Shake a Tail Feather!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bt9xBuGWgw

The above video is great- it is Frostie The Cockatoo Dancing To Shake Your Tail Feather! This bird Loves Ray Charles!

Sometimes you just got to shake things up!

If you're familiar with my work you know that I usually do landscapes, but I occasionally branch out into portraits, figure sketches and some still life. I recently started a little quick sketch ( an hour and a half) of Caleb. who is 22 months old.
And I had just finished a still life which seems to have gotten the attention of several folks who came by my studio:

I don't plan to stop painting landscapes anytime soon... but sometimes you just need to shake things up. Tomorrow I'll be taking a writing workshop in Tupelo. I need to improve my writing skills...and who knows - I may shake a tail feather and write a book! I can dream! 

Nostalgic Paintings

I have sold a couple of gems recently that were personal favorites to me. One was Baptism at Moon Lake. It is now on it’s way to its new home in Norway! I know that it will be loved from talking to the collector. She shared with me that it is a gift to her husband on their 26th wedding Anniversary.

Above is a southern staple that is quickly becoming obsolete. Delta Cotton, 24 x36, was purchased by a collector from Nashville at one of my solo shows in the fall of 2009... She touched my heart as she told me that her father was a cotton farmer and had always told her stories of his love for farming. That made the “adoption” of the painting even more special. She and I have remained friends and I look forward to visiting with her at her cabin on the TN river this spring.

Homeplace  on the Hill, 11x 14 is a painting that meant the world to me and sadly I wasn’t able to communicate with the owner. It sold in one of my galleries and this particular gallery does not share collector information with me. I wonder sometimes if the person who selected the painting had memories of a home place similar to this one. I had painted it because it reminded me of my childhood home -the house in which I was born. I loved the clothes on the line. I remember in the 60’s as a child, waking up on weekday mornings to go out on barefooted on the sunny east facing back porch to find my mother gracefully putting clothes through the ringer washer- and piling them like spaghetti folds into a white enamel wash basin and carrying them to the clothes line to hang. Clothes smelled wonderful back then!