Melody in Purples
 

 2020 My Year as an Artist in Residence

We have officially passed the halfway mark of the strangest year of my art career.
I finished 2019 with a hugely successful fall show tour and with great plans for the 2020 spring season.  But...not to be.
January and February were spent painting inventory for the planned spring shows.  The paintings     were catalogued, packed and ready for travel and then...  Well, I don't need to tell you what happened.
Fortunately my studio is in my home so there was no interruption in creating but I began to notice an inner urging to branch out into something new.  If you are familiar with my work, you know that I primarily use trees as my subject in order to convey a feeling of order and harmony.  I paint them in many colors but primarily with a minimalist composition, impasto brushwork and a limited palette.
To see examples, you can visit my online gallery at  Texas Gal Gallery .
I start every morning with Morning Pages, a free flow writing practice proposed by Julia Cameron in The Artist Way.  All through March, as the end of the show season became a reality, I began to write about and see a different sort of painting.  A new focus.  A different technique.  As my thoughts began to clarify, I was drawn to the idea of painting flowers, not as a still life but a portrait of their beautiful personalities exploding off the page.  
And so a new adventure began.  As days and weeks passed, with only an occasional quick outing to ship a painting or pick up groceries, I started.  First with a thought and then with a drawing and then with painting.
Melody in Purples was my first painting in this new era for me.  I painted, revised, observed, repainted and finally I was able to call it done and I was in love!
and within just a couple of hours it was sold!  Thank you Dawn!

And then Yellow Rose, which I planned to keep for myself, sold and was soon on its way to California.  Thank you Stephen!
Because I will be exploring new compositions, new palettes, new materials, I hope you will follow along with me.
Feel free to comment, but please be kind.  I am already my own worst critic.
Thanks and see you back here soon.
Jo 


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