Two weeks ago my family and I moved 2800 miles, from Baltimore, MD to the San Diego, CA area. We decided to live somewhere where we could enjoy the outdoors year-round without thinking about jackets or ice scrapers, and where eating avocados and oranges and being a locavore mean the same thing.

We are in the mountains. The sky is ginormous here.

It is commonplace to see eagles soaring, little packs of roadrunners running (roadrunners = adorable, btw) and cotton tail bunnies. The palette of my new landscape includes sage green, lavender and gold. A quick drive to the library feels like an out-of-body experience here. This is truly an inspiring change of scenery for me and my art.

I am gearing up for a new year of painting in a new place!

1. Mindfully add plants, lights, and other details to your home or workplace. Of course you will have to make a small effort to keep the plants healthy, but it’s worth it! Plants clean the air for you and they make your surroundings literally more alive. Lighting sets the mood. (Notice the tiny Christmas lights I keep strung around my ceiling year-round!)

There are many small things you can do that add beauty to your life without too much effort. I painted a huge mandala on the ceiling of my bedroom—but for a less work-intensive version, just hang a beautiful poster on the ceiling! Hang wind chimes outside your door or window for gentle background music.

2. Cook food from scratch. (I realize this is something that takes lots of time, but if you can make the time, even some of the time, do it!)
Get some glass jars, fill them with assorted beans and grains from the bulk section of the grocery store, and line them in pretty rows in your pantry. (Then eat the food–this makes you learn to cook new things and saves you money too!)

Get experimental with recipes. Here’s a raw strawberry-lemon cake I made last summer. Arranging those mint leaves and strawberry halves around the border was very satisfying! It’s the little things.

3. Have handmade things. Here is my cupboard full of pottery that I made myself.

Of course you don’t have to take it to this extreme–just making a point to acquire ONE handmade thing made by someone else will also give you pleasure! I believe that owning handmade items, even if you didn’t make them yourself, connects you to the collective spirit of all the “makers” throughout humanity, and helps put you in the mindset to create. It sounds hokey, but think about it–it’s inspiring!

My favorite mug, which I made!

Which leads me to…
4. Make things yourself whenever you can, and delight in the details. This does not have to be anything artistic, crafty, or fancy. It can be stuff that is boring and practical, and fills a need you have anyway.
For example, instead of buying chemical-y cleaners, add a few drops of tea tree oil, or essential oils of lavender, orange, and lime to a bucket of water and do your mopping and dusting with that. It’s environmentally smart and most importantly, makes your house smell wonderful. Make your own deodorant–this is easy, again cuts chemicals from your life, and is really fun! (I’ve gone through phases of making shampoo and body butters too.) Mix your own herbal teas!

5. Plant something in the dirt. Here’s a fragrant rose from one of my rose bushes.

If you don’t have the time or the place to grow anything outside, start with something simple like basil in a small pot on your window sill.

6. When all else fails, recharge your body and your spirit by taking a walk in nature. Why do I classify this as a creative action? Because it forces you into a change of scenery, and opens your eyes to a new way of looking. Check out this cool tree I never would have found if I hadn’t gone for a walk!

For me, creativity IS the cultivation of physical, mental and spiritual health–while, yes, you sometimes have to make a point to do it, it’s not something separate from the rest of your life. What creative things do you do in your daily life? What do you delight in and where do you find beauty?

*Work At Home Mom!

In 2010, I (in no particular order):

Made 30 original oil paintings, 5 of them very large in scale

Exhibited and sold my art in galleries, and maintained my business contacts

Took part in group exhibits

Sold art directly from my studio

Kept up with my blog, more sporadically than I would have liked, but still

Added lots of people to my mailing list, gained lots of Twitter followers and Facebook fans

Gave my advice freely to help lots of other artists

Made lots of new friends, online and in person

Completely renovated and moved into a sweet new studio

Traveled to beautiful Arizona, sunny Miami, and my home away from home, Asheville, NC

Went camping in the wilderness

Read a lot of great books

Took full advantage of the bounty of local food during the growing season

Hosted and attended some fabulous parties

Grew a garden

Was a fantastic mother to my toddler son, who for the record is clean, fed, healthy, learning and thriving

Got into excellent physical shape through hiking, running, weight training, yoga, and P90X (even if I didn’t quite, ahem,”finish” it)

Said goodbye to my dear dog, my friend and companion, Clara, and celebrated her life

Bought a shiny Subaru Outback

Made my home beautiful and relatively clutter-free

2011, here I come.  Bring it on!

Happy New Year to all my readers near and far!

