Reminiscing

I recently had a round number birthday, and a small windfall at about the same time. So I had a wild idea-- why not take my daughter to Ireland with me to celebrate in style? She was a fantastic travel companion, and we saw much of that lovely country. We drove the Ring of Kerry, hired a local boat to take us to the ruins of a 6th century monastery at Innisfallen,stayed in a manor, stayed in a castle, stayed in an incredible showcase of modern style,  
hiked a mountain to visit the cairn of Queen Maeve, visited the Cliffs of Insanity, learned about fairy rings, 

shopped the high street of Galway, listened to an evening of Irish traditional music, and ended up in Dublin, too exhausted to do much except dine and sleep. I was offered birthday upgrades, birthday toasts, birthday chocolates, and birthday cupcakes.  We took selfies in Dodger gear and tweeted them out-- and the Dodgers responded! We shared driving, took pictures of delicious food, and generally had a blast. I highly recommend embracing birthdays, especially round number ones, and we have decided to continue this tradition on our round number birthdays-- and 5 is a round number! 

After we returned, one of her friends made a tintype of one of our selfies. And he signed and titled it!

I highly recommend this manner of birthday celebration.  I thought the tintype idea was very clever,and it turns out Carlton is trying out a kickstarter campaign. It can be found at tintypeKickstarter.com. 

New work

Two more pieces in my Challenges series.  In Row, the red rectangles reference my son, who is 20 years old and has autism. He does not like to sail, which limits what we can do with sailing. The rectangles are the cars he used to line up all over the house, which were always quite charming, as is he.  

Row, 16 x 16 inches

Encaustic and Oil

After Gallifrey, 14 x 14 inches

Encaustic and Oil

destruction and regrowth

I've been intentionally introducing some elements of destruction to paintings that seem to me to be stuck at "boring!"  This is a metaphor for me of those times in life when things go utterly wrong and out of control, and we must decide what to make of it.  The first paintings to get this treatment started out here:

To me, they were all about that bright, sunny, perfect spring day.  But then I remembered one such perfect day, when I was called out of class the first day of my last quarter of university to be told of a personal tragedy. I remember the sunlight so clearly....up until that moment, and then not for years later.  So I tried to introduce the shadow and darkness into the paintings.

Here is another example, before, during, and after.