Potpourri

Magnolias in March, beauty unfolding…

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.)
Materials: Acrylic on Canvas
Cost: $6,200 Purchase

I tell my students never to erase. Mistakes are the seeds of genius. It had been a long winter with heavy late snows, it was dreary and I was creatively weary. I needed to paint, I wanted to paint. The rivers and forests were still shuttered in snow, and I wanted to burst forth into spring; to paint color, life, and beauty! I asked God to give me something beautiful and dramatic. Magnolias! Their simple, yet, sensuous forms are an old favorite of mine. I threw up some lines and started an aqueous background. I never erase; but, I erased and erased, over and over, nothing seemed right, every new ’fix’ and adjustment was more egregious than the fix before. So, I erased, scrubbing off paint with my paper towels, trying something else and scrubbing again, considering… and scrubbing off, layering more on top and repainting into what I had just laid down, over and over, as I became increasingly tense. Finally, I stood back and saw that the buildup of one ‘wrong’ line over another had created a rich beauty of subtly and depth. Our lives are like this- a wrong turn, a wrong choice, pivot, new direction… rework, restore, redeem, as God takes our ‘wrong strokes’ and creates a richness of redemptive experience, beautiful and dramatic!

Passages

Size: 48 in. × 60 in. (4 ft. x 5 ft.)
Materials: Acrylic on Canvas
Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Dried-out, dehydrated… beauty and life suspended in time. I stopped, mid-grab, struck by the dramatic elegance in the spent life of my tulips that had so beautifully brought Easter’s Spring verve and color to my table. Someone told me that cut tulips continue to grow after they are put in water. For 10 days mine grew, flourished and became a completed, and surprising, metaphor for us women as we age. The pert uprightness of youth’s perfection- fresh, eager, bright of color, enthusiastic for a life yet to be lived. The full-blown middle years- dynamic, active and fun, pure colors; a time to acquire amidst the tumult of growing kids and careers building toward the ‘future.’ The flower straightens into the elegant age of accrued experience, satisfied contentment and gratification in the journey traveled thus far; still looking forward… yet, bending toward the light, ever so slightly at first, as the fulcrum of life is now full of memories already made and tightening in on the time left to make them. As the petals twist, dry, and wither, on close examination the tulip is at its most beautiful- colors so deep, rich and unique they defy an artist’s replication, petals of delicately transparent gossamer bowing into the full bend of age. Grown children, grandchildren, many years lived- joy and pain, life and death, hope in what we cannot see. Even now, as a petal drops, its elegance carries the transcendence of experience and wisdom, and a life well lived and loved.

Water Lilies

Size: 36 in. × 48 in. (3 ft. x 4 ft.)
Materials: Acrylic on Canvas
Cost: $4,200 Purchase

Verdurous

Size: 48 in. × 60 in. (4 ft. x 5 ft.)
Materials: Acrylic on Canvas
Cost: $6,200 Purchase

Verdant spring. A veritable smorgasbord of greens…

Lalla’s Garden

Size: 60 in. × 48 in. (5 ft. x 4 ft.)
Materials: Acrylic on Canvas
Cost: $6,200 Purchase

As a little girl I spent hours drawing. We lived in a fairy book-style house with tall roofs and shingled gables, and acres of beautiful gardens filled with flowers at all times of the year. In the middle of the garden were enormous lichen covered rocks perfect vantage for an 8 year old in her dress, lace trimmed socks, patent leather Mary-Janes and brunet ponytail, to sit and sketch and dream of her future.

Memories

Size: 48 in. × 60 in. (4 ft. x 5 ft.)
Materials: Acrylic on Canvas
Cost: $6,200 Purchase

This is a place of my youth. A cool respite from the summer heat; happy water fights between warring boats and maybe the excitement of capsizing, are joy filled excuses to enjoy the cool of the river. However, sometimes, just rowing into the deep shade of the overhanging Tanbark oaks and reading a book in solitude is the necessity of the day.

Midnight

Size: 36 in. × 36 in. (3 ft. x 3 ft.)
Materials: Acrylic on Canvas
Cost: $3,200 Purchase

Silhouette

Size: 48 in. × 36 in. (4 ft. x 3 ft.)
Materials: Acrylic on Canvas
Cost: $4,200 Purchase

I am a runner and have been for over 30 years. I love running in the solitude and beauty of the night, especially the snowy nights of winter when all sound is absorbed into the quiet of the snow, and the full moon radiates such light as to turn night into day. One would think there is no color in the dark, but there is a vast depth and a richness of palette only seen without the static of the day.

Back Again

Size: 36 in. × 36 in. (3 ft. x 3 ft.)
Materials: Acrylic on Canvas
Cost: $3,000 Purchase

I had painted the background apples when, in 1996, after much internal argument, I relented to God’s call on me to home-school my three children. I packed up my brushes and paints not knowing when, or if, I would take them out again. Fifteen years later, when all thought of painting had been scrubbed from my dreams, God called me back to where I left off. As confirmation of this resurrected dream, I completed the foreground as testimony that the rent was bound and I was ‘Back, again!’

Eastridge

Size: 54 in. × 73 in. (4.5 ft. x 6 ft.)
Materials: Acrylic on Canvas
Cost: $7,500 Purchase

The terrific heat of a California summer afternoon radiating and roiling over and through the oak woodland is a foundation of my soul. I grew up on the edge of over one hundred thousand acres of oak woodland wilderness area. The backyard of my youth was free rambling along the crests of the hills, dropping down into the Redwood forests in the depth of the valleys, climbing huge trees, and catching frogs, snakes and salamanders in the streamlets winding their way through the cool on the forest floor.