so stay tuned for January’s episode of “Eyes Bigger than Your Studio”. They won’t all be started by February, but that will not stop me from planning even more of them in the meantime. (Remember that thing about deadlines?)

​"Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it."
​— Jasper Johns, Painter, Sculptor

​It’s been years now since I’ve touched paint to a paintbrush. An outright lie, of course, if you consider the variety of paint that is sold by the gallon to overwhelmed new home-owners, to be slathered (in at least two coats, properly drying in between!) onto fences, walls, railings, chicken coops, and every other surface large enough to catch a photon of light. Oh, there has been paint. The paint of adult life, of necessity, of reality. Not an enemy to creativity—have you seen the paint swatch aisle?—but still, we don’t grow up as children craving to lay down the perfect high-gloss coverage of a new chicken roost, enticing as it may become as an adult. We crave visual stories. We crave art.
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Or at least, I did. Every Christmas and birthday, I wanted art supplies. I was always drawing something, and studying artwork I admired. I didn’t take an art class until college, and even then, they were simply enjoyable electives to fill out a major. I have always felt this sense, though I wasn’t the one to articulate as well as Julia Cameron: “Art is not about thinking something up—it is the opposite, getting something down”.

But whatever divine, spiritual, purity we ascribe to the formation of art, there is in fact, much more to life. However much we chant “art through adversity,” we will not change that art is a physical manifestation of ideas, and it requires space, time, resources, to develop. Not unlike a living creature—and who could deny that great art seems to breathe its own life? And even a plant needs at least a handful of dirt.

The standard progression occurred: pencils to markers to charcoal, ink, and watercolor, and finally, after two decades, I felt worthy to touch the paint of the Renaissance gods. More sincerely, I was jealous of the precision, depth, and nuances that only oil painters seemed to achieve, and finally accepted that I could not reach it with watercolor and gouache. It was a brief, expensive, and unproductive affair that soon gave way to a career change, and a downshift to simple, contained, and intermittent things like pyrography. But the study of art lived on. I practiced classical guitar, studied and performed classical ballet…raised, trained, and raced sled dogs (oh, it’s an art alright)…raised chickens and ducks (you better believe it), so on and so forth--everything is grist to an artist’s mill.

After a decade of the twisting and turning plots of adult life, which were as incredible to experience as they are dull to read about, I am returning home like Frodo to the Shire. Maybe I’m not the same person, but for that I am grateful. Life has beaten into me new perspectives, values, and insights. This month is the first I have touched a canvas in years other than to store it out of sight, and I have never felt more ready. My wandering in the wilderness has led me to see the difference between mastery of technique, and mastery of artistry. I see finally that technique is not the goal of an artist—it’s just a method, a conduit to others’ thoughts, emotions, and imagination.
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But revealing a finished painting is only part of what I enjoy—the real thrill and magic is the living process of creating such an image from a vast, blank nothingness. The inspiration, the hope, the curiosity, the dread. I invite you to enjoy a part of that journey here with monthly updates, including announcements of finished works, previews of works in progress, demonstrations, gallery exhibitions ands awards, and other meaningful information that I haven’t thought of yet. I hope that getting to see beyond the edges of the canvas will help you enjoy my art as much as I enjoy creating it. ​

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