A visit to California to visit my father was followed by Mathew's spring break from college. He was home for a week and a half, during which we made multiple trips to Phoenix.

Lots of time was spent in front of the TV watching Monk, as Mathew succumbed and then recovered from a bona fide case of the flu.

After he left, guess what! I got the flu, which ended up being pretty debilitating for 3 weeks. Now I'm back on track, functioning at last!

The image above is one I did a number of years ago, called 'Till Death Do Us Part. The left side is a painted portrait of my Mom and Dad. On the right side are photo transfers of them taken from old snapshots. My mother passed away in 2002.

As my father approaches the end stages of Alzheimers disease, he and my Mom are much on my mind.

The painting you see is part of an ongoing series of personal work. This is work I do to express my own experiences, separate from the landscape and people in the landscape work.

I'm finding that keeping up a Blog page is a little like feeding one of those Tamaguchi pets. At least I think that's what they were called. For a while every kid was obsessed with feeding and walking these little electronic devices that beeped when they needed attention. And died if you didn't take care of them. Every teacher was being driven crazy by having to confiscate the little creatures.

However, for an artist, part of the point of doing the work is for other people to see it. Blogs seem to have that potential. But, they sure are hungry little beasts.

This is a large painting. It's roughly 6' wide by 5' tall. The largest I've ever done and considering the size of my studio spaces, it's pretty big. It is a composite of photographs my husband took for me at a rodeo he was photographing for a client. At the time, I didn't take my own pictures.

The whole cowboy scene is still very alive out in the Southwest. I have a hard time reconciling the Hollywood images with the real thing. While this painting isn't exactly a spoof on cowboy art, it shows actual people caught in the moment. I hope you enjoy it.

It lived in my closet for a long time, and is now hanging at the Curley School, in the Hallway gallery. Looks great there, but I'd love to give it a permanent home at some point. Maybe some real life cowboy would like it????

I'm delighted to be able to potentially show it to a wider audience on this blog.

Another odd vision. This painting was inspired by a pesky fly that insisted on helping itself to our picnic goodies. I noticed that the colors of the shadows on the paper towel, the shiny cherry, the pits and the fly with its transparent wings were actually quite beautiful. This was another image I sat on for a long time before I got the idea to divide it into four sections. It is painted on masonite, which is an interesting surface to work on. I continued to play with the idea of shiny versus matte surfaces. I assumed anyone looking at this painting would be horrified, but have been surprised at the positive responses it has gotten.

This image, called Life Cycles–The Butterfly is an example of keeping your eyes open for beauty in unlikely places. I saw this butterfly floating in a cattle trough. I hung onto the photographs of the scene for several years, until I finally figured out what I wanted to do with it. The outside border is rough textured, similar in feeling to the cement trough. The butterfly, rocks and other bugs are painted in layers of transparencies and are quite smooth and glossy. Rather a strange image, I guess, but one that was compelling to me.

What in the world is this? If you go to the Phoenix Art Museum, you'll find this window which looks out into a small space between two walls. Sometimes I see oddball images that strike me. This was one. It was so ethereal and strange, and is especially so, taken out of context. I had lots of fun trying to capture the feeling of the shiny floor and the transparent window in this painting.

This is a painting I did several years ago. I love to paint people. Painting people in wonderful places is even better. Paintings that say something about the human condition are the most rewarding of all for me to create. This little group of elderly people were sitting in the courtyard of a museum in Santa Fe. It's called Waiting for the Grandchildren. What does it evoke for you?

Being an artist is always a balancing act. Preparing and maintaining materials takes time, energy and money. Then there's the actual time spent producing the work. It takes time for creative ideas to coalesce. Figuring out how to make what's in your mind take shape in the physical world is another piece of the puzzle. The balance in my life for the last month has tipped to family. It was wonderful having Mathew home for his winter break. And wrenching to have him go back to school. Now it's time for me to get back to work!

What you see here are three small (8x10) paintings on panel. They work as a series or as individual paintings–capturing some of the colors and shapes I saw in the landscape around Yellowstone National Park.