... i am now a believer in the economic recovery ....

based on my sales at the trinity art show this week, i believe that the economic recovery might just be real ... i read an article this week (in time mag., i think..or online? npr? wsj? not sure!) ...

so maybe it's just that folks are tired of worrying about money .... they've had an empty spot above their couch for two years and they are ready to fill it .... either way, my newest extra large canvas has sold this week at the trinity art show ... it makes me happy that the painting made someone else happy enough to buy it ... rah! i have a couple more paintings started that i will try to finish first thing tomorrow, and go restock at the show, since they seem to have sold many... hip hooray for economic recoveries .... it's great for an artist's hibernating/wounded art ego ....

live love

i have a sign in my kitchen that says "love more, more love" or maybe it says more love, love more ... it's kind of yin yang thing ... they go together ... both create more of the other ... so .... that's where i was coming from when i made this one ... live more to love more and love more to live more ... it's just a tiny canvas ... six inches square ... a nice reminder ...

are you working on living and loving?

... happily ever after ...

what more can you want than to all live happily ever after ... i started this one after a joyful (spectacularly fun) wedding weekend of an old college pal ....

i finally finished this painting during my painting frenzy last week ... the blue background is actually bluer than this, but i did my photo shoot on a rainy day ... so i did it inside on my stove top ... under the bright lights of the hood .... not exactly professional ... but you gotta do what you gotta do ... it would have helped if hadn't procrastinated finishing the paintings and had provided myself more than a few hours window of opportunity for the photo shoot ... so it goes .... instead of being organized, i just have to trust that you'll believe me that the background is a gorgeous turquoise blue ....

here's to happily ever after .....

... happy friday painting ....

i delivered 21 paintings to the trinity show ... feels nice to check that off my list of things to do since it was a long series on the list leading up to delivery .... since valentine's is soon, i did a few heart themed pieces ... this one is a small six by six inches ...

do you do anything for valentine's? i think lots of people skip it .... i like to celebrate it ... and usually make something or get something for mr.e and the three wee e folks .... but i don't have a plan yet ... maybe bake heart shaped cookies in each one's favorite flavor ... i'll think about that ..

what's your plan?

... just be ...

here's another painting i finished up yesterday ... to deliver to the trintiy art show spotlight on art tomorrow ... show opens monday ... big party next friday night ...

this one is 12 inches square ... vintage dictionary pages ... classic notions of what makes a nice person ...

... over metaphored ... and back to painting ....

i've been a bit overwrought, discombobulated, chicken with my head cut off ... treading water to keep up ... and never getting to the good stuff ... oh! oh! i love a good metaphor ... i am trying to snorkel in the most beautiful clear aqua waters off a deserted tropical island ... but i can't get the water out of my snorkel or the sand out of my pants ... and i'm so busy working on getting situated that i miss the seashells and the fish and the coral reefs and that gigantic shark that might come eat me .... ok ... over metaphored ... i have no shark trained on my legs as i try to get sand out of my swim suit ... but i am not doing what i want to do because i seem to have too much of what i need to do ....

but not today... today, i had a busy first thing, but told myself (wrote it down even) that i would be painting by nine thirty ... and i was ... i also told myself that i would stay in my studio until one o'clock....and not get distracted by all the things that are just too distracting for me to say no to ... so ... i mostly stayed downstairs in the studio ... i came up about five times ... the first time to get slippers ..... cold feet were just not doing it for me ... the second time, i raised the thermostat ... still cold ... the third time, to check my calendar cause i'd gotten an important phone call ... the fourth time to refill on caffeine ... and so it goes .... BUT ... each time i came up, i did not check my email/facebook/flickr anything ... i just got back to work as fast as i could ... whew! it has been a LONG LONG LONG time since i've had a nice long block of time in my studio .... and i finished the five hundred forty three zillion paintings that were half done ... or ... actually, i finished eight ... they took anywhere from ten minutes to an hour and a half .... but they are done ... why was i so procrastinating on getting them done? why can't i get myself to do that block of time more often ? why am i doing the things that are supposed to's and should's and skipping all together the LOVE to's???

so ... more love to's for me .... have you been doing what you love?

and just a p.s..... i'm having trouble with my new computer's photos ... i can't grab the edited pics ... so above, uncropped ... just one more thing i need to work on!

turquoise map flowers ...

i finished a four foot by three foot painting yesterday ....

the background is an old, old, old, world map from a national geographic ...

