It was successful day. I was able to fix the mess I made of Jay's scalp on his pastel portrait. Hopefully I'll have it photographed tomorrow so Noah can post it for me on the Portraits page. Senor as a Young Man will be posted on the Pet Portraits page. Senor seems depressed, but not in pain. I also completed a di giorno of blood oranges. The oranges are really delicious. I've already started a painting of another orange and the spiky melon. Today's painting, "Just Hatched-Quail Chick #3", is the one I painted on my brother's birthday. It 7x5, oil on gallery wrapped linen. It's not for sale since it is going to a very special friend and fellow grandmother of Josie--we should just leave out the s and call her Joie. She's an amazingly happy baby. Anyway, Mary Charlotte Parr will be the recipient of the little painting of the chick. Hope she likes it.

The egg in this painting looks a little fluorescent to me on my monitor. Titled "Just Hatched-Quail Chick #2", it is also 7"x5", oil on gallery wrapped linen. $50. SOLD There is one left in this set of chicks that I'll list tomorrow. It's the one that I painted on my brother's birthday.

I was studying some of my paintings today that recently came back from an exhibit in Downingtown. Some I was happier with now than when I hung them. A couple I thought about changing some things on. That reminded me of Daniel Garber's exhibit. There were several there that he altered well after he finished them. One was "Quarry at Byram", 1921 and 1923. This was my favorite quarry painting. The quarry dominated the painting, the colors were more saturated and the complements were stronger. Not hazy.

Last week when I was photographing the few remaining paintings for other pages of this web site and the Paintings di Giorno, I took apart a pastel portrait that I did of my son Jay. There was a minute flake of pastel that fell off right over his head. I decided to fix it. Huge mistake. The spot is fixed, but I went too far down into his head in an attempt to blend around the spot. Of course I tried to redo his head and now I wrecked the shape of his head. It was a struggle to get his shaved head right a year and a half ago. Well, I know what I'll be working on tomorrow.

Today's Painting di Giorno is of a sand dollar. I found it on the beach, last October in South Carolina, right across the bridge from Charleston. It was very exciting because I haven't found a whole sand dollar since I was a kid at the Jersey shore. I also found a live sand dollar. I've never even seen one before. It had deep purple and lime green fringe on the bottom. A favorite complementary color combination of mine. I threw the live one back, which is a good thing, since I found out later that there's a huge fine for taking live ones.

The painting "Sand Dollar from South Carolina" is 7x5 and oil on gallery wrapped linen. Gallery wrapped means that the sides are wrapped with the same canvas--or in this case, linen as the front-- so there are no nails or staples on the sides.Consequently, it's more finished and doesn't need to be framed. $50.SOLD

At the exhibit yesterday, Jay noticed a little paint box that belonged to Daniel Garber, in a display case. It was smaller than a cigar box. It appears to be what he must have used to do tiny, oil paint sketches outdoors. What a great idea. It could easily fit in a purse or backpack. I believe it's Duane Keiser--please correct me if you know different--that custom-rigged a cigar box into a little easel and case for his "Paintings a Day".

Garber's was beautiful and refined. I'd love to have something similar. I looked on eBay, but I didn't find anything that really fit the bill. If you know of something, please shoot me an email.I'm still doing research on it, so I'll let you know if I see anything.

We went to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art for this exhibit. As I said before, Daniel Garber's later works are running concurrently at the Michener Museum. It was wonderful. I would just go to stare at the outside of the building. It's amazing all by itself. It looks like Frank Furness must have been so overjoyed and excited when he was commissioned to do the design, that he just couldn't include enough really great stuff.

The exhibit was very inspiring. It made me want to get outside and paint. With all of the treeless scenes, he must have painted in the cold weather a lot. It's my understanding that while he did use some photos, most of his landscapes were en plein air. Brrr! Some of my favorites were "Battersea Bridge", "The Studio Wall", "Gathering Grapes", "The Boys", "Tanis","Mending-Summer" and "Old Mill". There were many more including his drawings. More about them later. You should go. Let me know what you think if you do.

After, we had dinner at The Monks Inn. The food is good, but the beer selection is great.

Jay is playing some Rachmoninaff and "Victory in Jesus" as I type. Wow!

I'm posting a painting di Giorno now. It's the first of the quail chicks from the last hatch. As usual it is 7x5, oil on gessoboard and it's $50. SOLD

"Tiny Bamboo Brush With Quail Egg" SOLD on the left, has the brush leaning on a chopstick rest. This works well when painting with watercolors because I can fill it with water. The actual painting is lighter and a little more "glowy" than the image above.

On the right is "Pears & Quail Egg by Candlelight". SOLD. I think it's pretty accurately represented here, again a lot depends on your monitor.

Below is "Tasty Turkey Fig, Zebra Tomato & Blue Camphor Glass". SOLD The tomato is an heirloom variety from our garden and the fig from one of my trees. The cloth in the painting is more tan than in the the image below.

Have I mentioned that my grandson Gabriel made the honor roll this marking period? I didn't think so, but I just thought you should know how proud I am of him. What does this have to do with art you ask? Well he's an artist and a photographer at the age of 7! Now that I mention it, he just entered his first photo contest at school and won first place. Yes, he is amazing. Thanx.

So, today's three paintings are all oil on gessoboard, all 7x5 and all $50. each.

We're going to the Daniel Garber exhibit tomorrow. It's running concurrently at both the James A.Michener Museum in Doylestown and The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. They're splitting the works chronologically.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Please note that when I published the images of the paintings below, the order got reversed. I think the titles should help with any confusion. Sorry about that.

