baghdad flourishing 2

another in my series of baghdad reviving from the brutal u.s. occupation. this canvas is 8 x8 inches and is available
for sale. please email me for pricing.

baghdad flourishing 1

today's painting is the first in a series of acrylic paintings on canvas that i'm taking to the seattle arab festival to sell. this one is 10 x10 inches, and is inspired by an illustration done for saudi aramco world magazine last summer. the subject matter is baghdad, but instead of baghdad destroyed, it is a vision of baghdad flourishing once again. this painting is for sale. please email me if you're interested in buying this or one like it.

autumn woman

it is not even august yet, but hints of autumn are already in the air. the light is changing. the air is cooler; days are becoming shorter. this is how it is in the pacific nw.

so the use of the gilded autumn leaf as a starting point for this painting...another in my series.

with the golden yellow of summer, hinting of fall to come.

buddha/great vow

while away for a meditation retreat, this is the first of four paintings done with my first media—watercolor on paper.

butterfly woman

the latest in my collage/acrylic series after a month of travel, a retreat, and gardening catch up!

medicine woman—original version

here's the original painting without photoshop. which one do you like better?

medicine woman—psychedelic version

after my initial scan of this painting, i started fooling around with this image in photoshop, and decided i like the psychedelic version more than the orginial painting. so maybe i will go back to the original painting and really put in some color such as this! it's really fun to play with images in photoshop. lots of amazing variations are possible!

cauliflower woman

spent a week intensively getting caught up on my garden—planting american corn, lebanese squash, german green tomatoes, middle eastern and armenian cucumbers, jalapeño peppers, italian basil, and more...so my delay in painting and posting! the garden has produced abundant strawberries this year—a result of little rain, which minimized the usual slug damage. this year, for the first time, the strawberries and rhubarb were ready at the same time to make a fabulous pie—the best ever according to my sweetie, with a secret ingredient of orange flower water and lemon zest! Yum! (thanks to global warming?)

and perfectly in keeping with my activities of planting food, today's painting is an offshoot of people with things at the top of the head series, people with food at the top of their heads! self-explanatory...obsessed with food; food on the mind; love to cook and eat; a silly concept? you decide.

nimrod woman

to commemorate the loss of life, dignity, beauty, history, culture, civilization, and people of ancient mesopotamia/current day iraq, i dedicate today's painting.

dog man

a slightly looser painting style and a silly starting point (the dog!) led me to breaking out a bit from the usual today.

spectral man

he is spiraling! i struggled with this painting today to finally bring it around to the point where i liked it. and now he seems a good companion to spectral woman. let me know what you think. did i make the mark? as spectral woman is a hard act to follow!

buddha lotus

today's painting is a completion of a piece begun as a demo in a workshop last year.
what a joy to have finished it—another in this series which is growing into a body of work!

lotus woman 3

i found another lotus woman that needed completion! she's got some lotus "jewelry" which gives her a little zip!

let me know if you'd like to buy originals or prints of any of these paintings!

lotus woman 2

today's painting is a completion of one of a series of lotus flower women that i started awhile back. it feels good that she's now done! thanks to friend/writer/artist jill kelly for the idea of finishing some of my unfinished pieces for my daily art project!

KYKKOTISSA MOTHER OF GOD ICON

this icon was NOT done in a day. it was a long process, just completed (except for the final stage of olipha, or oiling the icon to preserve it), on friday. the medium is egg tempera on gessoed wood panel with 23k gold leaf and shell gold. it measures approximately 8 inches by 10 3/4 inches.

the original Kykkotissa Mother of God icon which was the prototype for this one comes from St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai. in December i viewed an exhibition of icons (not including this one) from St. Catherine's at the Getty Museum in LA—wow!

this weekend i was away at the oregon coast visiting dear friends from RAIN magazine days, and so i did not paint, but will use some of the beauty and inspiration in my daily paintings this week.

spiderman

spiderman reflects the mood of the day...duality and tension. this painting was done over a child's painting of a little dancer. some of the pink background is from the child's painting, and other "pentimento" are revealed throughout especially as texture.

mindful bliss

today's painting is the latest in this series which measure 7 1/2 inches by 5 1/2 inches. it came from the meditative state that arises while painting.

spectral woman

this is the one i painted on saturday in the workshop that i taught. she now has a title "spectral woman"
and is the newest in my series of people with things at the top of their head! enjoy!

please email me if you're interested in purchasing any of my paintings!

fireworks woman

daily art blog

for years i have been thinking of doing a painting a day, inspired by a woman named lorraine, who did a beautiful painting and shared with me her idea of doing a painting a day. she used a prompt list—one word for each day of the month's painting—as writers sometimes use to generate a written story.

so here i go, with or without a prompt list.

since high school i loved drawing faces—doodles really—and now as a painter many years later, i love creating faces. a number of years ago i began a series beginning with a visual prompt—a magazine cutout that i collaged onto my painting paper. i place these organic simple starting points at the top of the head and create a face from there, incorporating the element into the hair or head of the person i've created. it is fun and fast.

first i'm posting one of the original series that i love called fireworks woman. tomorrow i'll post a new one i which i just painted on saturday as a demonstration piece in a collage and acrylic painting workshop i taught in my studio. i love the colors and the feeling she has. so far, she isn't titled.