self-isolation day 50

Well let's start on a high note.  I'm pleased to share that my painting "Tooling Around" has been accepted in SPLASH 22 - The Creative Spark.  All of the paintings will be published in a 116-page special edition magazine, The Best of Watercolor: Winners From the 22nd Annual Splash Competition, which has a tentative publication date of June 2021.  Always a surprise and honor to be a finalist for this publication.  My thanks to the editor and staff of Golden Peak Media Fine Art Group!  In the meantime, be sure to look for this year’s special issue, showcasing winners from Splash 21, coming to newsstands (and to artistsnetwork.com/store) on June 16, 2020.  

I continue to keep busy painting as much as possible.  I got terribly behind last year and am using this time as an opportunity to catch up.  So, I'm about to finish this half-sheet painting (a companion piece).  I figure three more days will do it.  That's really fast for me.  Consider I started the last one in January and finished in April.  I put that one a board to flatten and haven't looked at it since.  It is a series of sorts...distilling the seminal influence of my favorite artists of the past and making that idea the relevant compositional aspect of my painting.  It's been fun and challenging.  The last was Kandinsky, and so find it most enjoyable from a  distance.   The pattern is key, but I believe the message is clear.  I'll enter it in something and see what happens.  

Other than art, food continues to be a focus of my time.  I'm getting better at cooking.  I appreciate a crunchy salad more than ever.  It is a new month, but the days run together, broken up only by horrendous weather.  Today the sun is shining for a change.  One of my Nanny's iris has bloomed (see slide show).  The hail took some of the other blossoms, but this one survived.  Stay home.  Stay safe.  Nothing has changed.  Back to my brushes.


"It sounds plausible enough tonight but wait until tomorrow.  Wait for the common sense of the morning."  - H. G. Wells