Three Rivers Artist Guild Holiday Show

The opening for the Three Rivers Holiday Show was on Friday, November 25, 2016.  This is the first holiday show that I am doing since I moved to Michigan.  Here is my display.

There are 20 artists taking part in this show which will end on December 27th.  The gallery looks great with a variety of wonderful art.  I am getting to know the other guild members and am happy to be a part of this group.  I worked for the first time at the gallery today and find it is run almost identical as the gallery I was a part of in Tucson.  We had a special visitor stop by today and I had my photo taken with him.

I am happy to report that I sold a painting on the opening day of the show.  It was an 10x8 version of "Mare and Foal"

Since I had an empty spot in my display, I spent all day yesterday doing another version of this painting.   I took it to the gallery today to fill that empty spot.

Now I have another empty spot to fill because I sold another painting today.  It is one of my "Desert Dwellers" paintings which were so popular in Tucson.  I was surprised that some one from Michigan liked it!

I have a cross painting that is the perfect size to fit the new empty spot. It is called "Mexicali Cross".

I also sold 2 of my new mirror compacts that my grand-daughter Laura made with my art work on them.

It is a good start to have sold things in the first few days of the show.  I hope it keeps up.

Something old, something new, something recycled.

I'm busy getting ready for the Three Rivers Artist Guild Holiday Show.  I have less than a week until my scheduled set up time.  I have so much to do.   I have to make price tags and painting labels,  I must do a bio update.  I have greeting cards to print. I have to decide how to do my display.  The list goes on and on.

 I did a few last minute paintings.  The first two photos are of what I call "old" paintings.  They are some of my best selling designs which I have painted many versions of in the past. Each version has sold.  The first one is my classic "Endless Rose" on a 12X12 stretch canvas.  The second one is "Equine Mystic".  I recently did a larger 11X14 version which I am showing at LA's Coffee Cafe. I chose to do a smaller 8X10 for this show.

I also did a new design which was inspired by a duck decoy that I found at a yard sale.  I am displaying it on my new shelf unit.  It is on the bottom shelf with another duck on a stick.

I had been wanting to do a still life painting for the holiday show.  In most of my still life paintings I feature a container of flowers with some object or piece of fruit at the base.  I knew I wanted to do an arrangement with sunflowers but couldn't decide what else to put in the painting until I had an ah-ha moment and decided on the duck decoy.  I was trying to come up with something that would look more mid-western then all my previous south-western still live paintings.  I think I accomplished my goal with "Duck Decoy Still Life".  Size of this one is 16X12

So you have seen my something old and something new, now for the something recycled.

 I wanted another floral painting for the holiday show but knew I didn't have time to do one. Then I remembered I had a box of  paintings that I had taken out of frames when I was packing up for the move from Tucson to Michigan.  I found the box and discovered this painting titled "Pink Blush".  I went though my frames and decided on one that seemed to be a perfect match for this 20X16 painting.  It gave new life to a painting that has been tucked away in a box for over a year.  Hopefully it will find a home here in Michigan.

A new horse painting, new functional items and a new front porch!

I completed a new horse painting and have been working on a new rose painting.  Here is a photo of the horse drawing on the canvas and the rose painting in progress.

I have been working on the "Endless Rose" painting on and off between doing other paintings.  I had every intention of the horse painting being a fierce stallion but that didn't happen.  The more paint I added the more feminine looking it became.  The he became a she!  I ended up with a girly looking filly so I decided to title the painting "Fabulous Filly."  Maybe I'll give another try in the future to get the look I had in my mind.  Here is the finished product.

I'm trying something new this year.  I have a grand daughter in GA who has a business called LPcreaets.  She is able to put images on all types of items.  I decided to have her use my art on some  of these items.  Here are some samples of the things I will be selling at the The Three Rives Artist Guild Holiday Exhibition.  I am only showing you things with the Endless Rose pattern.  I will have other images on these functional items.  Of course, I will also have many original paintings that I will be showing at the show too.  Here are samples of a cutting board, coaster, small metal print, mirror compact, and watch. (It was hard to get a good photo because of reflections.)

I can't do a blog post with out showing off our newest home improvement project. When we bought the house we had a small covered entrance stoop.  Over the years it had sagged on one side.  We knew it would have to be replaced so decided to do a full size front porch. This job was a little too big for us to do it ourselves.  We hired a contractor to do the work for us.  We are happy to say he did an excellent job.  We love our new front porch.  We also had our driveway widen.  It was a single driveway coming in then widen out in front of the second garage door.  It was a pain in the neck to back out so we had the driveway made a full two car width.  The workers who did both jobs were the best!  Here is a photo of the new porch and one of me enjoying the porch swing we installed.