From 1969-1973 Those Starving Artist Shows

Every week I have someone email me with a painting or two they bought in the above four years.  Some of the paintings make me cringe and others I actually like.  This one was sent by a daughter via her Mother.  It was done very expressively with quite liquidy oils and I like it for the looseness of the paint and the color that was exaggerated.  And, the frame reminds me of this precious man who made me 300 frames at a time in the color line (turquoise, lime green, avocado green, burnt orange, yellow, and orange) of the decorative colors used at that time.  Remember those avocado green shag carpets, anyone?  Anyway, that dear man made these really nice frames, distressed them, painted the color line, and charged me a pittance for them.  Am remembering that I could get a 16 by 20 for close to $5.  Is that not unbelievable!!

Also reminded that I was painting 20 paintings a week, actually 5 a day for the first four days of week, as I had to get them into frames to carry to the shows on that fifth day.  Too wet to do otherwise.  Never will I work that physically hard in setting up tent and display each week end, nor will I ever make that much money again.  Bought the 20 acres in Colleyville, road in, horse trailer to transport paintings before owned any horses, 4 stall metal barn, and fencing.

Here is this painting done in 1969 or 1970.  Like the drawing and like the looseness and the transparency opposed to the opaqueness of the paint.  Thank you, Susan C., for the sending.

Thursday, April 14, 2016, I was the lone member of a panel that David Morgan was the Moderator for Grapevine Art Project

It was a fun night.  I put in some real time on finding sources for the members of GAP.  It is always "fun" to talk about yourself, and is always an eye opener for self.  Having to put things into words makes feelings more real and gives me understanding of self.  Talked about a lot of things fast and hard and still did not get everything covered.
  One of the things I wanted to mention is using references from the internet and other peoples photographs and paintings.  If you want to compete with your painting or sell your painting (and I can't think of many other reasons for producing a painting), you should not use anyone else's photograph, and certainly NEVER another person's painting) or a reference photo from the internet.  Let me give you my personal experience that I have told in most every class or workshop since the experience.  Wanted to enter a State wide Pet Exhibition with a painting of my Blue Great Dane named Belle.  She had died some year before and I could not find a good photo I had taken, so went to the internet.  Found  a photo of a typical position that Belle would get in and made some changes:  1. the dog in internet photo was beige color with darker points and my dog was a blue.  2. The dog in internet photo had cut ears and I changed the ears to Belle's natural ears.  3. The dog in internet photo was not as fat as Belle, so I changed my painting to add pounds.  4.  Made my painting more feminine looking.
  None of this makes any difference.  The photo was not mine and that is the only consideration that copyright takes into consideration.  I won Best of Show, was challenged and gave the award money and ribbon back.  Lesson learned.
  Below is painting of my beloved Belle in Typical Dane Position.

This is What Life is About

Great time at the Outdoor Painters Show at Southwest Gallery on Saturday.  Man oh man did they get that show hung and take care of us (220 paintings from 19 states-our Prez, Tina B. did a fabulous job).  I was NOT happy with my Quick Paint, but appreciated the sale of three of my four paintings by the time the reception was over on Sat.

However, the real stuff of what life is made of came on Sunday.  Two of the artists returning home from the OPS Show, came by my home in Colleyville, Tx., and had bacon, quiche, fruit with me for a brunch Sunday mid morning.  We shared for a couple of hours over our luke warm coffee.  It was a wonderful, trusting, honest,  sharing and that, dear folks, is what life is about.  We all have a story, don't we.  And, then those two fine artists each bought a painting and went in their individual cars their individual ways.

Here are three of the paintings that sold at the show:  Thanks, Southwest.