24″ x 48″, Acrylic on canvas. This one is for sale at Cascade Vacation Rentals in Tofte, MN.

24″ x 36″, Acrylic on canvas. This one is for sale at Cook County Higher Ed.

I have ten paintings at the Cook County Higher Education campus at the corner of 3rd St. and 3rd Ave. in Grand Marais. I’ll be adding a couple more in the coming days. Also, I have lowered the prices of the paintings in this location, as a portion of the proceeds goes to CCHE. Please support this wonderful organization. They have done so much for me, and many others in this community.

It was a beautiful day to sit outside and paint! And it was fun to spend time with some of my favorite people, too!

A friend of mine said today that she hates abstract paintings. All I could do was chuckle. It’s so easy to hate something we don’t understand. For me, the whole world is abstract. I look around me and see pine branches against a blue sky. They are dark shapes against a light background. And the closer I look the more I just see shapes in relation to each other. I look at the undulating surface of water. If I photographed it, it would look like an abstract painting. This is what the world is made of. Have you ever laid on your back in the grass and looked at the clouds? The more you look, the more shapes you’ll see that remind you of something else. An elephant, whose trunk grows longer and longer as that wisp of cloud is carried by the currents of air up there… That’s how I look at my own abstract paintings. I can’t really see them when I have a brush in my hand and am applying paint to them. Oh I see them, but I’m seeing what they might become, not what they are. So I hang them on my bedroom wall, and look at them as I’m falling asleep. I look at them in low light. I see them when I wake up, not with the thought of what I can do to change them, but just see them as they are. That’s when I’m surprised by the creatures and objects hidden in the current of paint.

Swim. 24″ x 36″, Acrylic on canvas, 2013

(Detail) Chromatic Sea. 36″ x 24″, Acrylic on canvas, 2013

Forest. 36″ x 24″, Acrylic on canvas, 2013

Pines. 24″ x 36″, Acrylic on canvas, 2013

Flying Fish. 24″ x 36″, Acrylic on canvas, 2013

36″ x 24″, Acrylic on canvas, 2013

20″ x 24″, Acrylic on canvas, 2013