Deep Space

I'm obsessed with these images on the Hubble telescope photo-album site where you can download any of these images in super high resolution to print them out at home. I mean really aren't they just mindblowingly amazing!

I think the first one is my favorite, I'm picturing it framed it in my studio and maybe the last image in the kid's room. So many possibilities.

Home Again

Frank and I returned from our trip last night, feeling like we have been away much longer than five days. What a difference travel makes to your point of view, no? I love to come home with my eyes refreshed, able to enjoy where I live with the perspective that only travel can bring, and it felt exciting to come home to Charleston after this trip, which made it feel like Charleston is really our home now.

Jasper and Carys loved their alone time with Grandma and Grandpa.

I had fun entertaining myself on our flights taking pictures of the sky with my iPhone. I just love the landscape above the clouds and I'm obsessed with the instagram app.

Now off to organize all of the other photos that I took while we were away.

Sunset on the bay

A couple of months ago a professional photographer snapped this picture of Frank watching the sunset on the Pitt Street bridge near our home. They had exchanged cards and the photographer emailed Frank the photo recently. This spot has become one of Frank's favorite places to go this summer, he likes to bike over there alone in the evenings and fish or watch the sunset. Every time he does he comes home with his spirit refreshed...fun to have that captured in a picture that will always remind me of this summer.
You can check out more work by the photographer here.

Hello September, I've loved the August break, but I am looking forward to getting back into the schedule that the autumn brings!

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.

waves in the sky

The clouds looked like breaking waves yesterday. If you look closely you can see a faint rainbow in some of the pictures. We lay on the grass and watched for a while. Take some time where you are to lie in the grass and watch the sky, I highly recommend it.

Flying again

My grandfather was an airline pilot for 50 years. First he flew planes in the south Pacific in WWII and then he flew commercial airline flights for Eastern Airlines (remember them?). I have always thought that the urge to travel was in his Norwegian blood, and it is definitely in mine!
This summer we have been so lucky to have many trips planned, tomorrow we leave on our last week away before the fall. We are flying to Oregon in the morning, we'll be traveling around the state a bit, and I'm really looking forward to checking out Portland.
I always feel a little bit giddy, like a kid again, the night before I travel. Tonight is no exception.
Today was hard, I was home the entire day until 5pm waiting for a UPS delivery of some prints of paintings that I had to mail to a client before my trip tomorrow. After waiting all day at home, with the kids, I finally received the prints and they were BENT! Seriously, they are bent down the middle and completely unusable.
In the morning I had read this amazing email newsletter by the fabulous SARK where she was talking about being a "Detective of Goodness"....she stops people in the midst of their day and asks, "Would you like a perspective of Goodness?", this is her way of reminding people that they have the opportunity to have such a different experience right in the midst of the annoyances that they face. We always have the opportunity to experience things differently and I loved reading her reminder, boy did I need that today. All day I was seriously repeating that as a MANTRA.
I will miss all of you, and I look forward to returning with photos and stories of my trip. See you next week.
xoxo

::The photograph above is of 4 matted photos that hang in our upstairs hallway, all of them taken by me out of the window of an airplane on various flights at various times, when I fly I can't get enough of the sky::

I've been away

I am still caught up in the sort of floaty, summer time dream state that I had after our week at the beach. I'm not getting much painting done, but that doesn't mean we aren't being creative. It's just that we are all full into summer mode here, the days are long and full of constant kid attention of the best and most exhausting kind...making things and eating things and running all over the place, doing rocket balloons in the park and learning the monkey bars, meeting friends for play dates at the dirt pile near the baseball fields and coming home so dirty that every night is "backwards" night with a bath before dinner instead of after. Those are the kinds of days that we are having now. How are you celebrating summer?

Frank's sunsets

My husband and I love to travel, so, even after having kids we have continued to do it often. We have always been of the opinion that if you start traveling with them when they are young then they will get used to it and become good travelers...even growing to love it with us.
After five years we are getting pretty good at the whole traveling with kids thing, but, while on our recent trip to New Mexico, we encountered one of our biggest traveling hurdles with kids so far. Our two year old daughter refused to fall asleep in our rented house.
Our solution? My amazing husband Frank decided that he would drive her around in the car every night so that she would fall asleep. He did this all 14 nights that we were there. He is amazing.
As an artist, and not one to loose out on a good opportunity, Frank would park in a beautiful stop every night after she was asleep, and do a watercolor of the sunset. Many, many sunsets. Each of them is lovely and a perfect snapshot of the place, time of day, light and atmosphere. I love looking through them and thought that I'd share a selection of my favorites with you here.
Call it a father/daughter colaboration of sorts.

Oh That Sky

Vast

Rhythmic

Ever changing

Humbling

One of my favorite things about New Mexico is the sky. Oh that sky, it is the sky of my dreams, the sky of my fantasies, feeding my imagination. Out there on the high desert in Santa Fe, at 7000 feet, there are some places where you can actually have a hundred mile view. Its true, but I didn't believe it until a local confirmed it for me. We stood on a ridge during a hike and watched the play of lightening in clouds far away as storms moved across the plains. I love the lack of visual clutter out there, there are plains of sage and dirt and sky...Brown and Blue: those predominate and create a rhythmic whole. Resting my mind, refreshing my eyes from the daily assault of input and constant pace of New York City.

We went out there with the intent of meeting people, and had the good fortune to connect with quite a few. Over breakfast one morning, a new friend told us that the sky out there is like their ocean. I loved this analogy because at once its truth struck me! All of the descriptions that I would use for the ocean fit their sky, even down to the feeling that I had at the end of the day after we had spent the whole day out under that sky...I felt tired in the best way, as if I had spent the day at the beach.

Vast, rhythmic, ever changing, humbling, awe inspiring, soothing. Breaking things down into their textures and colors.

It is still on my mind and in my dreams. And oh, the sunsets.