As I wrote last week, I am in the process of finishing unfinished projects and painting the many unpainted canvases and wooden surfaces I’ve collected. Here is one of them.  A wooden shelf that’s been sitting in a pile waiting to be painted from Baltimore to Bogotá to Caracas.  So last week I slapped on a layer of gesso followed by a layer of blue acrylic paint and let it sit on the floor a while.  I figured eventually it would tell me what to do with it.

I should probably mention that since I started working on so many paintings at once, and since Owen got tall enough to reach my paints, I rearranged the guest room and am once again I am enjoying a full studio, with paintings spread out all around me.  It really is a nice set up, a room with a view even.  The one exception being the bed….which I have moved to the side and am hoping to convert into a sort of loungey couch to lure visitors into modeling for me. Which leads me to my second point. I recently declared defiantly to someone who was telling me to paint more portraits that I was intent on painting more of my botanicals, only to realize a few days later I had an awful hankering to paint a person.  The thing is, mind you, that there really is a difference between painting commissioned portraits and simply painting people.   Don’t get me wrong, I do love the challenge of painting portraits.  But I love painting people in my own,  more naturalistic hand, letting the basic geometric forms of the face come forward.  This painting, of my husband, is only a few hours in and probably a few hours from finished.  Still, I don’t plan on polishing it a whole lot.