As many of you know, I went through a fairly deep and extended period of what I think was mourning… for the loss of my mother, the closing of two of three galleries where I showed work, and for the overall stress of just miserable world events.

I took a class with Thomas Bradshaw in the Spring and slowly, I’ve started finding focus and drive in the studio again. I also revisited a lot of my reference photos and thought about the reason that I love to paint and the things I’m good at painting.

I’ve started on a new series focused on children. I work from photos anyway and since kids are highly unlikely to allow for long periods of modeling, it seems a good place to start. In fact, friends and family with children are normally pretty close at hand and take lots of photos of their kids. I’m working on agreements with them that if a painting sells (or by chance wins a prize), they or their little ones will get a check from for 10% of the proceeds. That way I can pay for the materials and my invested time but also give something back to the little ones. If and when my prices go up (I probably need to get into larger, national galleries or win some big prizes first), then the amount they receive, because it is not a fixed amount, can also go up.

In many cases, the photos have to be photos I’ve taken myself in order to enter the painting into competition because the work must be wholly my own, so I need to work on reaching out to folks to let me come work with their kids in photo shoots.

If a piece never sells, then I will either gift it to the parent, or, if I really love it myself, will leave it to them in my will. For family friends, when a piece goes into storage or up on my “keeping it wall”, then I will put information in an envelope on the back of the painting about to whom the painting should go should I keel over.

But here is a little view of the paintings I’ve done in this series so far:

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Grandma’s Helper has already sold (to the mother of the model). The others will be displayed at RAL Art Center starting next month.