On the eve

I didn't intend to take such a long break, really, it just sort of happened...and it felt so good to go with the flow, to not have any "shoulds" or "must dos", to fully relax.
We just returned from spending a fantastic Christmas week at my parent's beautiful old house in Philadelphia. There are lots of places there for little imaginations to wander, lots of stairs to climbs, nooks to relax in...(there is even a secret back staircase).

Most of our time was spent eating, playing and enjoying. One of the first things that we did upon arriving home was to keep the celebration going with the creation of a gingerbread menagerie. Some more recognizable than others.
Even though I love the holidays I do always look forward to the calm of January, and the start of a new year. I like the feeling of openness and possibility that it brings, and I look forward to the creativity within that openness.
Wishing you a wonderful New Years celebration!
xo

Happy Solstice

We woke up yesterday morning to a most delicious surprise, our world was transformed by snow.

What fun! We have been close to the fireplace in between sledding in the park, trudging through the HUGE snow piles that build up on New York City street corners, cooking (veggie chili and scones, yum!) and enjoying the build up as each day brings us closer to Christmas. The holiday fair that I was selling at on Saturday went really well, and I've been reveling in the happiness of a job well done.

Now, the orders and Christmas presents are all in the mail, and I'm looking forward to the next few days of winding down while celebrating more and more each day.

The sun set today at 4:30PM, the shortest day of the year. Happy Solstice everyone!
Thank you so much to all of you who entered my Solstice celebration giveaway!
This evening at 5Pm I put all of your names into a bowl and had my children choose one each (with no peeking), and the winners are....

Stacy, of Mama-Om, has won the Note Card Set
and
Lisa, of Doorways Traveler, has won the print of Awakening

Congratulations to you both. I loved hearing from each of you that posted a comment, it is great to hear your voices and visit your blogs. I am pleased to meet you!

Holiday Fair

If you're in Brooklyn this Saturday, come by John Jay High School in Park Slope (7th Ave. bet. 4/5 St.) for holiday Leaves and Feathers! I'll be selling prints, stationary, and wood mounted prints at the Holiday Craft Show with my friend Kristin Breneman Eno, who has some lovely Jewelry--check out her work here.

Lot's of new wood mounted prints going up in my shop this weekend too!

Including this new image, Water Flower

I am so enjoying the response to the giveaway! There is still time to enter, until the solstice on Monday the 21st.

Winter giveaway!

I checked the stats on the visits here the other day and there are a lot of you stopping by. Well hi there, you are awfully quiet! I am hoping to draw you out with this winter give away.
In celebration of the Holiday Season and our coming Winter Solstice...there are two prizes!

The first offering is a print of my painting Awakening, you can check it out in my shop here.


The second offering is a set of three note cards, of my paintings, Hope, Solstice and Beginning.

I've been feeling so festive this week so I have made four ways to enter the giveaway:

You can just leave a comment bellow, I do love to hear from you.
You can enter a second time if you are an official "follower" of my blog, if you have not yet just join over there on the side bar.
You can enter a third time by joining my mailing list, which you can also do easily by entering your email address in the button on my side bar.
You can even enter a fourth time if you blog about my giveaway and let me know about it!

I know, that is a lot of ways to enter! To help me keep things straight please enter each time in a different comment...that will help make sure that all of your entries are counted when I draw the winners.

I will randomly select one winner for each item on Monday, December 21st the day of our Winter Solstice and the shortest day of the year. I always love that day because I know that from then on we will ever so slowly begin to get more and more daylight each day!

Magical Journey

OK, for those of you that have been asking, I'm so happy to say that here is it. My Magical Journey triptych! Prints of my three paintings Evening Time, Taking Flight, and Sweet Dreams all mounted together on a wooden block. The edges have been sanded smooth which brings out the light blond color of the wood.


This piece of art looks great standing on its own, leaning against a shelf or mounted on a wall (there is a hole drilled in the back for hanging on a nail).
And it is now available here.

I know that there are still two weeks left of 2009, but is it just me or are the rest of you starting to wrap up the year mentally? I accidentally wrote 2010 the other day, I know that I am jumping ahead here. I loved this post today by the always inspirational Andrea Sher, about a completion ritual for 2009, definitely worth giving a read.

Right now....

