7 x 5 in.

Maybe you noticed a new print in the shop that also made an appearance in my email & blog announcement yesterday?

Over the holidays, Sean and I pulled out the "Wizard of Oz" dvd. It simply stands the test of time. Beautiful, amazing, brilliant and inspiring

So inspiring, in fact, that immediately after watching the film, I thought it would be fun to try a "Wizard of Oz" painting with all the characters in Creative Thursday style. And now I’m thinking I might expand this into a series that would include other characters from stories and fairy tales?!

The "Wizard of Oz" is also close to my heart, because, yes it’s true I once played a munchkin in a ballet production of it. Thought you might enjoy seeing these photos of me in costume. Always, a dog and a cat by side. And no, contrary to popular belief, I did not alter these in CameraBag on the Iphone. These are actually real polaroids ;) 

{click here to buy original} & available as print here

My annual print sale is now underway, for one day only! Starting at midnight, 12:00 AM EST Thursday, January 28 and ending 11:59 pm EST, Thursday January 28. (Translate your time zone here. Enter US/Eastern) For 24 hours at my Etsy shop, you can purchase 2 or more prints and get a 3rd print FREE! You can get all the details in my shop announcement. Happy shopping & happy Creative Thursday!

you rock my world!

{quote from, and inspired by, one of my long time favorite movie "Singles"}

If you’re about to click on this video because you think I’m going to gossip? I’m sorry to disappoint you :) That will be a video for another day.

After months sans my 30 day video project on this blog {which I’m still finishing by the way, hang on} I’m inspired to return and this time I want to open a discussion. The discussion I want to continue has been inspired by Sean and my e-course and is so compelling, and something that I’ve personally given a lot of thought to over the last year, that I want to take it further.

I’m asking you about friendships? So tell me what you think.

i believe in Love

always have,

always will.

this is my love letter to all of the people who encouraged and supported 

this realization of a dream come true, a life as an artist, a life I love. thank you.

I’ve always wanted to put together a book of my favorite paintings.

In light of recent events, this time of year, my complete over use of the word "love" in my blog, in my life,  and the often hard to miss, re-occuring theme of love in my work, I decided to let LOVE inspire this first volume featuring a collection of my paintings from 2005 - 2009

Measuring 7" x 7", this is a 32 page full color hard cover book including 24 illustrations, some of which will only be available in this printing. I will also be numbering and signing the first 100 copies. If you want to see what the books will look like, they will be the same format as my children’s book.

You can pre-order your copy right here at the shop.

Intended to be a timeless addition to your art collection, I know this would also make a special Valentine’s gift for someone you love - So if you are wanting your copy in time for Valentine’s Day, please let me know and I will do my very best to get it to you in time. Below is small sampling of the paintings included in this collection.

I hope you, too, will LOVE this new addition to Creative Thursday!

Oh, and it’s also {just one more post, I promise} all about Camera Bag...

Photo above is the "Instant" filter

Thanks for all the app/article sharing and for tolerating my newest obsession. I thought I’d close out the week with a post all about me while demonstrating the affects of my favorite filters/cameras on the same photo in the Camera Bag.  Lovely, don’t you think?

Also, I think this is such a fun idea started by Erin of Design for Mankind Fame. You should totally come and play along. It’s a Flickr group called Bloganistas, intended to demonstrate that even though we, who blog, all work from home, we might actually have style and do still wear things other than sweat pants. Although in this week’s photo, I’ll say it’s all about comfort in my "trip to the farmer’s market ensemble", as I traded my "sweat pants" in for the BEST EVER winter leggings from American Apparel. Highly, highly recommend them. I will warn you now, once you put them on you might just never take them off ~ again.

happy Friday to my blog friends! xoxo

"helga" filter

"colorcross" 

original Iphone photo

"magazine"

"1962"

 Well first a nod to the yellow wellies, that I absolutely adore and have been wearing several days in a row now {well when I leave the house that is} due to our torrential down pour of rain here this week. I don’t mean to talk, ahem tweet, so much about the weather, but this is the most rain L.A. has seen in about four years. What can I say, it get’s a little exciting when it rains here.

