Through the looking glass...

Here's a photo my friend Michael took of me from outside looking in through the window... I was concentrating on a new painting. You can see the reflection of the river in the window. Nice shot.

SeaFair Mega Yacht

Just went through a wild wonderful week-end aboard the SeaFair, a mega-yacht decked out with 4 floors of gallery space. See www.expoships.com for some photos. She docked in Morehead City for the Seafood Festival last week-end, and I was fortunate enough to be one of the artists on-board. The state-of-the-art gallery spaces were a joy to use. Here's the gallery I was assigned. It was satisfying to have a body of work shown in the best possible conditions.

There was a steady pace of visitors to the ship. I did a painting demonstration most days and really enjoyed interacting with folks. A very successful week-end.

Latest commission

The couple who commissioned the large, traditional oil painting of their daughter have given me permission to post a photo of the painting on my blog. Here it is. This was 36" x 60." A lovely subject.

Debussy

Here is the painting that I mentioned in an earlier post about Debussy. I was one of three visual artists invited to create a painting based on one of Debussy's movements from the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp. It was presented Thursday night to the accompaniment of musicians with the Carolina Chamber Music Festival.

I collaged the score of the movement on the canvas first, then collaged and painting the three instruments and painted a portrait of Debussy in transparent colors over that.

Good night Irene!

I've been hard at work on a couple commissions, and then got interrupted by hurricane Irene. She was a big storm and they were having a hard time predicting how strong she would be... so we decided to board up and evacuate to Chapel Hill. When we got back to our little cottage by the river, we were relieved to find it had not flooded. The wind switched just in the nick of time to spare us water (and mud!) in the house... it came close though and the yard was a mess.

So after a week of clean-up things are returning to normal and I'm working double-time to catch up on my paintings. Feels good to be back in the studio.

A miracle

I've been checking on the chrysalis pretty regularly. I went out on our screened porch about noon and instead of the chrysalis there was a beautiful swallowtail butterfly. I set the plant with him/her on it outside and it flew over to my Lantana. Wow. I noticed that the other chrysalis which was outside is empty now too.

Swallowtails

The beauty of the natural world is such an inspiration. We were sitting out on our deck last week and saw a Swallowtail arrive and check out every herb plant until she found our parsley. She then proceeded to lay tiny little dots of eggs around the plant... we've watched them closely and they grew into little then big caterpillars - buying more parsley and fennel to feed them. Then a couple disappeared... after looking really closely all around I found two on my sage plant - one had already turned into a crysalis and the other was starting. I took these photos with my cell phone - will try to post some better ones later... Awesome!