cedar’s blog

Cedar March 13th, 2008

I haven’t updated in awhile–life has just been speeding by!

I signed with a new gallery this week, the Premiere Fine Arts Gallery in Lambertville, New Jersey, owned and operated by Anthony Mustello.

This means I now have regular representation by 4 galleries. (”Regular representation” just means that they sell my paintings continuously and always have some of my artwork in stock–as opposed to a one-time showing.) So, that’s 4 business relationships I have now–relationships I must value and maintain.

My career is picking up speed as I become more established as a professional in my field. Of course I’m happy about that–I’m thrilled to share my talents with the world and to receive recognition for my work, and I’m so thankful for the income my art brings in. But at the same time, I am feeling the pressure to maintain a standard of quality in my work, and to spend enough hours on my artwork so that I am constantly creating something new and exciting.

I think I’m at a time in my life where I’m in the thick of it, so I can’t step back and see how well I’m doing (or not.) It just feels hard–and like I’m always falling behind and never up to my own standards.

However, that’s how I felt during my entire senior year of college too, and I came out of that with lots of experience, lots of friends, and a 4.0 GPA, achieving honors in my major. So, I’m going to just nurture my faith in myself and my work, and try to stay focused on my long-term vision without letting it make me too serious. At least, that’s the goal.

Anyway, here are a couple new pieces for you to see:

Mocha the Huntress
Acrylic on Canvas 8″ x 10″

(Reference photo courtesy of Ashley Van Alstyne–thank you Ashley for letting me use your beautiful photo!)

And this next one mimics the basic composition of my painting “Radiant Sky” but is actually quite different from that one.

The word ethereal means: characterized by lightness and insubstantiality; intangible. This painting turned out so airy and sunny. It looks like such a perfect day that it’s only halfway in the real world, and halfway in the realm of imagination.

So it’s titled: Ethereal Day
Acrylic on Canvas 24″ x 20″

I have been told before that I would be good at painting the scenery on theater sets, because my work sometimes has a dramatic, storybook quality. I think this painting definitely has that.

This past week I’ve done extensive modifications to one of my existing paintings, Upward Momentum. The collectors who are buying the painting were torn between this one and another one, but this one is bigger and they wanted the bigger size because they’re moving into a new home with lots of blank walls. So I made some changes to the painting to make it more like the other one they liked (Towering Trunk.)

Here’s the old version of the painting:

And here’s the new version:

As you can see, the composition remained the same, but everything else is now quite different. I like the new version a lot better–my favorite part is the beautiful highlights on the trunk of the biggest tree.

In other news, I’ve started germinating some of the seeds for my garden. Perhaps only fellow gardeners will appreciate the level of sheer giddy excitement I feel when I look on my windowsill and see this:

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