And second, while we’re on the subject of Iphones and all their wonder ~ a nod to my all time favorite app on the Iphone. Camera Bag, Camera Bag, Camera Bag. I love you.

The best $1.99 I’ve spent for creative inspiration in a long time.

You’ll recognize that all the photos I’ve been taking, including the ones I post in the e-course...YUP all altered with the Camera Bag filters. I fully admit, not only is the Iphone a new obsession but this app is the obsession within the obsession {if there is such a thing?}

Look, what I also want to say is don’t talk yourself out of an Iphone because you think you might check email too much, you might ~ but honestly if you’re already compulsive about checking email an Iphone is not going to be the thing that will push that over the edge. In fact it may just help you manage your inbox to a workable number, which it definitely has for me.

I avoided it like the plague, as I do many technological advances, only to realize {what was I thinking???} how did I live without this? It’s true. And I’m honestly not a commercial for the Iphone, but it is quite amazing. With that said, you should only get one, if and when you’re ready. I’m glad I waited and now have the newest version that came out last summer, as it has both video and voice capabilities that the first model did not. 

Some of you already have been sharing your favorite apps with me, thank you, thank you! If you have favorite apps. please share!! I will be sharing more, I’m sure as I discover them. I’m a newbie when it a comes to the wide world of apps.

For all the criticism advances in technology often get these days, every once in a while it’s really nice to embrace the incredible capabilities we now have, literally at our fingertips.

6 x 6 in. 

My spirit is beginning to return, {as you may know with all my recent chatting it up on twitter yesterday} and with it my creativity is also making an appearance again. I present to you the first painting of 2010.

If you ever wonder why my paintings are mostly happy, it is because I paint when I’m mostly happy. An entire month has passed since I picked up my paint brushes, which I’m realizing is probably the longest I’ve gone without painting since I began this blog and the process of daily painting.

There comes a time when sadness has to lift at least a little, so you can start living again. The experiences of this past week have been profound, not to mention all the devastation in Haiti, which I am just now able to wrap my emotions around.  I am seeing and appreciating my life in a way that I have only hoped for, for many years and I’m waiting to see if it is temporary, or the kind of shift that will remain in tact in the days and months to come. 

What I most want to say today is thank you. How do I even try to express what all of your emails, comments, tweets, facebook messages and phone calls have meant to Sean and I over the last week? If you ever wonder if one more message makes a difference to someone in a time of sadness or joy, it does. Your words and thoughts matter. Immensely. They always do.  One night last week, probably the hardest one of all, I sat and read each of your comments out loud to Sean. We felt so much less alone in our grief, realizing just how many of you have been exactly where we are. Thank you for your willingness to share your own stories so graciously with us.

Ok then, it’s time. Time to return to life and creativity over here.

sending much love to each and every one of you on this Monday.

{click here to buy original} {also available as a print over at the shop}

Such beautiful, sweet and extraordinary animals ~ a dream of mine was to have a great dane. Ten years ago this month I received a call from the Denver Great Dane Rescue, saying that an abandoned black and white dane was just about to come up for adoption in the municipal shelter. The woman on the other end of the phone told me that if I wanted her, to go and get her. And go and get her I did. 

As you may already know if you follow me on twitter, yesterday we had to say goodbye to our girl. 

How do I even begin to express what it meant to share my life with this dog for the last ten years? 

I can’t, because today I’m still too close to the hole that has been left in our heart and our home. What I will say is Lulu was my anchor, unconditionally by my side through so much change and upheaval in my early adult life. Her own challenges due to the trauma of being abandoned in her early life taught me more than I could have ever imagined.  Sharing my life with hers helped me grow in my own grace, and exploration of what it means to truly have compassion and love unconditionally, the effects of which have been most profound while caring for her in her old age and on through to her passing.   

My grief is a combination of guilt ~ was I good enough to her? did I love her enough? did I remember to notice and appreciate all the times she quietly sat next to me in my studio while I painted? ~ and then the realization that I gave her the absolute best of myself and my life that I had available over these ten years. Both the men in my life, my ex-husband Art, and Sean who shared their lives with her did the same. She was loved, incredibly, incredibly loved.