I understand that expectations need to be adjusted during the first years of your child’s life, especially if you’re the mother, and you’re breastfeeding.  But it’s disappointing to me nonetheless that despite my best efforts, I still seem to be struggling to squeeze enough hours out of each day to do everything I need to.  I won’t bore you with the full list, but in addition to the baby, I have a marriage, 3 pets, a house and all the things houses come with that are constantly breaking, a yard, bills to pay, and high standards for my health and fitness.  I attempt to have some spiritual contemplation, and some friends and leisure time too.   And that’s just my personal life!  If you can really separate my work life from my personal life, which is hard to do when your studio is attached to your home, my work life includes thinking up and creating paintings, writing about my art, maintaining my website, sending or delivering my art to galleries and occasional juried shows, networking online and in person, meeting with collectors and potential collectors, packing/shipping/cataloging/photographing artwork, marketing constantly to ensure enough sales so that I have some income, and so on.  You get it.  At times, I feel completely overwhelmed and don’t know what to do!

I realize I am being a big fat whiner right now, but bear with me for the moment.  Tomorrow I’ll suck it up and get back to business as usual.

So I sent a note to the very famous Robert Genn of the Painter’s Keys, seeing what he had to say about the whole thing.  To my delight, he actually responded by writing one of his twice-weekly-letters in response!

Unfortunately, he didn’t quite answer my questions and didn’t seem to understand what I’m going through, like, AT ALL.  He clearly doesn’t understand the commitment a woman makes when she decides to be there all the time, every day–24/7/365!  Or the exhaustion of having your sleep frequently interrupted every night for nearly a year, and what that does to a person.  Or that yes, babies sometimes take a nap, but the rest of the time they need constant supervision, and by constant I mean you literally can’t look away for 2 minutes without worrying what they’re putting in their mouth, smearing all over the floor, or trying to climb onto.

Robert Genn is a man, he’s in his 70s I think, and this is just a wild guess but I don’t think he’s ever been anywhere close to being in my current shoes.  To be fair, he did warn me before posting his response that he didn’t consider himself qualified to respond.  He’s a nice guy and having read his letters for years, I like him a lot.  However, the encouragement and advice I was seeking came not from him** but from the many people who added their comments underneath the letter he posted, and from the dozens of private emails I got in my inbox this morning from kind people all around the world, mostly but not all professional artists/mothers themselves.  I was blown away!

You can read Robert Genn’s letter and the comments on it (and comment yourself if you like) here: http://clicks.robertgenn.com/motherhood.php

I was in a deep funk when I wrote to Robert.  Today I’m feeling much better, knowing that I’m not as alone as I was feeling before, and I’m beginning to get a fresh outlook.

I’m definitely going to work on creating a playroom in my studio in the hopes of keeping my baby distracted for longer periods of time.  I’m definitely going to start hiring babysitters to squeeze in a few more hours of work every week.  Perhaps my husband (he’s fantastic, by the way) and I can be more strict or more inventive with the way we collectively manage our time.  Soon enough my baby will sleep for 4+ hours at a time again, as he did for awhile–it was glorious–when he was 4-6 months old, and when that time comes I will feel more sane.  And maybe if I only make 30 paintings this year, since I’ve sold some of them already, if I make sure to stay on good terms with my galleries through good communication, it’ll be okay.

Sincere thanks to the many sweet people who have written to me!  I haven’t read through all the messages yet but I intend to ponder all your generously given advice and to use your encouraging words to help lift my spirits.

—————–

Oh, and here’s a quick web-cam shot of what’s going on today in my studio!  I’ve just started a 30″ x 30″ sunflower.  I wish sunflowers were that large in real life.

**Edited to add: Robert’s advice about the super-manic-power-hour was excellent, I’ll give him that!  Indeed it’s been the only thing that’s worked for me so far!

Post away!

In the past week where I live near Baltimore, MD, we have had 2 major snowstorms for a total of somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-5 feet of snowfall!  (That’s on level ground, not even accounting for snowdrifts and the mountains made by the snowplows.)  It seems unlikely that I’ll ever again encounter a spectacle like this, barring a trip to Siberia, in my lifetime.

I feel privileged to experience such an extreme weather event–the fury of Mother Nature is a magnificent thing!  I’ve also never longed for springtime with more fervor.

Click here to see more pictures!

Being trapped in our house, we’ve taken the opportunity to finish the renovations to my studio.  I’m pleased to report all the painting, as well as installation of new light fixtures, outlets and switches is done, and I am ready to officially move in to my new studio!  I’ll have pictures up as soon as I get moved in!

And my latest artwork will be photographed as soon as the weather allows (read: oh, sometime in mid-April.)

