This is the last of my pieces that were "in progress" at the beginning of 2020. And I've finished it! And all the others that were in progress! There are probably plenty of artists who have a group of unfinished works they're working on, but my small pile of works in progress were a constant [...]
Wild Grief by Chris Heeter Start up close and from the back side.Don’t reach for the long view yet.It’s too much to ask of your grieving heart. Look close up, to the silhouette of seed heads on Wild grass.Stand behind a sunflower, on the back side,where each extended petal glows with sunlight. When Wild grief [...]
A couple summers ago, I took a watercolor class where I learned that I could make a variety of colors by mixing only primary colors together: blue, yellow and red. All my long life, I've used pre-mixed colors in my paintings, and even though I mixed those premixed colors together to get other colors, it [...]
As part of my ongoing 2020 goal to finish all my WIP (work in process) paintings, I completed my oldest WIP! Yay me! I started this painting back in 2016. Before I had any watercolor instruction. The paper I used isn't even watercolor paper. And the paper's been taped to the board for so long [...]
As I wrote earlier this month, I "give back" in my life in a variety of ways. I volunteer my time at Atwood Pantry, a local personal essentials (non-food) pantry, and at Olbrich Botanical Gardens. My husband and I donate financially to a variety of local and national non profits and organizations that we think [...]
Over the past few years, I've started to make a list of art goals every January. One of my goals for 2020 is to finish all my paintings that are in progress. I'd like to finish these before I start any new paintings, but that remains to be seen:) Here are three little watercolors I [...]
A percentage of all my ceramic sales is donated to charitable organizations. It’s important for me to give back to my community, and I do so by volunteering my time and money in my personal life, and by donating a percentage of all sales in my Rachel as Artist life. In 2019, 5% of everything [...]
For What Binds Us by Jane Hirshfield There are names for what binds us:strong forces, weak forces.Look around, you can see them:the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,nails rusting into the places they join,joints dovetailed on their own weight.The way things stay so solidlywherever they’ve been set down—and gravity, scientists say, is weak.And see [...]
I recently finished reading A Generous Vision: The Creative Life of Elaine de Kooning, written by Cathy Curtis. This author has written two other books, also about female painters - Nell Blaine and Grace Hartigan. A Generous Vision is a biography about Elaine de Kooning, born in 1918, an abstract expressionist painter who was married [...]
