Most of Exeter’s businesses will be open for the annual Christmas open house evenings. I will be at CACHE from 5-8 tonight—will you? (125 South B Street)
SIMPLY HOME
You can see this painting in person tonight.
Honeymoon Cabin I, 6×18″, $195
The show hangs until December 29 at CACHE in Exeter. Their hours are Friday 1:30-4, Saturday 10-4, Sunday noon-4. It includes about 50 paintings, 3 original pencil drawings, calendars, cards, coloring books, The Cabins of Wilsonia books, and a few pencil reproduction prints.
For the first many years (how many??) of my art career, I only worked in pencil, with occasional forays into colored pencil. The detail, the precision, the accuracy, the requirement of strong contrast and composition—all of these things held my attention. Plus, pencils are easy to transport, use, clean up—simple minimal equipment is all that is required.
Despite my devotion to the humble pencil, I am a self-professing color junkie. Here are a few examples of colors in Three Rivers that recently have grabbed my attention.
Someone’s yard has the most brilliant Japanese maple around.
Those bright trees across the river held on until the last rain.
The enormous flowering pear is starting to color up, while mine at the studio has dropped all its leaves now.
The patterns of leaves against the wet asphalt added to the intrigue. (Easily amused, easily entertained)
I went through my yarn scraps and arranged these in the order that pleases me for a multi-colored scarf— ’twill be a gift for a friend.
Sage is blooming in this fantastic blue-violet color beneath the flowering pear at my studio, with its brilliant leaves now all on the ground.
See that piece of dried mural paint? It is a green which I used to think looked fake. When I dropped it on the ground, I was astonished to see that it is almost the identical color as the new weeds now sprouting, at least when they are in sunlight.
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This might be the painting in the show of which I am the proudest . . . yes, I know that “pride goeth before a fall”. . . I hope this painting falls into the right hands!
ENTERING WHITE CHIEF, 12×16″, $387
*The show hangs until December 29 at CACHE in Exeter. Their hours are Friday 1:30-4, Saturday 10-4, Sunday noon-4. It includes about 50 paintings, 3 original pencil drawings, calendars, cards, coloring books, The Cabins of Wilsonia books, and a few pencil reproduction prints.
“Black Friday” kind of disgusts me. (I recognize the irony given the previous paragraph/ad). It overshadows Thanksgiving in the media, and it summarizes and epitomizes the commercialism and greed that taint Christmas. I have participated in Black Friday in the past by joining a group of artists for a boutique here in Three Rivers. It was fun for the visitors, most of whom were part-timers in town, staying at their second homes. I reached a point where the scuzzy state of the building where we held the boutique was no longer acceptable. (WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE IS NO WATER??) We borrowed some other locations for a few years, and when they were no longer available, it was a relief to let that boutique fade away.
This year I spent half a day refreshing the mural on the water treatment plant in my neighborhood, an imminently more satisfying venture than heading down the hill into the fog and the crowds to spend time and money looking for things that no one in my life needs or wants. (Not judging you—just stating the facts of my simple life.)
Yellow is the quickest fading color, so many of the greens have turned blue in the past 5 years. Some of those greens may have been mixed using a yellow that lost its high-lightfast rating (which I learned about when I tried to reorder that yellow.)
My before and after photos were terrible. It is almost impossible for me to take comparison photos when in sunlight because the camera screen is too invisible to be able to see and take the same angles. And even this last photo of the finished mural isn’t a good comparison because the light has changed.
You’ll have to trust me that it has improved.
Have a look at Alta Peak. When I went out into the road to view the mural from a distance, this is what I saw behind me.
In spite of my lack of helpful before and after photos, this picture of Alta Peak lets you know that the mountain in the mural is accurate.
It was a much more satisfying way to spend the day after Thanksgiving.
WAIT! I WENT BACK THE NEXT DAY AT THE SAME TIME AND TOOK THIS PHOTO FOR YOU!
Now, let’s look at before and after, side-by-side (11/29/24 on the left, 11/30/24 on the right). The differences are subtle, but I like it better now.
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*The show hangs until December 29 at CACHE in Exeter. Their hours are Friday 1:30-4, Saturday 10-4, Sunday noon-4. It includes about 50 paintings, 3 original pencil drawings, calendars, cards, coloring books, The Cabins of Wilsonia books, and a few pencil reproduction prints.
FRONt of 2025 CALENDAR, $25 (I will pay mailing and sales tax)
Amor Towles in Table for Two, a book of short stories, had a line that caused me to think, and talk to other friends my age: “After the age of sixty-five one wishes to travel less, eat less, own less.” Maybe point one and point three, but I’m not sold on point two.
2. My How to Draw presentation at CACHE was great fun. 22 people, one hour, lots of talk, one exercise. People really enjoyed themselves while learning and spending an entire hour without a screen in hand. Prolly ought to start charging. . . (I mean charging money, not charging devices).
