Maggie's at it Again .. Food and Art--Rain and Plein Air

This is a pastel plein air painting that I did on location near the Gila Cliff Dwellings in New Mexico last summer. My art buddy, Sue, and I went to the Dwellings and sketched and painted. This is near the trail to the cliffs. It was a beautiful day. The rocks are so amazing and huge. This is framed for my show, now. The color is off, but the only photo I have. The red is not so predominant.

I have posted before about Maggie Stiefvater. She is one of those extremely organized persons, well not so much organized as orderly in her work ethics. She is married to a policeman, 2 toddlers, 2 cats and 2 dogs, I think. She is a full time equestrian artist who paints all kinds of things. She is a novelist and a harpist. She does her daily art blog, a web page, is in several galleries, has and e-Bay store, does research and gives workshops and much more. She runs on chocolate chip cookies that are amazing, she gave us the recipe recently. Now she has started a recipe blog, the Deadly Spatula.

I procrastinate so much that I am in awe of her. She wrote a blog about how she does so much. You may be interested in reading this. Her blog is witty and knowledgeable, a smile for me at the end of the day. Check it out.

It rained all day and last evening and night. We need it and it has been lovely. Not cold and steady here. It has caused flooding in areas not too far away, though. Problems for many including a couple of drownings. The automated weather here says in the computer voice, "Don't drown, turn around. The life you save may be your own." People just don't understand that it just takes a foot or so of water, depending on the force to push your car off the road. Very dangerous flash floods, especially hard to see at night.

Anyway, Gene framed paintings all day for my show. Sounds so simple, well. I'm doing small paintings, 11 x 14 inches and under. Two of the gallery style frames I bought at Jerry's Artarama didn't fit. They say, "Gallery Frame, 9 x 12 inches. As most of you know , a frame that is 9 x 12 inches usually has an opening of 8.5 by 11.5 or some such so you have a lip over the actual 9 x 12 painting. Well, these frames have a 9 x 12 inch opening. So my 9 x 12 inch glass and painting just go right through. The only way to use them would be to have a mat about 9.5 x 11.5 or slightly larger. Geez, did I miss a bulletin to all artists that we are changing standard frames? So we had to use different frames. Other small problems as well. He finished around 7 p.m.

I painted on a 5 x 7 painting for another box. This one is a jewelry box with a place for a photo. I almost painted on a 5 x 7 piece of Pastelbord, but after the frame fiasco, I measured and sure enough the opening is 5 x 7 so had to cut the paper larger. So in that respect, it was good the frames were wrong. Ha. These must be made in China or some such. I got the box at Hobby Lobby. Weird...... I have been painting in standard sizes for a few years to save on framing costs. Now I will have to buy the frame first and cut the paper to fit the frame. Arghhh. I forgot to take a photo of Gene, the framer, and it was too cloudy to take a photo of the new acrylics and this new pastel. Hopefully tomorrow. If it quits raining, we may golf with Larry tomorrow and take a break from this show stuff. Tonight I am printing the brochure and working on the painting tags.