So this is the completed painting that the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
commissioned me to paint that will be used on their holiday card this year.
It will be on display in January at the Center’s gallery along with the series of still life
paintings I have been working on. I started a new one yesterday. It feels good to have
it underway.

Okay, I am going to post some images I took on a recent trip to Fredericksburg.
For those of you who don’t know Fredericksburg it is this ridiculously quaint town, lots of antiques and picket fences.
It is crazy, I really am becoming one of those ladies; watercolors of bluebonnets are next.

I am considering this image of the indian blanket with the sky as a possibility for a painting.
I love the transparency of the flower in the foreground.

I could have spent all day photographing at the many peach stands. These 2 images below were from Gold Orchards.
Maybe it’s that vibrant orange yellow color that just dazzles me. The repetitive shapes, like little bubble cells, over and over again
I find calm there. I am sucker for what I hope will always be considered common, yet extraordinairy beauty.

this is the first of what soon will be a diptych. 12×18, oil on panel

So we are moving into a new house/new studio within the next year. I decided that in this new space I would try to work on an
easel rather than on the wall. I have never before painted on an easel, they always seemed too romantic, too french impressionist,
(or were they all plein aire painters?). Anyway, lucky me, as soon as I decided it was time to purchase one I found one on craiglist.
It is kind of too big for my current tiny studio but will work great in my new space. Still figuring it out a bit, might need an adjustable
studio chair, but I think I have yet again resigned myself to the fact that I am a sentimental, romantic painter, my mother’s
daughter. So far from the hip and cutting edge artist I always imagined myself. Oh well.

I woke up early yesterday, about 6:30am, got dressed, made some coffee and hopped in my car and drove south to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
The center doesn’t officially open until about 9am, but I had special permission to enter the grounds. I have been commissioned to create a painting of agarita
berries to be used on their holiday card. This was great, I was being paid to photograph berries. Life doesn’t get much better for me. The morning was beautiful;
fields of tall grass and wildflowers, scissor tailed fly catchers and cardinals. I spent about 2 hours there, the whole place to myself, photographing the berries
and all sorts of other things. You can see a few of my favorites below. I endured a ton of bug bites, but it was well worth it.