Staying Warm at Christmas

Here is an inset of a FIRE painting. Something to keep warm by. It's going to be 27 degrees here in Florida. I know it may be colder elsewhere, but I didn't sign up for this!

Istanbul, Turkey

This painting was shipped to a Travel Business in Istanbul, Turkey. The shipping cost was so prohibitive, it had to be taken off the frame and rolled, which is not easy to do with a painting that has 3D texture on it. The owner said it arrived okay, but I got the feeling he was not enjoying trying to get it back on to a frame. I would love to visit this piece some day.

Blue Couches

Here are some early pieces placed in a decor setting I refer to as 'blue couch'

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From The Archive - Very First Ebay Sale

I watched a friend of mine paint and put up the paintings for sale on Ebay. He was selling them pretty regularly. I watched the listings for about a year. Cheering if he got a good bid, marveling at the effects he was producing. All through that year, it didn't occur to me to paint. I was too intimidated. But over time, as I looked through other art in the 'Outsider Art' listings, I became bolder.
Finally, I decided to try my hand at some very simple folk art. It started with scrap wood from Home Depot and did a simple painting. I wired it to hang and went through the process of putting it up for sale.
When someone placed a bid on it, I almost fell over. I know it sounds strange, and maybe others don't have this reaction. But for me it was mind blowing to think that some total stranger looked at what I created and said "Yes" I will spend my money on that and hang it in my home. (I guess talk about low self esteem) but it is the ultimate form of validation.

Sink Your Teeth In

A power overload knocked out the power supply on my 'modern' computer. As an emergency back up, I've plugged in an older computer that we had here at the house that no longer had a monitor.
This is the computer we used around 2004. This means it was the computer I was using when I first dove in to abstract painting. Some of the photos from that era fell by the way side some time ago, but, the silver lining of losing the other computer is that many of those photos are still on THIS computer.
Unfortunately I can't upload them directly to this blog, so I'm working (very SLOWLY) to try to get some of them uploaded to a place I can do an image link to them here.
It's been edifying to go back and look at early work and see where I've been, see what I moved forward with and what I left behind. I'm also seeing things I want to return to.