Bend, Oregon is where you will find me and my art this weekend. Art in the High Desert starts this Friday at 10:00 a.m.

AHD is a wonderfully juried little show in a beautiful—yet convenient—setting. Art booths wind alongside a stream just a few steps from the Shops at the Old Mill in Bend. Since it falls on the weekend before Labor Day, many artists do this show on their way to the Sausalito Art Festival or in my case, Art in the Pearl. So if you can’t make it to either of those famously top-notch shows, you can find many of the same amazing artists in Bend.

I’ve made some new work especially for Bend this year, including some of my ponderosa pine images like Storm’s Passing (above). I’ve also made some new miniature works, including a few landscapes and a tiny pine. Come see these and all of my work this weekend!

Art in the High Desert
When: August 26 – 28, 2011
Where: The Shops at the Old Mill, 661 Powerhouse Drive, Bend, OR
Hours: Friday – Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m, Sunday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
What I’m bringing: Pastels and Oils
Booth #26c

Can I be two places at once? If only.

This is one of those wish-I-could-be-two-places weekends. The Bellevue Arts Museum Artsfair starts Friday in Bellevue, WA. I’m so excited to see my Seattle-area collectors and find  homes for some new pieces like Shiva Luna (above). Naturally, also on Friday, the Peter Pan Invitational opens at the Tinman Gallery here in Spokane. I’d love to see my cicada “fairy” wings (Dreams of Moonlit Flight, left) in what I’m sure will be a fantastic group show. But alas.

If you are going to be in Bellevue this weekend, please stop by and check out a LOT of new work in pastel at my new location: booth O-9. If you are in Spokane, please visit the Tinman for their great summer tradition: the literary-themed group show. Both events promise to be full of fantastic art and fun.

Bellevue Arts Museum artsfair

When: July 29 – 31, 2011
Where: Bellevue Square parking garage, 510 Bellevue Way NE, Bellevue, WA
Hours: Friday – Saturday, 9:30 a.m. – 9:30 p.m., Sunday 9:30 a.m. – 6 p.m.
What I’m bringing: Pastels
Booth #O-9

Peter Pan Invitational

When: July 29th, 5 – 9 p.m.
Where: Tinman Gallery, 811 W. Garland Avenue, Spokane WA
What: Nearly 50 invited artists show works inspired by the classic novel, Peter Pan

At the moment, it’s craziness. The building where I paint is undergoing some major changes, and it’s keeping me very busy. More on that later, but let’s just say I’m being pulled in a lot of directions. I’m also working to promote the Little Spokane River Artist Studio Tour, which I suspect will be here before I even know what happened!

Thankfully, I do have a few shows coming up to keep me focused on painting. The Salem Art Fair and Festival is just three weeks away. Two weeks after that the Bellevue Arts Museum Artsfair. And, that same Friday (July 29) opens the Tinman Gallery‘s Peter Pan Invitational. I’ve used the Peter Pan show as an excuse to try painting a subject that has always fascinated me: insects. Which probably doesn’t make a lot of sense on the face of it, but for me, nothing conjured up visions of fairies better than cicada wings. Never having painted insects before, I tried a sketch before starting my piece for the show. The result: Cicada Study, left.

The cicadas were a fascinating challenge, and I may work with them more in the future. In the meantime, Cicada Study will be available at an art fair this July. I hope to see you out there!

Artfest begins this Friday at Noon!

After months of creating and framing new art, and one more week of last-minute details like matting new miniature pastels, I will be so ready for art fair season to start. Come on down and see my latest work in both oil and pastel, including my new 6″ x 6″ pastels in silver plein-air frames. Here are the details:

Artfest

When: June 3 – 5, 2011

Where: Coeur d’Alene Park, 2nd & Chestnut, Spokane, WA

Hours: Friday 12 p.m. – 8 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

What I’m bringing: Pastels and Oils

Booth #E-11

Click here for an artist list and booth map of Artfest.