I’ve had a lot of appointments, social dates, obligations, errands, etc. to take care of this week.  Despite the distractions I’ve managed to get some work done on my paintings, but not as much as I would have liked.  Next week I’ll definitely be minimizing distractions.

August seems to be going by very fast!  I can’t believe the kids are going back to school already.  And even though it’s still very hot and humid where I live, there are small telling signs that fall is on its way–subtle things.  The days are just a bit shorter, there’s a difference in the quality of light and the slant of the sun in the afternoon, and a few leaves here and there are less green than they were a few weeks ago.

I love this time of year–the harvest!  My breakfast this morning: Hashbrowns made with rosemary & potatoes (first of the season!) from my garden.  Omelet with tomatoes, peppers, & basil from my garden, eggs & dill havarti cheese from my local farmers’ market.  Oh yeah!

I took my 10-year-old beloved cat, Quani, to the vet on Friday because she was drooling brown and had funky breath–I figured she had a dental problem.

It turns out she has a huge growth on her tongue extending way into her throat, and either it’s a bacterial or viral infection, or it’s cancer.  We are force-feeding her antibiotics every 12 hours till her appointment next week (force-feeding medicine to a cat: not fun) in the hopes that it is just an infection and will clear up.  If it’s cancer, it can’t be surgically removed because it’s on her tongue, so there’s not much we can do.  I feel helpless.  It can be so hard when the animals you love are sick.

On top of that stress, the water heater in my basement has been having intermittent flooding issues for the past couple of months, and this weekend it finally decided to blow up completely.  It still heats water; it just also happens to pour a river into my basement whilst doing so.  Life had to stop momentarily while my husband and I shopped for a new water heater and arranged to have it installed.  Ouch!  At least we should be able to take hot showers again by tomorrow.

My good news for this week is that I visited Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington, D.C. to see the lotus flowers in full bloom.  I took a lot of beautiful pictures.

I decided my future Lotus paintings, in addition to frogs, dragonflies and other bugs, need to include turtles, bees, and possibly butterflies.

Can you see the camouflaged frog?

I hope to still meet my painting goals for this week by putting in extra studio time later in the week–so, stay tuned!

I’m working on some new paintings in my Lotus flower art series. Most of the paintings in the series have been 20″ x 20″. These are much larger, at 30″ x 30″. They are taking much more time to complete as well as much more paint!

But I’m really excited about them–on such a large scale, the beautiful jewel-tone colors–red, green, ivory and gold–will really make an impact when hung on a wall!

As you can see, the gigantic cosmic painting is slowly evolving as well. It is nowhere near complete, but I like where it’s going so far. No title for that one yet.

I’ve got paint all over my hands and arms and face. By next week I should have some finished works of art photographed.

I’m still grieving for Mr. Fullington–the loss has hit me harder than I would have expected, and it has been a very rough week. I’m sorry I’ll be missing his memorial service.

But tomorrow is my hubby’s 29th birthday and we’re having some friends over to celebrate. It’s a new year and I’m making things happen. My dogs are playful and adorable.

So I’ve got raw pain alongside unmitigated joy. The intensely vibrant colors I’ve been using seem to match my current emotional state.

He was a hilariously funny and quirky man. He was always so goofy. This is one of the few pictures I could find of him, and you can see there that he’s joking around about something–counting his money. Just looking at it makes me smile.

Mr. Fullington was a rare kind of teacher. He cared so genuinely for his students. He made himself so available. Of course I’ve had other great teachers in my life whom I’ve loved, but Mr. Fullington was my favorite.

He was such an encouraging force in my life, and I count him as one of the few people who really had a strong impact on me during my teenage years. I know he had a similar impact on many of my classmates, and it boggles my mind to think how many students have loved him and benefited from his guidance over the many years he taught. When I was about to graduate high school and I was deciding what to do with my life, he encouraged me to try being an artist.

I kept in touch with him after I graduated from Clyde A. Erwin High School in ’99, and every time I talked to him he was always curious to hear all about my life. If I visited his classroom while he was teaching, he would excuse himself from the class and make the time to sit with me at a school desk and chat in the corner. The last time I saw him was maybe about 5-6 years ago, when I went to his house with a few other former students of his. We had dinner with his family. I wish that I had visited more often.

It was only a few weeks ago that I heard he was sick–apparently his cancer hit very hard and very quickly. I am shocked by the news. Today I had planned to blog about art, but I’m in mourning for Mr. Fullington. I grieve his loss, but I am so glad that he lived when he did and that I was lucky enough that his path in life crossed mine.

Chanukah also begins at sundown tonight.  Happy Chanukah!

And Christmas is only 4 days from now.  Merry Christmas!

I wish the happiest holiday season to you all, and I’m looking forward to spending the New Year with you.