February 02022020 Palindrome Blues and Ipusharoundpaint

January ended -whew! what a long month - with a lovely Art Opening at The Chocolate Church Gallery - 2020 Members Art Show featuring works in painting and photography from approx. 10 skilled, creative and wonderful artists, many of them I am fortunate to call my friends, and they are a constant inspiration! My camera was too 'stuffed', so I didn't have a chance to take photos. My friend Alane, a wonderful photographer who has also been in this show in previous years, took this one of me. I have my 'Sosna' Pine Tree for sale along with two abstract landscapes and a bin filled with many smaller gouache paintings. The gallery is located at 508 Washington Street in Bath, ME and the show will remain up for all of February.

Well January,... meet February. Spending time being gregarious and extroverted naturally resulted in a number of hours the next day in my studio, needing to dive into the underbelly world. I started this painting below. The base is strong for me and it encompasses many personal themes and feelings. My aim was/is to create and feel out the structure with my hands only, for now. I-push-around-paint. Taking time to massage and tease out the issues and themes that I have been feeling and grappling with and express them both visually and physically onto the canvas. Yes, a little rebellious for me, only because I had stretched this canvas intending to use it for a landscape painting! It is still very much influenced by the external Maine landscape, but for these next few days, I'm bringing it inside, a Hue-Maine inner winter landscape and a turn towards a more inner visceral winter expression. Like so many of us, I have been feeling very tender about the landscape, about the environment and our earth. I'll continue with this one and other smaller gouache projects over the next week and as always remain curious and humbled.

February Blues painting....currently untitled, in process. 34" x 25" oil.