3. I’ve spent the last month working on my website—learned to back it up, to “purge all caching” in order to correct behind the scenes mistakes that occur when developers change things, to show all the art for sale instead of just showing 9 pieces. Some expert said I have too much data and need to rebuild the entire site and to pay for more storage and that it can’t be backed up properly because of the excess data. I think that is what she said; it was hard to understand her.
4. I read an article on 9 brain challenges by Mike Donghia, a blogger at This Evergreen Home. The list includes things like travel without GPS, memorize important facts, strike up conversations with strangers, use your non-dominant hand, and shop without a list. I do these things! I couldn’t find the list on his site: I read it in The Epoch Times.
5. Did you know that there is no mail service or delivery in the Dominican Republic? Good thing they have the internet so I can text my friend there. We had to make plans for our coffee date, something we do for a catch-up session whenever she comes home.
6. I relearned how much I enjoy the town of Exeter. I loved having my studio there in the building owned by my friend Seldon Kempton. We worked together on the mural team, and it was just a joy to be downtown surrounded by can-do people. It’s been good to be working at home too, to be off the road. . . a big fat car wreck caused me to rethink studio space in Exeter in 2001 and then build my studio at home.
7. “Pulchritudinous” means physical beauty. What a goofy word! Might be hard to remember.
This is me on a recent walk with two pulchritudinous friends (one is behind the camera).
8. Trader Joe’s balsamic vinegar comes in this sweet little bottle that is just right for giving a tiny bouquet of flowers or for rooting basil. I love that balsamic vinegar, and whenever I am in a town that has a TJ’s, I buy several. Been feeling confident about the wise nutritional habit of using vinegar to fight against glucose spikes, but then. . . I FEEL SO BETRAYED AND STUPID! Why? BECAUSE THEY ADD SUGAR TO THEIR BALSAMIC VINEGAR!! Of all the nerve—balsamic vinegar is naturally sweet and some people just say it IS sugar (to which I respond SO WHAT? IT’S VINEGAR!) But now I am thinking that stupid Trader Joe’s, Betrayer Joe’s, can just stay out of Tulare County! We fat diabetic ignorant poor folks don’t need you adding to our sugar problem. Do you hear me, TJ’s?!!
9. Ghost Town Living by Brent Underwood is an excellent memoir, which is my favorite genre of book. I highly recommend it. A friend recommended it to me, and I got it from the library.
10. Tim Cotton Writes is one of the best blogs on my short list. He recently wrote “Unhappiness Has No Permanent Address”, in his inimitable style of folksy wisdom. I highly recommend reading his work.
11. Did you know that the word “shortening” comes from the fact that when you add fat to flour, it shortens the gluten strands? Gluten is what makes dough stretchy, so when you knead it for bread it develops those strands. If you are making pie crust, you don’t want to make it stretchy and tough; hence, you add shortening (and don’t overhandle it). (Learned from The Frugal Girl).
*The show hangs until December 29 at CACHE in Exeter. Their hours are Friday 1:30-4, Saturday 10-4, Sunday noon-4. It includes about 50 paintings, 3 original pencil drawings, calendars, cards, coloring books, The Cabins of Wilsonia books, and a few pencil reproduction prints.
I’m going quiet for a little while. Nothing to worry about, just ready for a break. I’ll be back.
No image from Simply Home today, just a few final photos of fall in Three Rivers. (Check CACHE‘s website for hours, and visit the show if you are so inclined, because the paintings ALWAYS look better in person.)
This is the view looking east from in front of the Mural Gallery & Gift Shop. See the awning straight ahead? That is on the third location where I had my studio in Exeter.
While at the Mural Gallery for my November shift, I painted. My goal was to be productive in between customers by completing some of the plein air paintings from the week in Monterey.
Worked out pretty well.
I liked these enough to sign them. When they are dry, I will show the before and after versions.
This one is better, but I can’t wait to put a railing on the bridge and bark on the sycamore trees.
As I was moving everything out to my car, I looked east and remembered many reason I always loved being in Exeter: tractors in downtown, the water tower with EXETER on it, seeing Sawtooth and Homer’s Nose, trees with fall color, the Post Office, all visible from where I used to have my studio.
One of the three places my studio was in Exeter was in the second story of this brick building, which houses the terrific store Rosemary & Thyme.
One last view in case you didn’t get enough photos today.
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OAK GROVE BRIDGE #28, 24×30″, oil on wrapped canvas, $1800
The show hangs until December 29 at CACHE in Exeter. Their hours are Friday 1:30-4, Saturday 10-4, Sunday noon-4. It includes about 50 paintings, 3 original pencil drawings, calendars, cards, coloring books, The Cabins of Wilsonia books, and a few pencil reproduction prints.
