Scam ripping off artists

A few days ago I recieved this e-mail form with an attempt to copy two of my titles. One title was copied incorrectly. I just answered that I only do transactions through Pay Pal and never heard back.


Good day to you.
I am so excited that I came across of your work on internet search, I am interested in purchasing these creative artworks from you.....................(name of item)

Let me know their various prices and how much discounts are you going to give? I will be happy to have these selected artworks hanged in our new home in South Africa. As well, I want you to take out the shipping cost. I have been in touch with a shipping firm that will be shipping other house decoratives.We are traveling from our Dallas home to our new apartment as soon as possible. On Paying for the artworks, I will be glad to pay you with a Money Order or Cashier`s check in US funds that can be easily cashed at your local bank, please let me know on how to proceed for the payment of the creative artworks.I will await your advise on how to proceed. Have a wonderful day.

Digesting Diane Hoff-Rome's workshop on intuitive process

One of the tendencies I have at workshops like Diane Hoff Rome's is to let myself be influenced to paint like the instructor. Last week at the workshop some of my work looked like Frankenthaler and some like Hoff-Rome so I have been looking at some of my older work to see if I have a way to employ her process in my own development. After all my background is working intuitively. This is a painting done around 1988 and I am wondering how I have lost this kind of movement and spontaneity. Certainly her suggestions will help me get into my own creativeness more of the time. My next projects will be painting outdoors over some old paintings. I am starting some new paintings of Bond Butte Pond and the best one will go in The Everlasting Valley exhibit.

Being focused

Our computer crashed and I must find new ways to share my journey until it is fixed. This picture is a web cam picture and I am wondering if I can share my work by just holding it up. Here I am holding a duck that I have been knitting to donate to a hospital.

When I post what I will do in the future sometimes that helps me focus. My celebrating volunteers series is not going well at all. this afternoon I am going to start a brand new painting of Mother of the Woodlot and her grandson releasing a fish in Bond Pond.

Tango series at Toni Acock's mineral painting class

"Bride and Groom Tango" is mineral china painting on a porcelain tile 3 1/2' x 2 3/4". It is my first China painting. My teacher is Toni Acock of Corvallis, Oregon. She opens her studio twice a week. Today I painted three more tiles.
Her class is a fun cheerful group and Toni is very generous.

I am making these China paintings to give as gifts.

Skunk Cabbage in the Siletz River Wetlands

Hoff-Rome work shop brings out Helen Frankenthaler in me

Hoff Rome compared this exploratory exercise to a Helen Frankenthaler.

Mixed Media on Gouache paper purchased in China. 10" x 7 1/2" Completed near the end of our full day. We were immersed in the intuitive creative process. I was getting to work outside my comfort zone reaching farther from the landscape and farther from previously programed expectations. We were starting with the panoramic view of her studio in Monroe, Oregon. We stepped outside the realm of painting objects towards displaying our inner movements of our non-dominate hand.
I have painted in the company of Hoff-Rome many times but never fully trusted the importance of working with my non-dominate hand and surely I will now more easily recapture the flow I so often struggle to achieve.
I highly recommend Hoff-Rome's workshops.http://artistlife.com/ If you are open to new processes, the experience is rewarding. If you think you want to be more loose, you will learn if you really are comfortable with the intuitive flow.

Pictorial Accuracy, Biblical Verse, Darwin and the Cloud Cap on Mt. Hood

I observed Mount Hood early in the morning March 3, traveling north bound on Oregon Hwy 205. A cloud cap was on top. Excited I recorded a picture in my Mole Skin pocket book and wrote a few words of interpretation as a title - " a wave of frothy clouds breaking over Mt. Hood." After thinking about my experience, I wrote and listened to my thoughts as I read out loud with the hopes that I would be able to communicate my excitement as a simile:

Like sea foam, clouds churn over the crest of Mount Hood.



Although I am an artist, I will make some scientific observations about communicating feelings in my 2-d pictures as well as my word pictures.

Theory 1: People associate new stimuli with familiar stimuli of a different nature. For example I have been painting ocean waves last month so when I saw an unusual cloud formation over Mt. Hood, I saw the clouds on the mountain similar in shape to foam on waves peaking and beginning to break.
A good theory should be repeatable in other examples. Genesis paints a picture in words: To explain the energy and nature of creation to an agrarian people, God is likened to a human taking actions. A most awesome activity of man is making potery as potter god made a female companion from dirt and a rib of Adam. It is ludicrous to think that the early Israelites of Mose's time would be moved to feel they are a people and want to obey the law if their book began with creation explained by the details uncovered thousands of years later. The periodic table would be difficult for them to memorize and uplift their behavior.

Another example is Darwin who was untrained in science yet developed the theory of evolution and descent of species. His observation of nature was contradictory to his education as a clergyman with attention to the Bible. Being familiar with Genesis, Darwin saw the discrepancy between the verses of Genesis and the changes of size between fossils and living animals. Gregor Mendel and August Wesmann from the same period were genetics who did more accurate and scientifically correct work, however they are less well known because they didn't give the all encompassing ideas of evolution boldly explained. Darwin was an example of seeing the new stimuli that did not correlate with his familiar Bible.

Theory 2: Similes are not scientific law. A no brainer truth! Yet today many intelligent people believe Biblical verses are to be read literally as the word of God. Why, I ask, wouldn't God select poetic inspiration kindeling feelings of awe for nature, reveal a reflection of history to instruct and to promote the self -esteem of humans believing that they are made in the image of God. Self-esteem is necessary to raise the bar of their own expectations. Having high self opinion, people are made ready to accept and abide and teach laws to survive as a people. Why would God impart a scientific knowledge like periodic charts to a agricultural people? Instead I see the wisdom is taught through elements not the same as the wisdom but similar to what is known by the early Israelites. Like the Biblical verse pictures record a phenomena with elements that are different from what is being depicted. So in emotional contexts, poetic simile functions as a communication of emotion and never can be observed as scientific fact or law.

