Art by JPL

I take a weekly painting class at the Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown, MA. It's a great class with super talented students and an incredibly wise teacher. It's so fun to go and paint with people who get as excited about mixing colors as I do! And we can all be nerdy about art stuff together. I know my non-artist friends and my husband appreciate that I have people to talk about this stuff with! I'm planning to attend a painting workshop in 2019, details are still be

I am finally ready to post a recap of my painting challenge. I can't believe it's mid-October! We had family staying with us and we have a new puppy so my working life has been a little disrupted, but for good things! I had so much fun with this collection, Dreaming of Far Away Places. There are paintings inspired by Scotland, Australia, Mexico, and France. There are paintings inspired by dreams or imaginary landscapes. I hope you enjoy them! If you see one you want to reserv

I have been painting plein air this spring while the kids take horseback riding lessons. Plein air painting means painting outside. It's a French term that we have adopted (mutilated) into English. Their horseback riding lessons are at such a gorgeous location and I have an entire hour to myself! I bring my tiny watercolor set, just one brush, and a little cup. The kids learn assertiveness, they gain self-confidence, and they have so much fun. Meanwhile, I get my painting tim

I've been thinking recently about where ideas come from. I'm often asked about that as a visual artist and I don't always understand the answer myself! I have a lot of images that float around in my mind and I want to try to capture them when I paint. These are often landscapes, seascapes, and skies. I return to these subjects over and over again in a vain attempt to capture the beauty of nature. Sometimes these images come to me in my dreams! Like this one: If I sit down to

It's half-way through October and I'm still recovering from September! What a month. I completed 30 small watercolor paintings in 30 days and several of them have found new homes. I had a great time working in a new medium and really pushing myself to stay loose. Now that it's October I am working on some larger pieces and I'm getting ready to re-work or paint over some older pieces! Exciting!! Here, in no particular order, are my favorite paintings from September. If you're

When I decided to do another 30-day painting challenge I chose to switch mediums. I had never used watercolors before in any consistent way. Why would I do that to myself? Because they don't call it a challenge for nothing! And a challenge it has been. I'm not through it yet, I have 9 days left, but I have learned so much in the last few weeks. And daily painting is so good for me! The biggest lesson so far is how to loosen up. With watercolors, things happen that are out of

This month I am working on another 30-day challenge. To make it interesting I chose to switch to a new medium - watercolors! This has been fun and challenging so far. I'm getting used to not being able to fix things as easily and just go with the flow. Often I paint a few practice paintings first to get my jitters out and then things start happening. Here are the first 6 days. I'm posting them daily on instagram and facebook if you want to follow along! These aren't available

I completed my 30 day painting challenge. It did end up taking me longer than 30 days but life tends to get in the way sometimes! I had a ton of fun doing it and I definitely plan to do another challenge, maybe in the fall. I started out with seascapes, pivoted to flowers, floral landscapes, landscapes, went back to seascapes and ended with flowers. I'm so excited to have so much new work! I'm varnishing them now, and soon the best ones will end up in my online shop - $156/ea

Remember when I started the 30 day painting challenge and I called it a seascape challenge? Well, things changed. On day 14 I didn't want to paint a seascape! So I painted flowers instead. Flowers led me to fields of flowers which led me to landscapes. Here are some of my favorites so far. These will be varnished and available in the shop in early June ($156/each). Two have already been reserved! #painting #flowers #fields #landscape