Big Bend National Park

So I'm teaching myself how to paint.

I have for a really long time now wanted to learn. I didn't have the chance to in school, so I decided to simply try it. This is one of the pieces that I completed as part of this effort.

As you may have read in my blog or on my website, I don't have a studio in which to work, but I have a couple of places that I can go to more or less weekly and paint. One is outside of a gallery where I'm showing the paintings. It gets hot, windy, and insect-infested (my ankles have the bite marks to prove it), but it gets me out of the house and into a space where I have no excuses.

I sit and the gallerist tells me about town happenings, events she wants to sell her own paintings at, and anything else that comes up. I enjoy the company.

Living off-grid is one thing. Living in the desert is another. It helps to get some human contact once in a while.

So I've been doing this for a few months now, showing up twice a week, pulling my supplies out of the back of my car, setting up, and wondeirng why I keep forgetting to order more blue paint. LOL

My sizes for this collection range from 5x7 to 8x10 and 11x17. I have an interested party after posting one of them to Facebook. He said he wants two larger ones for his house. He wants me to message him whenever I complete a new painting.

I'm satisfied with the series, because although nothing is perfect, I'm learning as I go, and as long as they look balanced to me, it's really just so fun.

In grad school, I had to justify everything to a committee and critique classroom full of peers. I took a painting workshop as a creative outlet so I could just do artwork, without any rules. It was just what I needed at the time, and I always meant to return to it in earnest and try to really learn how to do it for real.

This is my return.