Tag: painting

80th Birthday Celebration

I threw my mom an 80th birthday party in Minocqua, Wisconsin. The location of the hotel is in the lakes region where my parents have a cabin. I wanted the party gifts to be as special as my mom, so I planned to hand-paint images of native Mid-western flowers and put each one in a small, metal frame. With little time to do this before departing for the Northwoods, I packed my art kit and pulled it out during the flight. (See my cramped studio above.) I painted 20 little images — one each to be given to guests at the end of the night. And, what a night it was. The banquet room was beautiful as it overlooked Lake Minocqua. Guests arrived at 5pm and soon we were surrounded by three generations of family and friends. Just as the sun set a double rainbow came out to greet the birthday girl. Mom was so happy, it was a magical evening.

"So we really have no way of knowing, do we?" A painting

In between times, I have been stealing out to the trailer to paint. I have a big table covered with small canvases and I am working on a half dozen at any given time. My process is to just simply play with color and shape to see what happens~my favorite way to discover things.

This little (4″x4″) canvas had been laying around for weeks with only wavy blue stripes on it. I just couldn’t figure out what to do with this direction and color scheme. Whenever I get to that point of not knowing, I just move on to another canvas until something hits me. Well, instead “it” hit the canvas.

One early morning before work, I was again throwing a bit of paint around and some yellow dripped on this canvas. Ah-ah! The image instantly turned into space. Maybe even the view of space from Saturn. That is, if you could lay in the Saturn grass one balmy evening and look up at the stars through your planet’s rings. Or, maybe this is looking out over the ocean at the risen moon. Whatever it might be, I liked it.

The final touch was this quote cut from my now diminishing Gore Vidal book. I clipped it out weeks ago thinking it philosophical. And now, with this little space painting, it’s as if the image and the quote were made for each other.

Well, I hope you are having a really great day. My weekend has just begun and among other things, I am going to lay in the grass and look at the stars.

xoxSarah