scenes from the art party

ART PARTY

The Art Party was a great success!

I am beyond exhausted but 

wanted you to see a few bits of it.

We had great Mexican food. wonderful music

by Mezcla Latina, and the Studio Sale was great.

It is always so nice seeing old friends, new friends,

wonderful and supportive collectors, and family too.

We celebrated our Nana's 86 birthday and

that was so special.

So, now I am in panning stages for the rest of the 

year and am already working on events for 2019.

Oh, and one of my goals is to be more

consistent with my blogging.

 The table set up.

We rented the tables and chairs.

I bought the black tablecloths so now I will

never run out of tablescloths!

They work well as display tablecloths too.

 The food tables, drink tables, and yard set up.

 Carlos Flores and his bandmates setting up the band.

Jillian Maresco, my friend, and manager for the sales.

She was swamped at various times!

 After the first food run.

This sweet woman is my favorite hugger.

 Judith, one of my loyal collectors.

 Olinda, another of the sweetest mamas I know.

And she owns paintings!

 After it calmed down.

 My Nana, my hugger Glenda, and Michaela, her granddaughter.

 The most beautiful and best tasting cake I've ever had.

 Enjoying conversations

 Nana dancing with her oldest.

Scenes from the party (the aspen painting sold)

 Inside the studio before the party

 The door from the studio into the house 

 Paintings

 Smaller panels and cradled gessobord pieces

Sweet little lamb!

These are just a few scenes from a wonderful day.

I'm thinking of ways to make it better next year.

Now, I have to go sleep.....

looking for sunflowers...and water

LOOKING FOR SUNFLOWERS

I set out on an adventure last Wednesday.

A quest, if you will.

I was looking for sunflowers to paint.

And so were my friends:

Jillian, Barb, Susana, and Susan.

It has been at least 6-7 years since I've been to Bosque del Apache.

I called about a week ago and they said the sunflowers were just

starting to bloom, so I thought, let's take a day trip.

We'll drive down, see a lot of ducks, geese, water, maybe a crane or two. 

And sunflowers.

We left the house about 7:35am.

It took us longer than we thought to get there and

when we arrived, it was already HOT.

But we found sunflowers!

They were not all fully open yet, 

but enough so that I got a few good shots.

 Jillian enjoying the scenery

Susan looking for that perfect shot.

 We also saw a cool old truck!

 Peaceful and serene

More suns

 The only water we saw

 I see a painting here

 And here

 And here!

 The trees were full of all kinds of variations of green.

And this yellow-rusty plant - we didn't know if it was 
normally that color or dying.

 BEAUTIFUL!

 Taking a close-up

 My best shot of the day.

But look how dry it is!

 We finally painted at the Coyote Observation Deck.

At least it was shady.

 Hmm, I'm goofing off.

 This is a beautiful scene 

 We saw two deer!

Okay, this is confusing to me.

When I went several years ago, there was SO much water everywhere.

I went in the winter when the birds were already there

and maybe still migrating.

A few scenes from that time:

So much water!

So, can someone enlighten me?

Do they keep the fields dry during the summer

and flood them in the winter?

It just looked so different from what I was expecting.

The water above with all of the ducks was a huge dirt field on Wednesday.

Bosque Del Apache was still beautiful.

Just different.

I'm going to call the Visitor Center tomorrow.
It was closed when we went.

I WILL HAVE SOME ANSWERS.

new Challenge paintings

Hi all,

Here are my newest paintings for the "FOR A SONG" Challenge:

These are so fun to paint.

There are somewhat harder, using

a smaller sketch and smaller brushes.

But I'm not constricted by subject and no real deadline.

I AM getting ready for the ART PARTY.

I just sent off the postcard for printing

and have a LONG to do list.

More on that in a few days.

We did see these beauties on our fence a few days ago.

Someone said they are babies.

Well, they are BIG babies.

The other day we saw four of them sitting on the fence.

Lots of noise and calling out to each other.

We didn't get too close.

WEEMS

I'm happy to say that I am going back home to

 Weems Gallery after a two year absence.

I started my career there and was in the gallery for over 15 years.

I gave my notice after some personal losses when I lost my mojo for painting.

But Weems invited me back and I accepted.

AND, I have my mojo back!

Look for lots of new work there soon!

That's it for now - 

back to studio organizing.