I am loving,

the smell of pine, winter light, and the calm of days spent indoors together....

making holiday treats with little hands....

thinking of friends near and far as I write our Christmas cards...

the blooming bulbs at the center of our table, and lighting the advent candles every night as we sing Christmas songs at dinner.

Things are getting very Merry and Bright over here.

A child's perspective

As promised, here are a few of Jasper's photos from our opening the other night at The Brooklyn Creative League.
Frank and I each have about 6 framed prints up, and the show compares and contrasts how our work is so different as artists who are husband and wife....his latest work being so gritty-industrial and mine so earthy-ethereal.
There was some standing on chairs involved in the photography along with lots of photos of the floor and even of a roll of toilet paper. But having the camera definitely keeps Jasper happy, and I love the five year old energy and raw charm that come through. Plus, when I saw that he had taken this picture of the sunset over Brooklyn, out of the window of the loft space, I knew that he is a boy after my own heart.

Trimming the tree

Let the merriment begin...

Art, weather and a show

Tide

Deluge

Prints of these two new paintings are in the shop today. I guess that I'm thinking about water these days, Tide and Deluge...and the latest painting that I am still working on is already called Vapor.
I think what I am really wishing for is Snow! Where are you winter wonderland?
We are having the coldest weather yet this year in NYC, seriously 25 degrees?? I always feel that if it going to be cold then there might was well be snow to add a bit of beauty to the situation! But of course fires and Christmas decorating help a lot, and I do think that today some Christmas cookies might help even more.

Right now I'm so excited about Tide above, I have always been drawn to the idea of the never ending cyclical nature of the tide and the intrigue of those places where the sea and land meet.

Last night was the opening of my new show Collaborations: exhibits at the Brooklyn Creative League, it is a two person show, with my magnificent husband Frank. Jasper was my date to the opening as well as the evening's photographer, so I'll post some of those pictures later...the 5 year old perspective is always so refreshing.

Awakening

Declaring an intention is almost always a bold act, not something without thought and definitely something with action behind it. That is how I felt when I declared my intention, back in September, to work on my affirmation series, a group of paintings that I saw in my mind and was really excited about bringing to life.
Well, the painting fates had other ideas because I was surprised at just how much I struggled with the second painting in that series. The first painting was about the affirmation Strength and Beauty Surround You, and this second painting was going to be called Dream in Color.


For some reason I just didn't feel "right" about this painting and while I finished other pieces with ease this piece sat in my studio, I worked on it in starts and fits, adding pattern and color, but it wasn't until I realized that the bird needed to be different that the painting really started to come together.
She's not dreaming you see. She is awake, and bright eyed to the color around her!

So, this painting is now called Awakening.

It is part of larger lesson that I have taken here, I can't make a painting or a situation different than it is meant to be. All I can do is be truly awake and alive to the color, the life, the ideas all around me.

Art Exchange

A few weeks ago I participated in an art exchange. I was excited to see what would come of it, as the idea of passing art out into the world to someone that I didn't know felt like a serendipitous act to me.

Today I received a thank you from the woman that I sent a print to, saying that she loved the art exchange so much that she wanted to send a "Thank You"...which turned out to be her own art response to my print!!! I loved it!

I had sent her a print of my painting Leap, she had photocopied the print and right on top she had written the amazing quote that you see above. The quote was so appropriate to the theme of the painting it is as if she read my mind as I was painting it. Talk about serendipity.

So, can I tell you how intrigued I was...I immediately googled Mary Anne Radmacher and found her inspirational website of beautiful art and quotes of her original writing. She has a line of greeting cards, posters, books and so much more. In fact, her work looks so familiar to me I swear I had a card by her on my wall in college.

I loved everything about this encounter. In her package she also included a piece of her original art with another of her fabulous quotes, this one about Leaves and Feathers:

Both of these pieces are going right into my studio, for inspiration and reflection, I know that they are pieces that will help me when I am in stuck places, I just know it!
Huge Thank You's Mary Anne!

Northern lights

The glow of these amazing photos just feels like the epitome of cozy to me. What a glorious way to celebrate the approach of the Winter Solstice at our darkest time of the year. There is something about the Northern Lights that seems so fantastical and surreal. It is one of those things that I just have to take on faith that it really happens so far north!
And those teepees call to even this "summer" girl!