Those words all describe my recent blog posts. I haven’t shown you any work in progress, only the pieces hanging at CACHE in my solo show “Simply Home” until December 29. (Have you been yet? Live too far away? I can ship paintings. Just sayin’. . .)
So, let’s enjoy a few more autumn photos from Three Rivers, taken before the storm. Chinese pistache trees remain the star in the landscapes; flowering pear is the champion outside my studio.
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Sawtooth XXIII, 18×24″, $850
UNTIL DECEMBER 29, CACHE, 125 South B Street, Exeter, California
CACHE’s hours are posted on their website under the “Visit” tab. Scroll to the bottom and look on the right side.
Right now I have 2 pencil commissions that both seem a bit too hard for me.
One is a collage, combining multiple photos into one cohesive piece of work. I have done this many times. BUT, these are photos that aren’t fitting together very well with lots of little fuzzy-faced people in them. A hard and fast rule is to Never Draw A Face Smaller Than An Egg. Somehow I got confused as to what this job would entail, and it is growing in difficulty. I’ve done 3 versions now, along with a sample of what the fuzzy faces are going to look like. Nope, not going to show you. Yet.
The other is a single scene, compiled from multiple unrelated photos. What makes this so challenging is figuring out what size each item needs to be in relation to the others, and where they need to be place to make the scene believable. This was so tough that I used Photoshop (the Junior version). Not going to show this either.
So, today we are going to escape into some fall photos. We had lingering heat this fall, then WHAM! It got cold and the colors got bright.
SIMPLY HOME
Swinging Oak, 12×16″, oil on wrapped canvas, $275
CACHE‘S hours are different each of the weekend days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and posted on their website under the “Visit” tab—scroll to the bottom and look on the right.
In the olden days when my studio was in Exeter and I was the president of the Mural Team, we opened a little store called the Mural Gallery. The idea was to have a place for visitors to learn about the mural project, take home mementoes of the murals, and for the Mural Team to have some income. Only mural artists were invited to show and sell their work.
This past summer, the store closed for refurbishing. Many of Exeter’s muralists are far away, don’t make lower priced art for sale, are retired, or have assumed room temperature. So, upon reopening, the Mural Gallery invited many local artists (whether or not they have murals in Exeter) to participate. A new option is for the artists to work one day a month in order to lessen the bite that the Mural Team takes from the sales (still much less than a commercial gallery, which starts at 50% and is rumored to be as high as 90% in some cities, no thank you).
I worked one day in October, met some new people, had some customers, caught up with some old friends, enjoyed being surrounded by pretty things while spending time in the town where my studio was located for 9 years, PLUS I finished one of the paintings from Monterey.
When we started the gallery, we didn’t have very many murals or artists to participate, so I did this drawing of Yokuts baskets and had prints made for the Mural Team to sell. I wasn’t a muralist, but we needed merchandise, and when we started the project, I told my teammates that I would do whatever it took to make the project succeed. Those first years were tough—the equivalent of having a second job without a second paycheck, a second job which shoved my business onto a back shelf—but the project made a HUGE difference in Exeter.
Since then, the Mural Gallery has sold many paintings and cards for me. I appreciate them enormously!
Today is my November shift. Want to come say hi?
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Big Oak, oil on wrapped canvas, 11×14″, $300
Gallery Hours are Friday, Saturday, Sunday, different each day, in the middle of the day. Might want to call first!
The flowering pear tree is also beautiful in the fall. It is the skinniest 20+ year old tree imaginable, and it leans.
In the spring and in the fall, when it isn’t hot, I am struck by the beauty and charm of where I get to work.
When my studio was new here at home, I participated in a studio tour. Many guests asked if my husband built the studio. My answer was, “No, he already has a job”. The studio was a planing shed for the clock builder who owned the property before us. We used it to store avocado green sinks and other unnecessary miscellany from remodeling our house in 1998. A dear friend, now gone the way of all flesh, did the interior remodel on the shed in 2001. About 15 years later, he and Trail Guy added shingle siding. A few years ago, I had the cement floor covered with fake wood laminate flooring.
This is where I draw and do administrative things, along with give private drawing lessons.
When I began painting, I didn’t want that mess in my studio, so I set up in the adjacent workshop, which now also serves as the three cats’ home base. Two were born there, and Tucker moved in at around 8 weeks of age, so they are very comfortable with it as their dormitory and cafeteria.
Since most of my paintings are hanging at CACHE, I had to dig out all my framed pencil drawings to put up on the walls. I also had to spend time measuring them, determining prices, making sure the prices match the prices listed on the website and are consistent with size and framing quality. Sometimes I would like to have an administrative assistant for such tasks.
The few paintings here were done recently in order to resupply the places that sell my work.
