Little hands

Here, in my journal I traced their little hands. Then, I filled the outlines in with little circles in the colors that are their favorites...one such a boy, the other all girl.
I will need these little colored hands, you see, because I am going away for a few days. For the first time. Without my children.
Wow.
I feel very dramatic about it, but also thrilled. A long time ago I used to love to travel alone, but my wheels are rusty...won't that make it an even bigger adventure?! I am flying tomorrow to Los Angeles to visit a dear friend for 5 days where we will bike at the beach, watch the sunset, eat long brunches and generally laugh a lot.
While I'll be checking in here from over on the west coast, I wanted to leave you with a brand new painting that seemed to just happen while I was playing the other night in the studio...

Love Letters

These sweet little birds have been popping up in my most recent paintings and I am loving their energy.
OK, now I've got to run and go make some "love letters" of my own, for my little ones to open every morning that I am away...wish me luck!

Meeting

What would happen when the horse met the Pegasus? The earthly meeting the celestial. The grounded meeting the sublime. The mundane meeting the enchanted. The corporeal meeting the ethereal.

Would the horse learn to fly?
My daughter left these two on our kitchen table, set up just like this yesterday. I loved that their faces were almost touching in this gentle moment. It made me stop and think, about things big, and small.

Our Love

Our Love

Our love is....
a soul mirror,
life's sweet blossom,
my sun and moon,
a gentle touch,
a refining fire,
a soothing balm,
my thoughts echo,
a cleansing elixir,
resounding friendship,
the warmest embrace,
an honest reflection,
God's gift,
a deep gaze,
a joyful breath,
wild abandon,
a safe haven,
a counter balance,
a quenching well,
a quiet whisper,
my candle's light.

Frank and I, at dinner on my birthday last year.

This new painting, poem included, are dedicated to my amazing husband. I'm thinking that this one is perfect for Valentines Day, but really its for everyday. There are really never enough days to celebrate LOVE.

Prints of Our Love are now available here.

A tale of a tree fort

We were wandering into the park, not far from the entrance when we found it, a fort of sticks and logs, pine branches, even a holiday wreath, woven together there against an old tree seemingly for our enjoyment.
There were not many others out, as the day was brisk, but we stopped and stayed for a while investigating our find and adding our own branches to the construction.
Then we entered it, drawn in by the invitation of a secret place, a place to hide, to lean against the old tree covered in rough bark and soft moss, to look up together at the clear sky.
To find that even here, in the middle of a teeming city of millions, sometimes you can find just the quiet that you need.

Patterns

Patterns, originally uploaded by leavesandfeathers.

I just learned how to create a photo mosaic, something I have been wondering how to do for ages. It was so fun that I may have found a new addiction, here I am up too late thinking, "oh come on just make one more!"
I found out about this site that has a program that allows you to create a mosaic through your Flickr account, here I used photos of natural patterns that I took throughout last year.
If you've ever wanted to make one, well I can tell you it just couldn't be easier!
And, my totes are now available for sale here and here!

Totes, oh my!

I am so excited, thrilled even, to introduce you to the latest addition to my shop. I had new tote bags silk screened with my images! In a word they are stunning, I have been wearing them everywhere since they came in and have gotten loads of complements.

They are light weight but sturdy, and I just love that the handles contrast with the bag and reflect the colors within the images, really just so cute. I know, I'm gushing a little bit.
I'll be putting them in my shop later on today.

Every Sense

Make the most of every sense; glory in the pleasures and beauty which the world reveals to you….

~Helen Keller

A detail from my painting Hope, that I look at everyday in our living room and still see new things in all the time.

Stretching in the morning.

Wearing this amazing necklace that Frank gave me for Christmas, he got it here. I love love love love love it, and never take it off.

Butterflies at the NYC Museum of Natural History, where last week we discovered that even the banisters have a bit of magic...

Magnets

In the past couple of days things have been coming in the mail around here that have made it feel a little like Christmas all over again. I have a few surprise updates for my shop coming in that I'm just loving. Oh the delicious excitement of opening boxes full of anticipation and things long awaited!
The first that I want to share with you are these new sweet magnets.



