I have been lugging around canvases… some, still fresh in their packaging… and some have long been painted but needed to be, well, “recycled.” So I pulled these canvases out of their resting places and armed with sand paper & a tube of gesso … I primed them for their new lives as something else.

In August, I will have the featured artist spot at Sidestreet Arts (along with my art pal, Nicole Curcio) and I have LOTS of wall space to fill. Most of my recent work is either collage or mixed media on paper, and mostly 8×10 or near-abouts. So I needed to work larger and quicker. Enter those “refreshed” canvases.

The painting above is the first one completed in the new painting series for “Closer to Home.” It’s 18×24 inches and represents some of the more abstract techniques I’ve been working in. It still has that cartoonish hand… and the colors are fairly bright. That’s Mt. Hood in the center, in a cloak of white and pink. When driving our little packed car into Portland and over the Marquam Bridge (the zigzag bridge on the right), it was sunset, and the sky was pink and Mt. Hood was pink … and everything was pink. It was a sign. It’s become a symbol for me, of our moving here to Portland.