6 years later....

This week, June 23 - 27, I have an entire week to paint. Fabulous artist Sara Qualey (www.saraqualey.com) has provided some guidelines for my work this week, and I'll post my progress here each day. I have to say, I am nervous that I've forgotten how to do it, and I'm not thrilled to show off this first foray back into painting The last time I had this kind of time to paint was December 2002. Here are some paintings from that last week:





So I used to paint all the time, basically living in my studio in the now demolished Sibell-Wolle Fine Arts Building at CU-Boulder. About halfway through my time there, we learned that the building had been condemmed, our poor old glorious studio space, previously the campus stables, was headed toward destruction. Students keeled over left and right from the fumes everyday. At some point, one of the graduate student's studios went up in flames, as his oily rags spontaneously combusted. But I staked out my spot early on, maybe sophomore year, the prime spot near the one working window. I camped out there for the next several years and loved every minute in that studio - and while my fellow students lamented the poor working conditions, their declining health, the newly furbished engineering buildings - I think I always felt lucky to have that space and the time to paint.



I left the "doing" to do the "looking" - moving into art history for grad school, and now have a career in museum education. Come to think of it, if the rumors are true, only one of the painting majors has "made it" as a working artist, and he's the one that turned in a taxidermied deer with plastic forks sticking out of its sides - as his final project in our advanced painting class. Huh.