400th Post: July 10, 2010

This is my 400th posting on my blog! My first blog entry was on April 20, 2007, with a painting of a pineapple. My goal was to paint and record a painting a day. After a good year of painting almost every day, I had quite a collection of small paintings. I highly recommend any artist, quilter, writer, singer, etc., to do a small piece of their work every day because I saw a definite improvement in my painting skills.

My blog now shows larger works and projects that I am working on. I have neglected my blog for the past month in preparation for a big art show, my first in a real gallery. I've shown one or two pieces in galleries before but not my whole body of work. My work has mostly been shown in coffee shops and restaurants which are great venues for art. In preparation for my art show, "Flora & Fauna: Wild & Not so Wild", at the River's Mist Gallery of Fine Art in Stevensville, MT, I ordered supplies, matted and framed my paintings and prints, sent out mailings, and other sundry tasks. This photo shows the piles of small framed paintings and prints.

While preparing for the show, I received a commissioned job. The words are from the client's own plaque. She wanted one made for her son with a caricature of his dog. This was painted over a beat up print of folk art. I repainted the frame. You can faintly see the old print beneath the layer of gesso.








The day of the artist's reception, I found out that my painting, "Dane", was accepted into the Montana Watercolor Society's national juried show Watermedia 2010. The show will be held at the Bigfork Art & Culture Museum in Bigfork, MT, from October 1-31, 2010.




July 6-7, 2010, the soccer mural was painted on the kicking wall at the High School soccer field. I designed the mural in May and drew it onto the 8'x24' wall. Some of the soccer players, their dads, and a couple of soccer moms (including me) used exterior house paint to fill in the image.