Laurelines

February color!

Here's some color to brighten your February! Maybe your February doesn't need brightening. The days are appreciably longer now. Little green things are pushing through the ground. Here in the northern hemisphere, spring is next on the agenda. Cheers! 

 

Illustrations by yours truly from the February 2013 issue of Walter: Raleigh's Life & Soul. It's a  new magazine about Raleigh, NC ( you guessed that part?) and its fresh and lively spirit is reflected in the title.

Bringing the far North closer

When my beautiful daughter Cecelia won a scholarship to live and go to high school in Germany at age 16 for a WHOLE YEAR (!!!) I missed her so desperately that I started painting paintings of her at all stages of her childhood. In a miraculous way, those paintings brought her back to me during the endless 12 months of separation.

In a similar way, the paintings and studies for paintings I'm making for my upcoming show bring Iceland and Norway back to me. The studies below are quick and gestural, drawn from sketches and from the images in my mind's eye.

 

The trick will be to make finished works that share some of the energy of these studies. If I could, I'd spend one whole year just making large scale study after study like the last one shown here, acrylic on board. I wouldn't worry about producing a certain number of finished pieces, I'd just paint my heart out. And at the end of the year, I'd see where I'd been. Maybe that will be what 2014 holds for me. We'll see. There's a still-fresh 2013 to live first!