little lamb

A new mother with her little lamb; a card for my friend who will soon be a new mother with a little lamb herself.

black and white

A limited palette isn't necessarily limiting. Just think of black and white photos. Value truly is more important than color.
A Guild Show Challenge had me happily snipping and stitching.
This little quilt is a replica of a water color I painted a decade ago.
It was pretty exciting to see the sheep re-emerge in black and white.
The butterflies are 3-D; tiny, tiny quiltlets.

space and time

Four oval pine plaques once adorned my living room walls.
I hung them to see how the grouping would fit the wall space, and there they remained. Empty plaques. Time passed. The country look came and went.
Guests would glance nervously at the wood grained ovals, no doubt wondering if they were some sort of avant garde art. Were they missing something, they would wonder to themselves?
The blank plaques were eventually painted, a bit at a time, here and there, over the years and are now a part of my dining room decor. They remain a work in progress, the foregrounds unfinished.
Sometimes an idea needs space and time.
Sometimes art needs room to breath.
But sometimes there's an even simpler explanation.
Procrastination at its finest.

heady stuff

Vintage embroidered linens are heady stuff. When I spot them at Thrift Shops, my heart beats erratically. This little lamb was embroidered by an unknown patient soul and began life on the corner of a table cloth of all things. I believe it is a step up for it to be surrounded by flowery meadows on the back of my granddaughters doll quilt. Doesn't it look proud? Stay tuned, the same tablecloth had a wonderful embroidered robin............

high and spry

I love dusky, shadowy barns, particles of hay suspended in the golden light.

Sheep make my heart beat faster. I love the sound of bells and the constant clamour of lambs calling to their mothers in the cool, mountain air.

And I love how water color can capture light like no other medium. How color mixes and runs in surprising, spontaneous ways. The hard part is knowing when enough is enough.

I had a lot of fun painting this picture because it seemed that layer after layer of color disappeared into the shadow. I think I tried almost every color in my palette, and the picture just became more and more muted. I'm sure muddy would be the technical description but it really seemed to me to capture the dimly lit interior of a barn. I read once that you have to make a thousand mistakes to become good at something, but making them can be fun too.

starting small

One year, my husband gave me Water Color classes as a gift. The instructor was a school teacher who had an alternate life as a painter. She had accumulated a cluster of devoted followers, who gathered to paint with her, and I felt awed to be able to "watch and learn." Her method of teaching was really not unlike the process of osmosis. Put someone thirsty to learn beside someone plying a brush, and nature will take its course. Amazingly, it seemed to work.
The other women in the class were comfortable, confident returning pupils. I was a timid beginner.
They took full sheets of water color paper and splashed paint and water on with reckless abandon.
I took little rectangles and squares of water color paper and hunched over the table, my brush in a death grip.
They were thinking big.

I was starting small.