the stems are dictionary ...

the flowers are street maps ....

i have lots of other pictures of the whole process i used to do the painting ... but i'm on a new computer .. and the iphoto is just enough different that it is freaking me out ... i can't figure things out ... it is not as clear cut as my old computer ... well ... maybe it is as clear cut, and i just need someone to explain it to me ..... we'll see .... it took forever to get this one pic up ... which is hard to understand ... since i had no trouble getting the pics up on flickr ... you can see the others over there .... that link will expire the further we get away from today the day of posting ... cause it isn't to the pictures, just to the first page of my flickr site ...

i'm dropping off 18 pieces for a show at the end of the week ... i have other new paintings and such to show you .... so come back soon .... if i spend too long not putting them up, it means my computer is not finding my skills to be satisfactory ....

what have you been working on or working towards lately?

.....happy new 2011 ....

... happy new year, friends out there in blogland .....

i've had an amazing whirlwind in the last few weeks:

-my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary party before christmas in florida ....

-christmas with both sets of grandparents here at home ....

-family skiing in colorado with our best pals ....

and upcoming:

-mr.e.beck.artist's birthday ... i'll be cooking mexican for that ... just need to work on a present ...

-little.e.beck.artist's birthday... a week away .... eek .... (tip: don't bear children in january)

and now, mr.e.beck.artist has gone back to work, three kids have gone off to school, and i am left with seven (ack, when will i learn to pack lightly?) huge suitcases of dirty laundry/ski gear and a christmas bedecked home to unbedeck .... oh my ....

i've been working hard just to get it all over with so i can get back to my tra la la carefree, artsy ways .... and in between i check my emails, dally on facebook, and now, blog ....

this morning online i saw this quote:

and i love it ... it sounds all new age, seize the moment, follow your blissish .... but it is thoreau ... good old fashion thoreau .....so, i wrote it down, cleared a spot at the sink (moved the santa and the angel to the dining room cleanup staging area, sigh) and hung it right up .... i always like seeing how long it takes my family to notice new quotes .... that's called enoying the little things in life, huh?

so, new years resolutions ... at the moment, mine is to get the christmas gear stowed away in the basement .... once that's done, i'll either feel accomplished, or determine another resolution .... at the moment my studio is not functional, it had a wrapping paper explosion ... but that should get cleaned up with the first resolution .....

how long is it acceptable to have garland and wreaths wrapped around my white picket fence? ... i need to get on that, huh?

happy new year ... i'm off to a slow start .... but that's ok, right?

we interrupt this regularly scheduled holiday ... to show you a painting ... mostly just so that i'll stop eating christmas cookies while i type ....

... oh MY ... my family celebrates christmas .... complete with christmas eve mass and stocking hung by the chimney with care ... but it seems that this year, the holidays were all about cookies! .... i made traditional spritz ... a TRIPLE batch ... good grief what were we thinking ... but for the first year in many, we had a spritz gun that worked WELL and that the kids could manage ... so we just kept making them .... do you know what spritz are? ... you press the dough, in our case, butter cookie dough, through a weird gun ... i've made them every christmas for my whole entire life, i think .... i went through a decade or two of weak spritz presses .. but my new one is great .... so we made twobatches of butter colored spritz ... and one batch of green, or greenish ... all with sprinkles .... and each batch makes about 100 cookies ... they are small cookies, but that's still a lot of cookies, huh?

and then pepperkaker ...

that's our traditional swedish cookie ... it's like a gingerbread ... in fact, we made lots of gingerbread men .... here... read this .... oh wait, that was in norwegian ... maybe you can translate for me?

there's a photo of my floury brigade of bakers, in order: boy.beck.artist (my he's growing tall), girl.beck.artist, mom.of.e.beck.artist(hey mom, have i blogged your pic before?), and little.e.beck.artist ... we did a double batch of pepperkaker because mr.e.beck.artist likes NOT frosted ... and the rest of us LOVE to frost them .... so we needed plenty unfrosted and frosted ....

and ... since it is an artist's blog ... here's a painting i did a few weeks ago ... and i don't think i showed you a pic of it yet ....

thought i should toss that in, lest you forget i actually am an artist ... now... back to the cookie eating i go .... if you are celebrating holidays, i hope they are joyful ... and peaceful ... and that your new year is fab ...

christmas time .....

i made ornaments and ornaments and ornaments this year .... i made christmas trees for most people on my list .... ....but i also made a special set .... this set also had fuzzy white ribbony yarn tied around the tops ... but i forgot to photograph that update before i gave them away ....

have you been making and baking yet? or just shopping?

