For those of you who were worried about my sanity because of the recent influx of dancing animals, you will be relieved to know that this post does not showcase any NEW dancing animals projects. Yellowstone Dancers – the pause before commitment I am still working through my ideas around Yellowstone Dancers. I think I’ve landed on a plan, but…
I told a friend this week about my latest project and she said, “Tara, do we need to talk about this recent obsession with dancing animals?” No, Gretchen. I’m as sane as I ever was, and yes, I’m aware that is not a high bar. Unfortunately, my sanity or lack thereof was of little import this weekend. The memorial for…
I need to announce that there is a vanishingly small chance that I have learned something. This is a red letter day! Let me explain. Back in June, when I went on my great Western Adventure, on Day 6 I went through Yellowstone National Park. I started pretty early in the morning and witnessed a herd of young bachelors tussling…
A week ago, one of my co-workers–Andrew Dutterer–was killed in an accident on I-5. To say that the death was senseless is an understatement. While all deaths are hard, the sheer randomness of this one hurts almost as much as any other factor. His obituary can be found here. I work at a very small state agency called the Oregon…
After the great cow adventure of a couple weeks ago, I had reference photos of cows sitting around all over my studio. So, obviously, I needed to paint a few to get this cow thing really out of my system. Cows aren’t really my thing; except that cows and horses are a little like peanut butter and jelly. So, a…
Almost every discipline requires some kind of editing. If you garden, you have (at a minimum) weeds. If you cook, you try substitutions or variations. If you run, you try to better your time or lower your heart rate. With painting, there are a lot of editing opportunities. What to paint? Materials? Colors? Which details should be left out or…
I’m not sure what it is about short weeks that makes them feel so intense, but work this week was “petal to the metal.” When I hit the weekend, I had a little list of chores to do. Doing stupid things like slicing open a finger (twice) and accidently getting garlic/onion/pepper on my hands and blinding myself really wasn’t part…
Author’s Note: To get the full effect of the title, say “Cows” like Dug says “Squirrel”. It may be a while before I live down shaving my head. I had a therapy appointment on Thursday and my therapist gave me “the look.” Co-workers are just now starting to mention it. “Ah, Tara… Are you okay? That’s a pretty… drastic… haircut.…
This was a big week for art show notifications; I received two acceptances, both of which pleased me to no end. The first was for the Watercolor Society of Oregon fall show. Even though the in-person convention has been cancelled (some digital classes will be available, but it’s not the same), the show will still hang in the Elsinore Gallery…
It was a one of those weeks and I was glad to make it to the end. Friday was my day off, so I took the dog for a hike, dropped off the paintings for the ODFW Stamp Contest, and then crossed of a New Year’s Resolution (we won’t talk about that this has been my resolution for the last…