* Images of the Northern Lights in Yellow Knife Canada, forwarded from friends in the UK.

Secret World

Secret World

Here is a painting to end the week on. I'm just loving the gold echo of the Lotus next to the big pink one! This print will be in the shop this weekend.

We are having a cozy evening at home, feasting on Thai food, reading new library books, serving cakes to a tea party for dolls and building Playmobil castles.

I can't stop listening to Sufjan Stevens album Songs for Christmas, my absolute favorite album for this season, and every year I feel like I enjoy it MORE.
I hope that you are having a cozy December where ever you are!

Watching over you

This new painting was inspired by a collage that I made at the Children's Museum, yes I do find inspiration even (maybe especially) on the art table at the Children's Museum. We were there at craft time and they brought out this box over flowing with stamps and ink. How could I resist that?
So I sat down with the kids and made this collage:

I liked my stamp collage so much that as I gazed at it back in the studio I just knew that I had to make a painting from it.
The deer became the main character, and as I painted the whole thing became about a Mama and baby deer foraging in winter. The Mama deer gazing, and carefully directing her baby deer. She is always watching over him.

This painting is getting wrapped up and placed under the Christmas tree for Jasper this year (shhh, its a surprise!)
I want him to know, from his Mama:
The Sun, the Moon, the Stars and I; we are always watching over you.

My new favorite dress

A tale of shopping is one that I will never tire of, the constant quest for that perfect thing always excites me.
But, suddenly here that thing is....my new favorite dress/tunic/shirt. (Yes, I have worn it for 2 days in a row).
A couple of days ago it appeared on my doorstep after it's long journey from Eastern Europe. I just love Etsy for that, only there could I find LeMuse the maker of this amazing garment thousands of miles away in Vilnius.
I love to dress for comfort, my favorite clothes are ones that make me feel like me at my best when I wear them, and this dress does that for me...I just feel comfortable and uncomplicated.

I love LeMuse's description of her work:
"I always considered that the beauty of a person cannot be described by tangible things/somehow comes from within. It cannot be determined by a nice dress or new haircut. The sources of beauty cannot be easily traced for the beauty glimpses through each time at a different moment.
Every time a woman would dress in LeMuse, I would notice how differently it looked. It adapts to individual body and moves with that person in its own unique and beautiful way."

And don't you just love her dreamy photos!

Thrills and Surprises

One of my favorite things about having my kids along with me is the way that small moments become big ones. Things that I wouldn't notice myself take on a special thrill and I get to see it all through their eyes. The other day we had such fun taking the subway, that instant when the train burst into the station was so captivating and electric for them.

Yesterday I had my own surprise, which I took a little thrill from too. I noticed around mid-day that my Etsy shop had about 50 new Hearts on it, and there were a couple of back-to-back sales. It all was explained when I found out that I was featured as part of the Etsy take 5 Tuesday over on the amazing design blog decor8, you can check it out here.

I am seriously craving all of the jewelry by the artist that is featured after me! Those gold dipped crystals are just amazing. Boys, pay attention.

Awaiting the Tooth Fairy

Last week, while we were away we had quite a surprise one morning. Jasper came running to me with his finger in his mouth, "My tooth is loose Mommy!". Could it be???
Indeed, his bottom front tooth, the first to break through his gums as a baby, is now nice and wiggly, especially this week as he has had a while to play with it with his tongue.
I so remember that feeling, being a kid with a loose tooth, and the excitement of wondering when it was going to come out!

I had the idea of making "Tooth Fairy Pillows" for both of my kids, but really I figured that I had a year or so to start that project.
Clearly that was a little naive, so, since returning home I have been knee deep in felt, working away on Jasper's tooth fairy pillow.
Because, of course it needs to be ready for the big event.

Here he is, our tooth fairy pillow, Mr. Owl, keeper of teeth and the tokens that the tooth fairy brings.

The tooth is still hanging on by a thread but when it comes out it will go right into Mr. Owl's breast pocket for safe keeping until the tooth fairy's visit that night, she will take the tooth and leave some money in it's place.

And, because I figured the back needed a little something too, his bottom has a little tail! I'm so happy with how he turned out, now he is off to be wrapped up to be presented for the big event...which should be well, any day now!