Garage Mural - Trail of Fireflies: Hot Summer Nights

June 29, 2024

Trail of Fireflies: Summer Nights, 83” h x 190” w , spray paint and acrylic on metal, 2024.

Summer and winter seasons merge in this otherworldly landscape with shapes and patterns derived from the dance of the fireflies. The winter season is shown by painting trees without their leaves and summer is represented with green grass and firefly markings. Looking at sunsets is one of my favorite activities as they are colorful, ephemeral, and forever changing throughout different weather and cycles of nature. I used artistic license with the colors of the sunset behind the weaving lines of the river. Different species of fireflies create different marks when they glow and fly through the sky. Some make a dot, dash, squiggle, zig zag, or a even a j-shaped flash. It’s pretty rare to be able to see this many synchronous fireflies glow at one time. I have only experienced it though viewing time-lapse photography. The images and phenomena were so inspiring to me that I wanted to immortalize them in a painting. It gives me great joy to imagine their nightly flights. The firefly marks have become a recurring motif in my work and I have incorporated their glow in many paintings. I used Montana Gold spray paint for the background and Nova acrylic mural paint for fine details on the trees, pink flowers, and firefly marks. As typical in my work, the pink flower forms are not literal flowers but flower inspired. They could also be marine creatures, amoebas or something else. I try to evoke a hybrid of subjects in each of my artwork forms and invite the viewer to use their imagination.

See other artworks that incorporate my firefly motif here. The mural design was inspired by one of my smaller studio paintings shown on the firefly blog. That painting is in now in a private collection.

The project took about 36 hours including 6 hours of priming. I used an existing painting and slightly altered it for the initial design to fit the garage format. The smaller studio painting took around 3-4 months of full-time work spread out over 1-2 years time.

Please reach out to me about custom murals. I would love to collaborate with you.

Mural Process

Connecting to Our Common Ground

August 31, 2023

Brushwood Center
Connecting to Our Common Ground
about the group exhibit

21850 N. Riverwoods Rd. // Riverwoods, IL 60015
September 10 - October 29, 2023

Featured Artists: Paul Branton, Peter Gray, Ken Hester, Renee Robbins, Sheri Rush, Preston Lewis Thomas, Julian E. Williams, Jr.

Brushwood Center, in partnership with Hyde Park Art Center and collector, artist, and environmental scientist Patric McCoy, presents an exhibition of artwork celebrating the different ways in which we connect with and are shaped by nature.

Gallery Hours:
M, TU, W, TR, Sa: 10am - 3pm
Su: 1pm - 3pm and by appointment

About my two artworks in the exhibit:

“One Step Beyond”, part of the “Galactic Lagoons” series, shows a variety of flora and fauna performing a dance while landing on the moon. This otherworldly environment, while rooted in patterns and shapes from the natural world is fantastical and imagined.

Paintings in the “Galactic Lagoons” series bring together celestial and aquatic spaces in order to explore natural wonder, both real and imagined. Planets are layered with microscopic forms to highlight seemingly disparate details in one composition. Bright botanical colors merge with shapes and patterns derived from biological specimens and coral reefs to amplify our curiosity.

“Anchor” is part of a narrative series called “Biota” which illustrates the beginning and end of an invented biome using a palette composed of transparent rainbow glazes, a light blue background, and shapes of burnt sienna. The artworks title “Anchor” reflects the main form holding on to something fixed, so it doesn’t get swept away by the elements. The series features invented flora and fauna and explores how they exist and evolve over time.

Paintings in the “Biota” series investigate the flora and fauna of a distinct region in order to imagine multiple views of one habitat—diving into its mysteries, exploring every corner, and considering how a place changes over time. While the work references many actual things on a human scale, these paintings also incorporate invisible elements from the molecular and cosmic levels.

Expedition Spectrum - Inspiration

March 18, 2022

EXPEDITION SPECTRUM gives the viewer a visual opportunity to meditate on color; to connect their thoughts toward inner awareness and close observation of minutiae in nature. The paintings in the Expedition Series journey into unknown spaces inspired by bird songs, forest canopies, and seafoam. With these prompts from nature, the works focus on depicting simple pleasures and silver linings. Viewing the paintings invites a chance to slow down and investigate our surroundings. With this introspection comes resilience, no matter where we are. The painting process I employ is the culmination of my personal quest to find joy in color and to radiate warmth and optimism on each piece. The works act like fantastical prisms of nature, reflecting the shifting magic of color, from red through purple, one color at a time. Expedition Spectrum renews the spirit and shifts the mindset towards hope.

