Summer 2023

A year ago I started selling at Portland Saturday Market and moved in with my boyfriend. It was a lot of change at once for a hermit but all very welcome. I had wanted to do the market in my 20s and at age 48 I finally got around to it. I had the best time. I wanted it to replace my day job and at the end of the market season I had to reflect on that goal. (cont. below)

It seemed the things I needed to do to make the market my living were moving me in the opposite direction of what I wanted artistically. My books are my greatest passion and they were only a tiny slice of the income I brought in. Also while all the market prep was fun it took up most of the time I used to have to paint. I decided to spend the coming year working on my books, getting deep into my abstract paintings and drawings, and hopefully finding a few indoor art sales that would be a good home for my work.

It’s been a busy and fulfilling year making 2 new books, working on 3 more new books, enjoying family life, traveling with my fellow to Greece and England, getting COVID, starting a new job that is a better fit for me than the old one, planting flowers and ferns. I found a couple new art sales I’m excited to apply to but would like to find more bookish events.

Even though I miss the market I am glad I decided to let it go for a while to collect my thoughts and feelings about art and money. I am all-for artists making money but for me the art needs to come first. In retrospect I wish I had gone there without needing to make money. To just show up with my books and a few original paintings and talk to people about how beautiful nature is. How beautiful humans are even though we don’t always act like it. I may still have taken this last year off, maybe I would have lost interest sooner but I think it would have moved me more in the right direction. I am contemplating whether I could have a re-do next year. I’ll keep you posted of course. Thanks so much for reading!

Summer 2020

Today is the last day of summer. I recently started documenting my life and work with photos again. I stopped taking pictures regularly after I started using Instagram and became overwhelmed with the sheer volume of images, not to mention a little disturbed at the effort some people appeared to be exerting in order to make their life look good on social media. I didn’t stop taking pictures altogether but my goal became only to share what I thought my tiny social media audience would find meaningful about the week’s art making.

Now I’m taking them for myself again and collecting them by season on my web-site as part of my on-line sketchbook.

August 2018

August

July 2018

July

June 2018

Mostly June