These are 3 of my newest paintings, both are 16x16inches, oil on panel.

“…This he felt, would be the challenge for the sculptor in the years ahead – the possibility of failure and neglect and solitude. The idea of how he might rise to this challenge charged Henry’s imagination. He imagined Andersen’s, (the sculptor), face become haunted by the slow concentration of work, his eyes more inward-looking, his conversation more hesitant and subtle, and his sculpture smaller in scale and more intricate and delicate, more worked on and worried over. And in the years when this transformation took place, he believed, it might not finally matter to Andersen who admired him or where he lived.”

this is a photo of chocolate mint sandwich cookies i recently made,
and oranges and leaf and blossom from my little potted tree

I went to visit my sister and her wife in California for Thanksgiving and reacquainted myself with this painting I did in 2002.
I love how they have  buddha sitting right below it. It is at the end of a long hallway and the first and last thing you see when
you enter or leave the house.

I believe I just finished this painting, except for the final varnish I want to do on it. I am pleased with the way it turned out
I knew I wanted to use the small Hanuman figure in the center. When I first placed him there it wasn’t working out. He had
no connection to the rest of the painting. It wasn’t until I familiarized myself with the story of Hanuman, that I saw what I
needed to paint. Someone he cared about was hurting and it was said that there was a plant, Sanjivani, (a lithophytic plant)
on a certain mountain in the Dronagiri range in the Himalayas that could restore health. When he arrived at the mountain,
he couldn’t identify which was the correct plant so he decided to just bring the whole mountain. He is pictured leaping over the
ocean carrying the mountain. Hanuman is also sometimes depicted tearing open his chest to reveal his heart.

here is the painting in an earlier stage. it took a few months before I knew how to complete it.

just finished 2 more of these small portrait paintings.
they are approximately 9.5 x 8.5 inches on paper.

if you hold your cursor over the image you will see who the portrait is of.

still feel like i am learning how to use the gouache and feeling out how big i want the portrait to be on the background.
feeling like they are a little too cramped perhaps.