Ascension 2, my commissioned work for Providence Regional Medical Center, is completed and approved! The piece, pictured above, will be shipped off for framing in a few short weeks. I’m so excited to (hopefully) see it in its new home. It has been a wonderful opportunity and experience.

And now that I’m back in the groove, I see more oil paintings in my future… my oils juried into more shows than I expected this summer, and I need to make more. My summer fair schedule will be finalized in the next few weeks, so please check back!

In other studio goings on, my three works for the pastel salon in France are nearly done. Pictures to follow soon.

A crazy good week just happened, and here’s why.

First and second, I have been accepted to two great art fairs: one ” old” favorite and one new to me. Art in the High Desert (Bend, Oregon) invited me to bring my pastels and oils for the third year in a row. This is an amazing, exclusive, high-quality show and I am thrilled to once again take part. Then I found out my pastels and oils and I would travel to Salem, Oregon for the Salem Art Fair and Festival for the first time this July. The new director received rave reviews for her transformation of this show to a top-notch, artist friendly venue. The list of 2011 artists boasts names you might see at shows like Cherry Creek and Sausalito. I can’t wait! (Check out my summer schedule to date on my Art Fairs 2011 page here.)

Third, and very exciting for me, I received a major commission from Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington. Honestly, it has been so long since I submitted work for this project, I had completely forgotten about it! Then out of the blue appeared an email saying I made the final round. A week ago today came the good news: Providence wants a large-scale oil painting (3′ x 4′) based on my earlier oil, Ascension, pictured above. I’m already well into it—the painting ships in early May, rolled, no less! Fast turnaround for an oil painting, especially one that needs to be dry, but I’ll make it.

Not too shabby for one Thursday-to-Thursday week. I remember saying not too long ago that I could really use some good news. Well, there you have it.

As an artist, I talk to a lot of people about my work, especially at festivals. And I get asked a lot of questions. Many of them I hear over and over again. Some are questions such as, “why do you look tired?” or “do you really like leaves?”. These are not the questions I will be addressing here. Luckily, even more often I am asked really good questions about my medium and how it works. So, I decided to put together some relatively quick (for me) answers and post them on a new page, Pastel FAQs. For example:

1. What is pastel?
Pastel is a dry drawing medium, created by mixing pure powdered pigments with a minimal amount of binder and water, rolling it into a stick form, and allowing it to dry. The pigments used are the same pigments used to create all painting media, but the pastel form allows the pigments to appear closest to their original color. There is an enormous variety of pastel available on the market today, ranging from inexpensive, student-grade, chalk-like pastels to handmade, buttery, pigment-rich—and expensive—professional lines.

This one goes to eleven, so for the remaining ten Q and As, go here. Enjoy!

This week, I hung a nice, simple, low-key, easy-going show… a show which had caused me no end of stress for the past month.

Not the show’s fault, mind you. Nor the fault of the lovely Spokane Club, where the pieces are currently installed. Nor of Dean, the friend who scheduled and helped me hang the show. The stress was all me, of course. The short time frame I had to paint following a protracted studio move, the amount of art I had out in galleries, the learning curve of the new glass cutter. But all’s well that ends well. Everything is painted and framed and hanging and I can move on to what’s next at a more relaxed pace. Yay.

For those of you not familiar with the Spokane Club, here’s the deal: it’s private. This being the case, there was no public opening for the exhibit. As much as I’d love to invite you to see the show, unless you happen to be a member, I can’t. So in leiu of the actual show, I’ve made a virtual gallery of the pieces in it. If you’d like to see them, go here.

Update: The Spokane Club has featured my work and me with a very nice article in their magazine, Signals, on pp. 18 – 19.

Also, it turns out you CAN see the show if you are not a member—the members-only thing isn’t so strict as I thought. Fair play!

Works at the Spokane Club, February – April 2011

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