Berkeley Mine, Butte, Montana

This is not a beautiful place, but it was, for me, a beautiful moment. I was in Butte, Montana, March 31, 2008, with my niece. It was a bitter cold day. We stopped and parked in the middle of town, almost a ghost town, all turn of the 20th century prosperity. We both loved it. An old guy, looked like an Irish miner to me, said, "Pea soup weather, ladies, pea soup weather," and he ducked into a bar.
Oil on canvas, 8 x 10

The Cows Come Home

Cow and Calf, 8x10, oil on canvas

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Clumping Together in the Rain, 9x12, Oil on canvas

Figuratively Painting

Girl in a Mirror

Caran d'Ache Aquacolor pencils, watercolor, lace paper, gouache on watercolor paper, approx 24x24,

Water and Water Media

Egret near Lake Cuayamaca, 8 x 10, oil on canvas

Watercolor, willow leaves and sunset reflected in a stream, fall, Pine Valley Creek, San Diego County approx 12 x 12,

Willow leaves at sunset, Pine Valley Creek, 8 x 10, oil on canvas

Favorite Words from Literature

One project in which I'm very interested -- and find a lot of fun -- is rendering some of my favorite passages from literature into visual art. 

Rilke, Duino Elegies, "Fourth Elegy"

"Who shows a child just as he really is? Who places him
within his constellation, with the measuring-rod
of distance in his hand. Who makes his death
from gray bread that grows hard,-or leaves
it there inside his rounded mouth, jagged as the core
of a sweet apple?
The minds of murderers
are easily comprehended. But this: to contain death,
the whole of death, even before life has begun,
to hold it all so gently within oneself,
and not be angry: that is indescribable."

I got this idea from an apple box that came holding four, perfect, honey-crisp apples. I bought them at Trader Joes, and they were beautiful, but as happens, they were not as beautiful as they looked. They quickly rotted and I was able only to eat one. Within a day or two of buying them I had to throw them into the compost.

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Candide by Voltaire

"There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short, had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunegund; had you not been put into the Inquisition; had you not traveled over America on foot; had you not run the Baron through the body; and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of El Dorado you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts," said Dr. Pangloss

"Excellently observed, but let us now cultivate our garden."

For this, my thought, the joke, is that Candide and his friends were all happy at the end, not because they'd given up searching for the ineffable perfect love, life, lesson, world, wealth, but because all along they'd been garden gnomes.

Custom Murals

Zion, acrylic on rough side of masonite, 1995, 4 x 5 1/2 dining room wall

The Jungfrau Joch (Eiger in front) acrylic, 15'x8', bedroom wall

Ivy Garland with flowers, bedroom walls, acrylic

I can and will paint anything you want. The ivy garland took between 2 and 3 hours, was done completely free hand. The mural of the Jungfrau Joch took 8 hours. The mural of Zion took about 4 hours and seriously looks much better in real-life. This is a scanned photo from the days before digital and I was not working with a clean photograph.

Done in acrylic, these murals dry quickly, have little or no odor, are simple to clean up, water proof and fairly tough. I used artist's acrylic for these but they can be done easily in interior latex paint.