End of September Check-In
The last two weeks have been quite busy and eventful. This past weekend, I traveled down to Solvang, California (near Santa Barbara) with my partner and a very supportive friend to attend the opening ceremony for the Wildling Museum’s California National Parks: Stories of Water exhibit to see my painting Flash Flood Warning up on the museum walls. The museum held a lovely opening reception and I had the opportunity to meet the other accepted artists, the juror, and supporters of the museum. My painting, Flash Flood Warning, received an honorable mention in the exhibit, which I was amazed to receive. Throughout the process of preparing for this exhibition, I kept bouncing between thoughts of not believing that I even was accepted into the exhibit and feeling a sense of accomplishment. But after attending the opening reception where I, and all of the other artists, felt celebrated, I feel proud of myself for putting in the effort to apply to this exhibit and seeing my painting in the museum. It’s been further motivation for me to continue working on my art and being thoughtful about what I’m painting and what it means to me and those who see it.
I also want to note that the painting is for sale at the museum, so you can reach out to them if you are interested. I also am selling giclee prints of the paintings, which can be found here on my website: 18”x24” Flash Flood Warning Print.
Now that I’m back home after the quick weekend trip to southern California, I’m back in the studio and feeling quite busy.
What I’ve been working on:
I’m just about finished my series of ocean/coastal paintings that I had mentioned in my last update. The collection is 12 6”x8” oil on canvas paintings that I’ve titled Ocean Perspectives as the paintings depict a variety of perspectives of the ocean from different coasts and different times of day. I’m hoping to have the collection of paintings released on my website for sale by the end of the month, so I need to do things like sign, photograph, and varnish the paintings among other administrative pieces of work.
I also finished a large 24”x36” oil on canvas painting of a sunrise I photographed in Maine. I started this painting back in 2021 and I’m really happy to have finished it. I also hope to release this painting onto my website for sale around the same time as the Ocean Perspectives paintings.
I’m back to working on the California Highway One series. After painting the aforementioned paintings, which had a very different color palette than my California Highway One paintings, I felt refreshed and reinspired to continue with this collection. I have three more paintings that I want to finish in this series: I am over halfway done a painting of a panoramic view of the coastline, almost finished a moody painting of a spot on 17 mile drive, and I’ve just started the last painting. I’m hoping to use a number of paintings from this series to apply to a gallery call for art that is due October 22nd, so I feel good about my timeline.
I did a bit of a website re-organization/update because I felt like it was becoming a bit unwieldy, so I collapsed all of my original paintings into one shop. I’m hoping that it doesn’t present as too different from a viewer, but it has helped me keep things much more organized and easily accessible.
Outside of my studio, I’ve started training to become an art docent volunteer at the Los Gatos school district. I’ll be training to provide 20-30 minute art lessons to kindergarten to middle school aged students in the Los Gatos school district. I miss working with kids, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to mix my passion for art and expanding children’s education.
That’s all for this update. Thank you all again for supporting me throughout this journey! The next few months are going to be quite busy with my Business of Art program, art docent training, preparing for SF open studios, and overall preparing for the holiday season. I hope to continue providing these biweekly updates and I always appreciate your comments and emails in response! Have a great rest of the week!
