finished

After two months of concentrating on other work, my family and the holidays I have begun painting again. In fact, last weekend I realized I needed to finish 2 paintings by Monday so I would have enough work to submit to a gallery here or I would have to wait another year, and really it's the only local gallery that seems right for my work. Luckily my husband was able to be a full time dad and I spent the weekend in the studio, no interruptions. I did send them out but after looking at the photos I realized they are far from finished. Here they are until I can get to them again (the top one is the drawing of Venice that I had so much trouble with).

Order Schmorder

I've been struggling the past few weeks with a drawing of a photo in Venice so I finally broke down and decided to grid it to see why it's giving me so much trouble.

In the past I would have drawn it as I see it and whatever happens happens but since the training I had in Florence I learned to value perfection in the drawing stage. Which is precisely my problem with this particular piece.

One of the things that I love about Italy is that things are not orderly or done in the precision as they are here and that creates sort of a unintentional beauty, and so what I've realized is that one of the windows (just one out of 10 or so mind you) of the buildings I'm drawing is just slightly crooked, as well as some really funky shadows that also don't seem to make sense. It's interesting to me that my brain keeps wanting to see these things how I think they should be instead of how they are.

So if I'm correct that this is what is so beautiful, then this is going to be some beautiful piece, 'course I'll be bald by the end of it from tearing my hair out.

What I'm not tearing my hair out about however, is that we have such an eloquent, intelligent and confident president, who has the power to inspire people, I certainly am.