...believe ...

it doesn't look christmasy ... but the message fits the season .... i sold this small painting today ... i did it with a few other paintings last week ... but i won't show you those yet ... gonna save them for another day, right?

for me, at the moment , believe is perfect .... i believe i'll make it through this day, this week, these holiday events .... my season is even more chaotic than usual ... but .. i believe it'll still be just fine ... it all happens whether you are ready or not, right? i believe that's right ... so ... i'll keep muddling through ... hoping that my best is good enough this time ....

so ... are you feeling it? are you believing?

the tree story ...

last year i bought an orange tree ....

click over to this blog post to catch yourself up on the orange christmas tree story ....

so this year my family just seems all together overscheduled ... things just aren't happening for us ... prior to this weekend, the only christmas thing that we had really done was getting out that orange tree, plugging it in, and decorating it .... but that's something .... an orange tree certainly can get you right into the christmas spirit ....

so ... since our calendar is JAMMED ... i said to the family, hey, why don't we just have the orange tree ... we don't have to get a cut pine tree ... just orange is good, right?

well ... proverbial lead balloon ... no one agreed with me and girl.beck.artist was AGHAST ... maybe even a little angry with me .... i'm pretty sure she thought i was doing the scrooge thing ... i mentioned the no green tree thing a dozen, maybe two dozen times over the course of the week .... but when can we get it? when will we rearrange the living room so that it'll fit (we always have to do that), when will we decorate it? .... still , didn't fly .... mommy, we HAVE to buy a REAL treeeeeeeeee ....

mr.e.beck.artist, boy.beck.artist, and girl.beck.artist went to a high school open house on sunday afternoon and said they'd grab a tree on the way home ... but they got home empty handed ... no tree .... they didn't remember .. well, i guess we don't really need one if you don't remember to buy it .... uproar .... no, no , no ... we NEED a green tree .....

little.e.beck.artist came up to me and whispered, mom, there are 29 dollar trees at costco a block away .... let's go get one and surprise them .. and there you go .... my very own anti-scrooge cindy lou who says costco .... so .... off to costco we went ... and we actually took girl.beck.artist (the one most emotionally invested in the tree ) with us ....

three minute drive to costco ... tree truck outside .... snow still in the tree branches ... nice .... there was a good skinny tree standing up in a stand ... i asked if all the trees were that skinny ... mr.costco.29$.trees said oh no, lots are very full ....

me: no, i need a skinny tree so i don't have to rearrange my furniture ...

so .. we went into costco ( it was snack time so we made the rounds of free samples) ... we bought a poinsettia bigger than some christmas trees .... and paid for our christmas tree .... we went out to mr.costco.29$.trees .... and ordered one that's "not too fat" .... i walked to get the car ... the girls stayed to pick the tree .... i drove up ... and i laughed out loud .... the girls were standing by the absolutely skinniest, spindliest, narrowest christmas tree i've ever seen ... seven feet tall and seven inches wide with all its tied upness .... skinny, skinny, skinny ... it will not need living room rearranging! .... and it might just be a charlie brown tree .. it was hard to tell ... it was just so darn skinny ...

mr.costco.29$.trees tied ours to the roof ... not in the middle, but right on the edge, tucked in next to the roof rack .... it took up about a tenth of the mini van roof ... do you get how skinny it is?

we drove it home .... girl.beck.artist was a little defensive when i said it might be a charlie brown tree .... we pulled up .... mr.e.beck.artist and boy.beck.artist came out with scissors ... and laughed ... boy.beck.artist could easily carry the tree himself .... he could have juggled with it if he wanted ... skinny AND light ....

we took the green skinny tree in and tried to get it in our tree stand ... but the stand was too big .... so we found our old stand and it worked perfectly for the dainty stump ... before un-tying the branches, boy.beck.artist got the star on .... then we untied the string and the branches remained motionless ... the skinny tree was still skinny ... the branches did not drop down, fill out, move at all .... so .... we started pulling on them .... they have to come down some, don't they?

many ornaments later, those branches were coming down nicely .... our skinny tree filled out quite a bit .... but i didn't have to move the couch, the piano or the table ....

ready or not, christmas is coming .... we might actually be ready in time!

how about you?