I did a lot of other things first

I did a lot of other things before I finally settled into a regular studio practice. I’ve been a picture-maker since childhood, and I went to undergraduate and graduate school for painting, but for many years, I found myself doing a lot of other things beside painting and drawing. After teaching studio arts and art history for ten years at a small college near Boston, I left in 2011 to join my husband on our 82 acre hobby farm. We raised sheep, cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, and turkeys. We also had horses, rabbits, a dog and a cat, and we grew and canned vegetables. During the seven years we ran the farm I learned to spin and dye wool with natural dyes and became a pretty good knitter. As you might imagine, there wasn’t a lot of time left to make pictures. I did make a few, some of which are included on this website, but during those years I focused primarily on fiber arts as well as growing and preserving food.

Farming was a dream I had since childhood, and I loved that life. However, farming gets more difficult the older you get, and one morning my husband, who is older than I, woke up and said he was ready to stop. We traveled and lived in Florida for a year before selling our home in Vermont and moving to Maine a little over two years ago. Since then, I have recommitted to my studio practice. It helps that I have a great space in which to work, and as I mentioned in my last post, I have also been very happy with the arts community in our area. I have met several talented artists and am starting to show my work again for the first time in several years.

This is another quick figure drawing. We tend to alternate weeks of long and short poses. This fifteen-minute pose was the last of the night, and i liked it the best.