Between holiday funk, creative angst and a nasty head cold, not too much has been happening in the studio. Luckily, i’m showing some older work at open studio … unh … Next Weekend (already!)

At the end of the year, i have a tendency to want to “clean up” and “use up”. This is good, because sales are very small and infrequent, so i have been hesitant to buy more supplies. i don’t really have the quantities of paint to work on the only blank canvases i have left - large ones. Also, i am still intimidated by them! So i have been re-doing some pieces and working on vintage art papers, inherited from my aunt. It is rather nice to use.

i have been working on some painting experiments - and also some very simple collages using family ephemera and photographs. Right now, they look *too* simplistic, contrived and trite for me to be very happy with. Too literal. i want them to be more abstract and less representational. But i am very pleased with the colors. Dirty pastels, sort of like vintage lingerie, some (not shown here) mixed with brights. This one is on canvas, and will be hand-stitched. It is still in progress.