Rising Night Circus

Butterfly Vine

Starry

Space Lotus

Firefly Signals

Golden Hour

Cloud Nine

Bird Song

Ghost Forest

Hiking Portals

Immersive

Hanging Garden

Coming Up For Air

Event Horizon

Pivot and Anchor

Wipeout

Budding Joy

Low Moon

Morning Sun star

Lunaria

Rising Coaster

Nightwatching

Spreadsheet Fever

January 31, 2021

ARTIST ARCHIVE

During 2020 I’ve been working on my artist archive in depth. An artist archive includes all of the work I’ve ever created and where it’s located. One of my artist friends said I was the hardest working artist that she knows. I thought about that for a bit and wondered why she though that. I realized that being organized is one of my strengths and that inspired me to do a blog about how I organize and keep track of all the my business parts of my art. These topics will be broken up into several blogs as it’s too much information to cover in one blog entry. I started a proper archive of my artwork in 2015 and have been working on it slowly over time. I wish that I started this when I graduated from college in 2005 but I didn’t realize this was something that I should do or keep track of. I could easily store all the information in my head at the beginning of my painting career but as the years have gone by it became harder to remember details about individual artworks. I had some of the information in a word document list but then when a work sold I deleted the information. It became important to reference information for all works. It’s difficult to store all the information in my brain about work that I made 15 years ago. I figured out that I should make a spreadsheet on excel to keep track of all of this information. My archive includes all the details about all of my artwork, details including medium, date, size, series, price, sold, sold date, collection, location, and unique archive number. It also includes information like if I reworked an artwork or if it was destroyed. While I had some of this data entry done from 2015-2019, it was missing quite a bit of information. I had a goal at the beginning of 2020 to get this in shape and have been working on it slowly over the course of the year. I made a list of all the things that I needed to do on the archive and then made a commitment to do one hour a week on the archive for the entire year. I save this work till the end of the day when my creative energy is spent as it’s my least favorite task to complete. It’s lengthy, time-consuming and a bit boring but once I get started it’s fun to get in the groove of entering information. It’s not as exciting as making work in the studio but an important project and part of being an artists. At this time, I have all the major works completed so I am excited to share that major accomplishment. I’m not completely finished as I have works on paper to complete as well as works from 2000-2005 undergraduate and graduate. This portion can be even harder as many of those works no longer exist and I do not even have digital photos of many of them. Another column for high resolution photos in the archive became necessary when I discovered that I was missing photos. I wanted to know if I had high resolution photos of the artwork so I could re-shoot them if necessary. I think it’s ok if I don’t have all the info for my student work. However, I don’t have photos of many of my works on paper so I’m beginning the process to photograph and record information about all of the artworks. Anyway I thought I would share my system in case it might help other artists to keep better track of their work. I have 23 series or tabs of my work recorded so far and with few more series to go. I also added the all the images to excel spreadsheet so I can easily reference and see what works I have and all the details about it. The unique archive number I created also corresponds to a folder that has the images with number in the file name.

I included close up photos of the spreadsheet.

Detail of Artist Archive Aquatic Traces.

DAILY PLANNER, SCHEDULE, TO DO, & GOALS

I am a definitely planner and schedule out all my time throughout the day and week. As an artist you have to be extremely organized with your time and conscious that you are taking action to accomplish goals and things that are important. I have been using the Daily/Monthly Day Designer Planner for the past 3 years and I really enjoy it. If you are looking for an inexpensive planner to block out your time and track goal progress this is for you. Before trying this planner I used a blank notebook to keep track of time and that started in 2000. The printed planner is a fantastic improvement to my time management and for keeping track of deadlines. I would recommend to every artist. I just looked up the one I prefer and it is currently out of stock. I usually buy it in Sept/Oct of the prior year. I think they have a certain time of year to sell the planner and since it’s almost February some of the ones they sell are already out of stock. I prefer the three-column format of the particular planner sold at Office Max versus their flagship planner because of the daily page format. I would actually prefer to get the thicker more expensive flagship type but I don’t like the two column layout of the flagship daily page and the additional square sections for do, dinner, dollars, and don’t’ forget. Those squares are not really relevant to me and I do not like them. Many planners are for women with lots of pink and girly design which I don’t like either. Last year they only had one with pink in it available and that really bothered me. I could not find another planner with the three column layout that I like so I had to get it. This year they have better colors so I was happy. The simpler format planner at office max daily has one column for the schedule, one column for the to-do and a large column for the notes. Plus it has a large area at the top for notes and other things that I like to jot down during the day. The Office Max planner has fewer worksheets and pages then the flagship planner but all those extras can all be downloaded for free on the Day Designer website which I have done. The planner has a timed column for scheduling and keeping track of my hours. Daily, I keep track of the hours I work on a particular painting as well as time spent on marketing and administrative activities. In addition it has a top three to do section. Additionally, for 4 years I have been practicing daily gratitude where I write down things that I am grateful for. January is when I reflect on the past year and refocus my goals for the New Year. I am also keeping track of this daily, weekly, and monthly to check in that I am spending my time taking action towards these goals. While 2020 was a very strange year and 2021 will be different as well, I can still orient my time, which is my most valuable resource, and connect it with my values.

As a compliment to my printed planner I also keep a TO DO SPREADSHEET also in excell. This is my master to do list where I write down every thing I am working on in three categories including CREATIVE, MARKETING, & ADMINISTRATIVE. At the end of each week I review and record my time so I can check in with myself. Each month is also a chance to make my focus change or limit my goals. There is only so much time in a month.

I have an additional studio planner/journal that I write more details on my challenges and ideas in the studio. This helps me to remain focused and remember different ideas I have from day to day.If I am looking for ideas I can go back to reference my thoughts very easily. This also makes it easy to prioritize what ideas are most compelling to create in the studio.

I have another tiny purple leather notebook that I write down titles in.When I get to the title portion of my artwork I can begin here to reference my ideas.

Daily Drawings Week 2

April 15, 2020

April 8 - 14, 2020