They are 2 by 2 inches square, the perfect magnet size if you think about these things...really not too big as to overwhelm what it is holding, but big enough to hold it well.
I'm just so super pleased with how they turned out. It's wonderful how magnets can make my day isn't it?
Available as a set of three, or each on their own, here in my shop.


P.S. My note card set is featured this weekend in a very cute treasury on Etsy, worth checking out if you love paper products and stationary as much as I do!

Sunlight

At this time of year, in the afternoons, the low sun shines into our house at a mysterious angle, almost as if it is searching us out. Transforming the mundane into the magical,

the everyday into the brilliant,

and giving us all halos.

Vapor

A new painting floating in from the studio, just finished this weekend.

Vapor

There is so much movement in this one for me, those bubbles are floating by, the perched butterflies are about to flutter away, the grasses might wave at any moment in the breeze. I became entirely wrapped up in getting each color of the bubbles just the right tones of turquoise and chartreuse, just perfect. It reminds me of warm evenings and summer smells. Ahhhh.

Still life

This is "the one", my first love. While making this painting, in my intro to painting class in college, I fell hard for the delicious process of putting paint and brush to canvas.

My professor had set up a huge still life of fabrics and fruits in the middle of our painting classroom, and I was immediately drawn to the relationship between the gourd and the pear. When I began to paint them everything else fell away around me, and it was just me and my painting. The calm that descended upon my mind as I painted was a sensation that I could not get enough of, I came at all hours to the studio to work on this painting. The colors and the texture of the paint transfixed me, but the most amazing thing to me was the magic of it...the way I could squeeze a blob of paint from a tube onto my palette and through just using my brush to smear it onto a canvas I could create anything that I wanted. Here, so many years later, the satisfaction that I felt as I painted the orange skin of the gourd is still palpable to me, and I still can't get enough of painting.

Today my still life adorns one of the nooks in my parent's lovely living room. Whenever I am there I take some time for a little visit, sometimes just a glance, sometimes a longer gaze or an up-close study. This still life will always be one of my most precious paintings...serving as a reminder of the discovery of first love.

Clarity

My word for the year ahead.

I am wishing for clarity of purpose, clarity of desire, clarity of intent, clarity between "want" and "need", clarity in relationships, clarity of direction, clarity of priorities, clarity of path.

clar⋅i⋅ty

–noun

1.	clearness or lucidity as to perception or understanding; freedom from indistinctness or ambiguity.

2.	the state or quality of being clear or transparent to the eye; pellucidity: the clarity of pure water.

Synonyms:
1. intelligibility, exactness, simplicity.

clarity - the quality of clear water; "when she awoke the clarity was back in her eyes"

Winter days

Frigid outside...
Toasty inside...

Where our cozy days have been taking shape...

even as the battle between good and evil rages on around us.

Print Sets

New for 2010 I have just added Print Sets to my shop! Within my work there are pieces that just go together, and I had fun putting together groupings that have such a dialogue. The print sets are available in 5 different color ways...

Yellow

Blue

Pink

Green

And the Affirmation Series of prints is in a rainbow color spectrum.

The groups look great popped into simple frames and hung together on a wall (I've just used Ikea frames here). There are also enough in the group to keep two for yourself and gift two to someone very special, should you wish.

I'm getting closer to choosing my words for 2010. I've settled on one word, which feels like it needs a partner, so I'm just narrowing down my choices. How about you?

Lucky

I feel so lucky. Santa (read my *amazing* family) brought me just what I was longing for this Christmas.
The camera of my dreams is now mine, oh my heavens, and I had such fun taking it for a "test drive" while we were still visiting my parents house.
Their house is full of odds and ends picked up over a lifetime of travels to distant lands and interesting places. My mother has a wonderful eye for color and design, she always returns from a trip with treasures.

Amongst it all, here is a portrait of me at age 5...

...in which I see a remarkable resemblance to my son.