Summer Pleasures

Oh, beautiful summer. I met a new painter this week; new to me but known to many others. Her name is Flora Bowley and you have to check out her work. When I learned she lived here in River City and was also teaching at Squam this fall I contacted her and arranged for a painting experience in her studio.

She has a wonderful big studio in a warehouse downtown. Along with 9 other women I painted 2 30x30" canvases in one day under her direction. She is a wonderful teacher that I can wholeheartedly recommend; please see her work here and check out her blog.

The two big wild whirling dervish paintings you see here are merely stages in the unfinished pieces I started. Gosh I love painting with abandon.

This is another wax piece that is no more but I do like the way this shot shows the deep carved lines. Like a drunken butterfly this week I've flitted from one happy art-making experience to the next.

Last weekend I sat through 5 hour long demos at the big encaustic show at the Lake Oswego Art Center. This is Jeff Schaller above, showing us how he paints his realistic wax paintings. He is really funny too. His first salvo was to look back in that mirror and ask, "does this mirror make my butt look big?" ha ha.

This whack a doodle journal page was the underpainting that turned into this ...

Demonstrating that it doesn't really matter what goes down first because it's going to change. 

I'm so excited for the 4th of July. I feel like a helium balloon that's been untied from an anvil. A big contrast to the heavy experiences of the preceding months. I'm starting to look ahead and ask myself what I want to do next.

One thing I'm looking forward to is having more time in the studio and to attend the meetings of the local encaustic group. I miss that stimulation.

On this page you can see several friends; dear Jen cutting arugula from her sweet garden for our lunch, Flora Bowley painting in her studio and friends Tabor, Dayna, Nikki and Stephanie relaxing at a cuban restaurant after a strenuous (?) session of painting together. Dayna posted more pictures of the day on her blog. How good it is to paint with friends.

Delphiniums in my garden; here's to summer and all the good things that come with warmer weather. Big breath. We do what we can with whatever we have. We seek the good things that bring us pleasure. We seek them avidly. xo