Leonardo The Poet, my lion mask, was hung in a significant place at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts Member Show, which is currently running. This will be his last show as he has was purchased right away by a private collector. Although I will miss him, I am excited that he will go to a good home. I believe his new friend is also a Leo.
Lori & Salina meet Shamu (just guessing) at Sea World. Lori's husband took this picture, and I just loved it and couldn't wait to paint it. Lori is my daughter's best friend and business partner. They are wedding/event planners and their business is called My New Best Friends. Link to their website is at the bottom of my blog.
Look at that face. This is a very serious looking painting of a very silly dog. She usually only looks this way if you are about to eat the last bite of something she wants you to share with her. Otherwise, she's all cute, bouncy and playful.
My friend Jan paints wonderful animals. After she painted some pandas, I decided to do some pandas myself. I'm happy with how lush the green bamboo turned out.
These cuties are my youngest grandkids, Ely and Delaney, at Delaney's birthday party. They seem to be sharing a quiet moment. I wonder what's in the bag?
Painted at Spring Lake Park in Santa Rosa. This is one of the great trees along the jogging path.
Abstract on a grid. Inspired by a really beautiful abstract painting by Joan January.
My first collage. It's created from 27 pieces cut from old National Geographic magazine and chosen for their colors and patterns. I had so much fun with this, I went on to do a barn owl and the lion that is my bannerhead for this blog. 
I set out to paint a landscape, but the clouds were so dramatic that day, I couldn't keep my eyes off the sky. So I painted a cloudscape instead.
This painting represents the beautiful children who grew up on the big hill of the Dry Creek Rancheria. I particularly had in mind the Cardona and Lopez families, who grew up at the same time as, and were friends of my own kids. The painting was comissioned and inspired by Tanya, who brought me a snapshot of some of her siblings and cousins at play on the hill. The Tree, the Acorns, and the Eagle, were part of a vision of the Chief, which later became incorporated with the dreamcatcher into the iconic logo of the Dry Creek Rancheria of Pomo Indians. I feel honored to have known these wonderful children and watched them grow to be the great young men and women they are. 
These cute guys are this year's batch of owlets who lived in our big walnut tree until they fledged and went their separate ways. They were with us for several noisy, screechy months. Sometimes I would go out on the porch with a flashlight, and this one night all six were in a row, so I snapped a picture. In the photo rather than having "red-eye", they had neon rainbow eyes, and I tried to capture that in this painting.
My grandson Ian and granddaughter Madison are cousins, about the same age and have always been fun to watch. This is a painting from a picture I took on a day that wasn't windy enough for these two little kids to get their great big kites to stay up in the air. And yes, their eyes really are that blue. Ian gets his from his other grandma, and Madi gets hers from her dad.
One of my most recent oil paintings is this sunny green peek into my daughter Laura's favorite place in Sebastopol. It's a lush grassy meadow amid a small forest of oak trees, the kind of place that makes the busy world drop away for a little while. On exhibit at Sonoma County Harvest Fair, 2009.
The reason I call him Secondhand Lion is that I painted him on a canvas I had been using as a palette, which gives his face such wonderful texture and undertones of colors you might not otherwise expect in a lion's face. You will soon discover I am hung up on lions. To see a close-up, click on the painting.
