These are a couple of ornaments that were passed on to me from my Aunt. They are possibly from the 60's. They a mini sized and so whimsical I decided they merited a painting. The painting is 6x6 inches.

I actually missed the cloudy overcast days when we lived in California. The sun was great, but the blue sky was monotonous. Give me a roiling boiling soup of clouds racing acroos the sky for some excitement any day.

Several weeks ago my son and I spent some time at the local high school's new Land Lab. It is an outdoor learning space that the kids, teachers, and community are working to restore to a natural prarie and wetlands area. It is a great spot for bird watching and just enjoying nature.

Finished up my latest painting and placed in my Etsy store today. I have really been enjoying working with red and gray lately, in fact this is my third red/gray combo painting. Anyway, these lovely veggies quickly became part of a pasta dinner when I finished up the picture.

This painting is currently available in my Etsy shop-

https://www.etsy.com/shop/grabbox

My mother, brother, and I are artists and we hope to help fund our artistic pursuits by selling art and vintage items online. We add items and paintings regularly, so stop by to see what is available

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The temperature here today was 91 degrees, so I was feeling a little lazy and sat while I worked on a landscape sketch in oils. in may I took a class in plein air painting at the Columbus Cultural Arts Center.What a great resource for local artists!

The field behind our house is beginning to show some of its late summer colors- Purple for iron weed ans golden yellow of the goldenrod. The rolling cumulus clouds were blowing by so quickly it was difficult to capture them in paint.

This 8"x10" oil sketch needs some more tweeking but was a good attempt for about a two hour time investment.

It has been a very long time since I have posted! In the time that I have been away,we were doing quite a lot. One of the biggest changes for our family was that my eldest son decide he wanted to home school for 10th grade. It worked out well and he really enjoyed the autonomy of setting his schedule and choosing what he wanted to study. I will post more about homeschooling and his courses later. He decided to return to high school for this year because the State of Ohio was providing funding for enrolled students to take classes at any public college for free and to have those credits count both towards high school and college. The program is called College Credit Plus. Also many local public colleges required an accredited high school diploma or GED in order to enroll, (until the rules changed in July of 2015), so returning to public school and taking mostly college classes made sense.

My artwork has been going through some changes as well. I started working with pastels a few years ago and finally got up the courage to enter an exhibition, The two paintings below were selected to be part of the Ohio Pastel Artists League exhibit at the Butler Institute of American Art at Youngstown State University.