Purple Sunrise

After reading my comments on birding below, my songwriter friend Bobby Braddock (one of the funniest people I know), responded with this: "Does this now mean that people watching is "peopling" and clock watching is "clocking?" "I enjoy peopling when people are clocking."

This painting is Purple Sunrise, an 11 x 14 oil painting.

BUY

20 Years

This is a big day. My husband and I have been married 20 years, and my son-in-law thinks we're weird because we have never had a big argument. People always say, "Marriage is a lot of work...you have to work hard to have a good marriage." Really? This one has been the easiest thing I've ever done. We just treat each other the way we want to be treated. Simple. No work.

My painting today is a 9x12 oil. We went to some wetlands the other day, and I must ask: when did “Bird” become a verb? There are signs saying “Birding Trail” everywhere. Does this come from the verb, “To bird?” Why isn’t it “birditize,” like “prioritize?” When did “birdwatching” fall out of favor? When people got those big giant lenses so they could “camera” better?

Strawberries and Cream

I love big, delicious Plant City strawberries. This is a 6 x 6 of those delectable fruits. Not feeling too wordy today. I must be sick.

Low Country Marsh

Yesterday I did one of those things artists call "distractions". Distractions are anything that keeps one from painting. I cleaned house, one of my least favorite activities. When done, my back hurt and I was in the throes of an allergy attack. I was also bored out of my mind. Of course, I do like a clean house, and I must say I didn't have dust bunnies under the sofa--they were more like jackrabbits. My uncle and I once had a conversation about dust. His wife died, then his cleaning lady died, and he never hired another one, and he was clueless about cleaning. He said, "You can do it after I'm gone." (And I did) We discussed where dust goes. I mean, in a house like his, where he never dusted, ever, why didn't the dust keep getting deeper and deeper? But no, it reaches a certain point and stops. Calculating the years after his maid died, dust should have been a foot deep.
So what is more fun? Standing on a grassy bank, hot, sweating, and being bitten by mosquitoes, painting a picture like this one, or making my house all nice and pristine? You got it. Come on, skeeters!

The Story of Cindy Rella

In response to questions, here is my silly little book on Lulu.com. I did this book for the Hopes and Dreams show at the Fifth Ave Art Gallery in Melbourne, FL. To order, click on the Lulu button.

Marina

I neglected to put the size of my previous painting, which was 6 x 8. This one is an 8 x 10 oil painting, done in Ballard Park en plein air. What a great time of year in Florida to do this sort of thing. I'm so revved after this workshop, I'm painting an ambitious painting of Venice. It's nice to revisit the best places you've been by putting them on canvas. Small wonder that Sargent spent so much time there. It's a labyrinth of incredible beauty and Old World flavor and is absolutely unique, the tacky reproduction at that hotel in Las Vegas notwithstanding. It's like comparing a delicate rose to a plastic one. And one of Venice's glories is no cars! None of the crazy traffic that's present in other European cities; only in the waterways, and that's just picturesque. Commuters standing, in their suits and carrying their briefcases, in a gondola. Commuting from one side of the Grand Canal to the other. Where else do you go to work like that?

Workshop Joy

Just finished a workshop with Gay Faulkenberry and it was exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. She is a noted plein air painter and very cool person, and I tried to absorb as much as possible. She strokes the canvas with the touch of a symphony conductor, but her baton has bristles and paint on the end. We stood on Highland Avenue and got many interesting comments from "Where did you get that hat?" to a little boy picking up my brushes and asking if I needed this one.
Speaking of art, I read that Lucian Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, a painting of an obese nude woman sleeping on a sofa, sold at Christie's for $33.6m. That's quite a sofa painting. It's well-done, but would scare small children and women who have put on a few pounds.

Stolen

Years ago I had this painting displayed in an exhibit at Brevard
Community College, Melbourne FL. While I was in class someone stole
it. I had put a lot of work and a lot of heart and soul into it, and I
felt so violated that when I discovered it missing I dashed outside
into the darkness, frantically looking for the villain walking away
with my painting. I learned what it means to literally "snap."

I never found the painting or the lowlife who took it, and we didn't
have the internet back then. It only recently occurred to me that it
might be a good idea to try again to locate the picture using the power and reach of the internet. If anyone has seen it, please contact me at this blog in the "Comments" section. It's a long shot, but stranger things have happened.

Flower Girl

This was one of the flower girls at my sister's wedding, and she is the groom's granddaughter. She was so adorable in her pretty pink dress, striking this lovely pose. The torrential rains stopped right on cue and it was a beautiful wedding in picturesque Middleburg, VA, followed by much dancing and hilarity at the reception. We love to talk my husband into doing the Mashed Potatoes, as he used to on American Bandstand, when Dick Clark was young and so were the rest of us.