Having experienced profound loss before, I will honestly say this journey over the last few months has been much harder than I anticipated. My heart is wide open and my compassion for those who have also made this journey with an animal member of their family is immense. I understand and I’m thinking of you too.

Now you may understand where I’ve been. I haven’t been ready to involve the online world in truly sad moments in my life, although I’m considering what it might be like to share more in this space. When your heart is open ~ this is when you truly see just how much we are all connected to one another in our lives and how we can’t and aren’t meant to do this thing called life alone. Sharing this yesterday through twitter and the outpouring of messages, and how much they soothed me, reminded me how important it is to let people in, to allow them to offer you love and support when you need it. 

So thank you. Thank you to all of you who had the chance to know and share so much love with Lulu over the last 10 years and thank you to those of you who glimpsed her spirit through this blog who have extended so much kindness to Sean and I over the last day. 

This obviously wasn’t my plan to return to my blog with a heavy heart, and as I’m sure you understand I might need a little time before I return once again. As my tears begin to dry, a sense of relief and quiet calm move in. Our girl was not well for a quite a few months. We did the best we could to make her transition as peaceful and smooth as we could and now she is free and so are we.

To my Lulu girl, you are one of the sweetest, most beautiful and loving spirits I have ever had the chance to know. Thank you for sharing your life with me.

 
 
My Christmas vacation in photos.

I know I said I’d be back tomorrow, but I’ve decided to sneak in a day early. It’s time, I’m ready to gently close out one decade and enter into the next.

1. the grove

2. seanie

3. kitties napping Christmas Eve

4. home made pecan pie, and by home made, I mean the crust too

5. Christmas Eve

6. ornaments

7. Lulu in Lolo

8. everyone is sleeping

9. from Sean

10. my new amanda blake art print, a gift from Sean

11. Seanie + me ~ It’s hard to take a self-portrait {on a new Iphone!!!}

12. santa claus

13. zucchinis

14. skyping with my family in Germany

15. garbo girl

16. a holiday gathering

17. santa monica Irish pub

18. studio doorway

Hi! It’s me wishing you a bright and beautiful start to the New Year!

Sean and I took New Year’s day to catch a really good indie movie and enjoy Irish beers at a pub in downtown Santa Monica. Lucky us, we also caught the first sunset of 2010 in Los Angeles, right as the sun was dipping into the ocean. 

So much to share with you but this will be all for today, because trust me when I tell you that writing this tiny {well it was tiny and then grew into smallish after all} blog post has felt like a monumental effort. 

For this reason, I’ve decided it’s not quite time to come back to the blog. Over the last two weeks. I took what I said in my last post to heart, and when 2010 arrived I decided it was as perfect a time as any to keep the sense of calm and trust I’ve kept in tact over the holiday, which means letting my life evolve from inspired action, not from pushing things into place that aren’t feeling ready yet.  

Also, when I return I want to really, really return. As I enter what will be my 4th year of blogging,  I’m honestly wondering what I want this blog to be when it grows up.  And one of the questions that keeps coming to mind is what can I give and share with you that will make visiting Creative Thursday especially fun and meaningful in the coming year?

I have a lot of ideas swirling around and as of yet, none of them have settled. I’m going to give it another week and then I’m coming back, with or without a great epiphany {because sometimes you’ve just got to get the ball rolling again and see it where takes you}

In the meantime ~ a couple of quick announcements.

Sean and I are preparing our first class for the new e-course, beginning next Tuesday and I have to say, I’m so excited about it. It’s going to be good. If you did still want to join us, there are 7 spaces left as I post this. You can register here.

And! The 2010 sessions for Squam Art Workshops were just released and Sean and I are both scheduled to teach this year. More details here and on the blog shortly.

Thank you so much for all your sweet comments over the holiday and thanks for checking in on me from time to time even while I was away. You are the BEST.

Until Monday then. xoxo