the space

today i worked for about 3 hours on a piece while listening to This American Life and Jillian Michael's radio show. i find it harder to concentrate with just music and am enjoying working with someone's voice in my head. it helps me concentrate less on my life and more on the colors and design of my painting.

i wasn't happy with the start of the piece. the colors weren't working and i wasn't sure where the clouds were going. so i destroyed it and then brought it back. then i took pictures of it and stood back a few thousand times. i still don't know if it's finished, but i'll let you see it. it's 14x14 inches and i've titled it "new night".

and here is my studio! it's in my aunt's garage next to a window. in the winter it's freezing and in the summer it's roasting. the spring and fall are perfect. i look forward to the days that i can open the garage door, get some more light and fresh air.

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my artist's blog! I will continually update this page with new works of oil and pastel and the general happenings in my blossoming art career.

I currently live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a true place of inspiration...especially for a landscape artist like myself. I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, got my undergrad degree in Art and English Writing at West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon, WV, and finished my education with an MFA in painting and drawing from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. Before moving to New Mexico, I was teaching drawing, design, art history, digital photography, etc. at Fairmont State University and West Virginia Wesleyan College.

My work is primarily oil, but I also love to work with hard pastels or NuPastel. I've always enjoyed the space of the land and the sky, but was only really able to understand it once I moved west. I also have been known to do abstract works in both mediums that still deal with space along with color and value. I'm also a bit of a photographer. I always carry around my little fuji digital camera, but I also have an old manual canon in the back of my jeep at all times. As I tend to work from photographs, this comes in handy.

Thanks again for visiting my blog!