My 2020 calendars are here, and ready in their subdued colorful way to brighten up your coming year. Up now in my Etsy shop, along with some new mugs, and at Catalyst Gallery in Beacon, NY, and by contacting me directly (venmo, paypal). 

This summer, I made a connection that some of my color ideas are rooted in my early obsession with crayons and coloring, always boxes of them on hand, vibrant to murky, ones worn to stumps and others still pointy. I keep a coffee can of dusty Crayolas in my studio that I don’t use, I thought I was saving them for somebody.
But now I know why they’re here. After I made this new painting, I found crayons to match what I'd mixed. A color prescription. Closing my eyes, I smell wax on my hand.
24x24” acrylic on canvas.

Multiple oblong, round shapes, cut from scrap wood and painted in different bright colors, hang on a portion of chain-link fence that separates a community farm and garden from the road. The flat pieces, facing passersby, are visible from both sides. The installation’s title, Colorgarden, is a homophonic play on garden—an enclosure inside which vegetables and flowers are grown—and guarding, which is the role of the fence itself. 

I cut the pieces freehand with only a general plan of the finished effect. Each one is slightly different and many are colored to match an element of what might be found in the garden. As the season changes, the colors become a snapshot of a summer palette through fall. As I worked, I felt that I was growing a sort of garden in my studio, colored rounds sprouting up from the floor.

The role that the Newburgh Urban Farm and Food Initiative plays in the community—for the people who work and volunteer here, and for the people who in turn have access to locally grown produce—makes for a natural response to the Terrain Biennial theme of how we change the environment we occupy, and how it changes us. Creating the farm within the city of Newburgh is an answer to how to adapt to our busy urban surroundings, just like the park it’s tucked into, bordered by a paved road that traverses many city blocks. It mirrors my answer to “why make art?” They are both challenging and both essential. You are nourished, you thrive, you learn, you find color and joy, and you are rejuvenated.

I had submitted my series of Fisher-Price milk bottle paintings to a museum exhibition about toys and collectibles. They were not accepted to the show, but the process got me thinking of them again.
When I decided to paint them, I had a specific memory of this collection being some of my favorite toys. I don't even know why. I can remember prying off the mismatched plastic lids and pouring the 'contents' into cups, refilling with every imagined flavor of milk and juice, a tiny bartender.

Even though I was a child in the 80s, my toys were older because I had 4 older siblings, and the playroom contained all these late-60s and 70s toys, a lot of Fisher-Price, mixed in with more 'modern' items. (Right now I'm not moved to paint any Care Bears or My Little Ponies or even my Pound Puppy, but maybe in another 10 years.)

I love the colors, this blend of faded and fluorescent, and the tactile memory of play that the photos brought up, and then the mixing of paint to evoke them. 

In my recent work this year, I have been jigsawing shapes from thin wood and painting/assembling them into wall-mounted compositions, occupying the space between two and three dimensions. Those shapes are oblong and round, stacked adjacent to each other in rows or appearing to be piled on the same flat plane.

In this new series, the layers of cut and painted wood evoke a dense and fantastical field of grass. and the piece interprets the sense of confronting wild greenery by representing the shapes and shades of it like that your imagination might conjure. The largest piece, 48"x50", is titled after a line in a Walt Whitman poem, ‘observing a spear of summer grass’. They may all be titled a variation of this, as they all grew from the same idea. Noting the word ‘spear’ instead of blade, both words descriptive and dangerous, as these sharp wood spears softly writhe and tangle around each other. 

I made this painting for the set of a private photo shoot with a 60s vibe. I painted it as a close copy of a print by Shag (the LA-based artist whose work is incredibly fun) which the photographer, Dean Goldberg, saw and dug for the project. I replicated his complete design, using an orange/red palette to suit the photo shoot, instead of the original's greens and blues.
Initially I hesitated to post this, but I consider it an homage to the artist (with respect- it took some work) and I think it is a groovy painting. 28”x36” acrylic on canvas. I may not exhibit as it doesn't feel like my original work, but I would very much like to sell it with the understanding that it is copied from another artist for a specific purpose. It would look pretty cool hanging on the wall in a bar/lounge or a hotel with a hip midcentury mod decor..
The piece is back in my studio and makes me want to kick off my heels and recline in an egg chair with a martini next to my pool table, watching the fiery sun set behind the skyline.

One of several pieces available here at Wonderwall Studio as a framed print in several sizes, here brightening up a breakfast table. Personally I would like this chair to go with it. The original painting is 40"x65" and still available, though the prints are probably an easier fit for most interior decorating. 

These four paintings are now available on Perigold, a premium home design retailer, as prints in several sizes, float mounted on linen with colored acrylic box framing or mounted on wood panels. Doing what I can to brighten up those interiors! 

For example, the Citron Stack original painting is just 12"x16", but the finished pieces are offered as 19"x24" or 32"x40". So cool. So premium. 

I have two pieces in this exhibition 'Celebrating Color', opening Fri July 12 at Womenswork.art in Poughkeepsie. They are new this year and were only previously shown at CMA Gallery at Mount St Mary College March through May, so I'm glad to have another venue in the Hudson Valley to exhibit them. Especially since celebrating color, so to speak, is a major focus in this new work!

‘Transit’ is a group exhibition opening June 24 at Krasdale Distribution Center in Hunts Point, NY, and includes six of my paintings. They will be there for 3 months, after which they will travel to the Krasdale Corporate Offices in West Harrison, NY, where there will be a reception on Oct 16, 5-8 pm. The second leg of the show will close Nov 13.

These are 2012-2018, from a slowly braking series of car/travel paintings. The curator, Kirsten Kucer, was familiar with this earlier work and felt it would be a great fit for the exhibition. I am always glad for new venues to show them. (And sell them.. In this exhibition, interested buyers are referred directly to the artist for purchase, so.. contact me!)
They reflect a particular kind of labor, observation, love, and matching of color/texture to the reference images. I’m still there but I like to visit places I haven’t been. I suppose this ‘place’ used to be ‘the past’, in effect, and now.. it's somewhere a little more abstract.