As promised, I will post two paintings today. Today's small paintings are both 7x5 and are both oil on gessoboard. Each are $50. If you'd like to purchase any of these you can use Paypal, but I need to know by email first so I can calculate shipping. I'm exploring payment options with these smaller works right now.

If you purchase larger paintings from other pages on this site you can take advantage of not only the 20% off Valentine's Day Sale, but also free shipping.

The first painting shown today is "Art Glass Egg and Quail Eggs". SOLD It pretty much looks like this depending on your monitor.

The second painting is "Art Glass Egg, Quail Eggs & Blue Camphor Glass". SOLD I feel the actual painting is warmer and a little lighter.

Look for three small paintings tomorrow.

The "Paintings di Giorno" series were photographed today, but it was very, very difficult to get the color, contrast and detail correct. Very discouraging, but I'm going to be posting them anyway. The ones that were totally hopeless I'll re-shoot another day. If you're interested in one and would like a better shot of it, please email me. I'd be happy to do that for you. All of these paintings will be only posted on this web log for now and are $50. unless priced otherwise. That doesn't include shipping, which will be fair, I promise.

"BAMBOO HAKE BRUSH WITH QUAIL EGGS" SOLD

7"x5"-Oil on gessoboard. Unframed.

The tiny egg is the first one that my younger hen laid. Most times their "pullet" (first) eggs are small but this was ridiculous! In the actual painting the background and foreground are lighter and a warmer, coppery brown.

I'll post two more paintings tomorrow in an effort to catch up.

Well Senor is OK, we think. Really, the vet doesn't know what's wrong with him. He thinks it's a soft tissue problem because there are no breaks, dislocations or arthritis on or near his bones. It may be a miniscus issue. He did say that Senor's bones are "gnarly". Not from anything. He feels they've always been that way. If you met Senor, you'd agree that he looks like "My Precious". Gnarly would also be a great description of him at this age. I have a graphite portrait that I did of him 10 years ago when he was a young man. I'll post it soon. So there's been a delay on getting the paintings du jour up because of the long vet visit and laying in groceries for the wintry weather we're supposed to get. I walked by the exotic fruit section and there were the most beautiful blood oranges and Meyer lemons. Then there was a small prickly melon that had similar colors. I bought them to paint and my reward will be to eat them. I hope the melon doesn't taste like a Durian! Jay Jr. is spending the night, so if it's snowy tomorrow, we may go out together and shoot--photographically speaking. There will only be three quail with this hatch. I have to paint them tomorrow.

Despite the power outage on Saturday we've had three, bumble bee-sized quail hatch overnight. Hopefully we'll have a few more by tomorrow. Senor has a bad shoulder, so if his vet visit goes well, I'll be able to start painting these adorable, little puffs tomorrow. Today I put some of the finishing touches of varnish and signatures on most of my small paintings. This was to prepare them for their photo shoot and listings on this weblog tomorrow. Right now I'm headed up to watch a documentary on a local, famous, female artist, Mary Cassatt. I hope I can stay awake.

Well I never made it to the pen show yesterday, but Jay did. I stayed home to babysit Josie while she napped. It was good. I cleaned the studio in preparation for this week's work and started the "gravy" for a nice Italian dinner of gnocchi, sausage, salad and garlic bread. Danny brought home his French co-worker Laurent along with an amazing bordeaux and sauterne. After dinner we watched M. Night's "Lady in the Water". It was disappointing, but interesting. It brought to my mind the algae-covered statue of the girl in the pond at Chanticleer. She appears to be Victorian, but I don't know anything about her. It was a real thrill when I discovered her. Coincidentally, I was just thinking about this statue earlier while cleaning the studio. I found some photos I had taken of her in 1999. I was contemplating how to paint something like that. Sometimes she's so hard to make out in the water because of the algae that accumulates on her. Sometimes the sun is too strong on the water or there's too much movement on the surface of the water. I'll have to try sometime this coming year. The garden doesn't open again until April, but be sure to ask for the location of that particular pond when you go to the admissions desk. I promise you won't be disappointed. You'll be captivated.

As you can see the site is revamped. Great job by Noah Welch. Thank you very much Noah. There will be a few more changes, which will include Paypal to purchase paintings and possibly other interesting pieces. You can still do that before Paypal is up, just email me. While waiting for some more quail chicks to hatch, I'm working on my daily quail egg paintings. Not today though. Due to the high winds some power lines came down with a tree and we were without power. I'll be posting them next week along with the other almost daily paintings. I'm off tomorrow. Hoping to go to the pen show in Philadelphia. Jay Sr. and I are big fans of admiring and using fountain pens. Jay was still practicing "Abba Father" tonight. What a gift he has. I'm very fortunate to have private performances on a regular basis. Have a wonderful weekend.

Today is my brother's 56th birthday. He's my younger brother...ouch! In any case, after I put my granddaughter Josie to bed, I decided to paint a baby, just-hatched quail in his honor. It has an inquisitive, friendly look, so it reminded me of him. It is a small 7"x5" oil painting on linen that is gallery-wrapped, which means that it doesn't need a frame. It's not for sale, but I do have others that are similar in size, subject and style. They'll all be posted soon. While I painted tonight, my husband Jay practiced the hymn that he'll play in church this Sunday. It's titled "Abba Father", it's going to be beautiful, so go to the morning services at Church of the Saviour if you want to hear it. He also played "Cantaloupe Island" by Herbie Hancock to liven things up.