Artandicon's Blog

  • Homage to Van Gogh: Sunflowers

    Flowers please us because of their colors and forms, but also because of their fleeting beauty. While the class was painting, I threw some colors on an old canvas. It is a sketch, since never got to the dark accents of the petals. The paint was wet, so I would have had mud, not two…

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  • Madonna of the Cold Brew

    I’m at my annual conference for my church. I have a display of my art work up. I just sold this found object icon. Icons are not just images of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, but they represent windows into the holy dimension. They aren’t meant to be realistic renderings of the people…

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  • Dinosaurs and X-acto Knives

    I must be the last dinosaur on the earth who still hand cuts with an X-acto knife and a mat knife. Fair warning—this is an old codger rant of sorts. I still have the knife I used in art school. It’s the same one that took a slice off my left index finger when I…

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  • Crossroads and Callings

    Nine years ago…how time flies when you’re having fun! I was at a crossroads in my life, however, with a preexisting health condition I’d managed to live with successfully through three high stress careers since 1977. Accumulated stress isn’t good for the body, so my seizure disorder began to make itself visible. When my neurologist…

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  • PLANNING TO FAIL MISERABLY

    How to do it as an artist or any other professional. Or lollygagger in the workplace. I personally like #8—Why don’t you ever paint landscapes in normal colors? I get this question all the time. How do we know our greens and blues of today are “normal?” We live in creation after the fall, not…

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  • PROMISE OF HOPE

    Today is an official snow day here in our town. While other parts of our state got up to 5 inches of the fluffy white stuff, we got a mere dusting. However, our temperatures fell into the low teens with wind chills in the single digits. Those of you from our northern states might think…

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  • Our Best Life Possible

    When I was young, I thought I had to be Wonder Woman in order to please my parents. You know, the perfect daughter, the smartest child, the best artist, and the best behaved of all their progeny. After all, I was the first born and the only girl, so I’d had my parents’ undivided attention…

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  • It Takes a Village 

    It takes a village to put on an art show, even for one person. My booth is at spot #58, just up from the University of Arkansas at Monticello Wesley Foundation’s booth. I can always count on Brother Kavan’s young people to help me get my setup put up!  The Hot Springs Convention Center is…

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  • Weaving Images

    “Aye, workman, make me a dream” By Stephen Crane Aye, workman, make me a dream, A dream for my love. Cunningly weave sunlight, Breezes, and flowers. Let it be of the cloth of meadows. And—good workman— And let there be a man walking thereon. In 2013, I made a painting of flowers in a meadow.…

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  • What’s a measure of worth?

     If an artwork doesn’t sell, it could mean any number of reasons.    1. It’s not any good, but good is a relative term. Fauve was a pejorative term applied to the bright colors and bold forms of Matisse and Rouault, among others.  2. It’s actually bad. Here bad means unskilled. Of course, naive painters like…

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