In Tango He Pauses, She Crosses

Sometimes a finished painting keeps saying to me, "I can be more. Come on don't be afraid. I am not all that perfect. The intention was to make the gardenia costumes. Look down on the feet . The feet tell the Tango story." So here is the painting I started as Gardenia Tango.

Visit to Bond Butte Pond

My husband and I drove to Halsey and then to Bond Butte Pond in view of the I5 Freeway. This is the first time we have visited the resting place of the small logs he cut from our neighbor's wood lot. We were happy to spot a couple of the logs submerged to give fish shelter. My husband is photographing the makeshift fishing platform.

A few branches of the log break through the surface. Below is the lake looking towards I5.

There were many birds including this black bird. Near Hway 99 we saw tundra swan, hawks and bald eagles. Around the lake was killdeer, black birds and geese.

Today was too cold to see the warm water fish in the pond but soon I want to return to the pond in warmer weather. Maybe some of our local artists will want to paint here with me.

Volunteer for ODFW - Bond Butte Pond fish habitat

"Mother Donates Fish Habitat Logs For Bond Butte Pond" might be the one I choose to be exhibited in an Oregon State University Art about Agriculture exhibit this May and June at the River Gallery in Independence, Oregon. The exhibit is called " This Everlasting Valley II: Willamette River Valley Farms from the Art About Agriculture Permanent Collection With Recent Works". The show is exciting me. I can show both the changes in the woodlot next to our home and the development of my painting process. The painting in the University's collection is "Mother Thinning Woodlot." "Mother Donates Fish Habitat" was begun looking out our garage back door but immediately I was challenged by the dry air of the furnace making it hard to move the paint around when it dried too fast. The feeling of outdoors was just inches away so I moved out into the freezing cold to paint the foggy setting for my memory of my husband volunteering to log neighbor Mother who donated the wood to Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for building fish habitat at Bond Butte Pond, a quarry dug out for the building the I5 freeway. I want to also paint the volunteers working at the pond.

Fresh after Rain Storm

"Fresh after Rain Storm" is acrylic on museum wrap canvas 16" square with painted sides 1 3/8" deep,can be hung with or without frame, for sale $150. Yesterday afternoon the sun came out after the rain then a blue bird sat in the walnut tree for a minute. I watched by a warm wood fire in the shop looking through the windows that I had just cleaned. In the evening the thermometer dipped almost to freezing, there were predictions of snow, and I took my paints to our warmer garage adjacent to the house. This morning there was a skiff of snow on the bare ground and some in the trees.
The snow melted before I finished writing my thoughts on boycotting on Rain's blog. http://rainydaythought.blogspot.com While writing, I had an epiphany. I am going to paint volunteers for government. There is so much anger in the world, I want to celebrate the good hearts and importance of volunteers. I will start painting my husband who has volunteered his whole adult life assisting the government. He volunteered for the Whatcom County Mountain Rescue in Washington State assisting the Sheriff department and boarder patrol for about ten years. Now that he is fully retired he is volunteering for Oregon Department for Fish and Wildlife.
In yesterday's post in regards to drying of paints in our shop, once a barn and very cold in Oregon, I am continuing to research different paints. I am waiting for answers to my questions from several other paint manufactures including Grumbacher and Stephen Quiller. The different manufactures have different paint properties. Grumbacher requires a varnish to make the paint have integrity. Quiller has acrylics with body similar to oils. I have always liked the intensity of Lascaux Aquacryl. A small amount of color goes a long ways. Liquitex Super Heavy Ivory Black is light for a black. Hair driers can be used to dry Liquitex but Golden paints can crack if exposed to strong air flow. Reading all the information on acrylic paints is a real eye opener for me. I'll be writing more about what I am learning.

Researching Acrylic Paints

I am learning about the differences between Golden Acrylics and Liquitex. There is no latex in Liquitex and only a small amount of amonia. Golden has other additives and also requires 40o F to dry. I am still working on finding out temperature requirements for Liquitex.

http://www.goldenpaints.com/technicaldata/drying.php

http://www.liquitex.com/resources/faq.cfm

View of Siletz Bay from Nature Walk at Salishan

"Nature Walk View at Salishan" is acrylic on cradled wood panel 12" square, with 45% edges so the picture can be hung in the corner of any room or appear to float an inch and a half in front of a flat wall. For Sale, $100.
My memory painted fresh of walking the Nature Trail at Salishan Resort gives me joy on a cold rainy day.

Painting Out of the Rain

"Painting After Rain", acrylic on stretched canvas, 16" square, For Sale $150 plus postage.

I am painting acrylic again today. Although it is pouring down rain the north east side of the shop doesn't get the rain. This was a favorite resting place for our sheep when we had them. Here I am between the rat poison and the lawn mower. Instead of starting a fire or turning on the electric space heater, I used a hair drier. The paint should be dry enough that I can go back and finish the painting. I love fit when the sun comes out after the rain as it is doing now.

Moving my acrylic painting studio

To help out my husband who is allergic to acrylic paint fumes, I have quit using Golden Acrylics in the house. Today my husband cleaned the shop and we moved a paint supply cabinet next to the wood stove. The problem my husband points out is that the paint will freeze.
Two solutions come to mind. Buy a space heater or move the paints into the garage every time freezing temperatures threaten. Here in Oregon we could have a freeze as late as May.
Tomorrow I am looking forward to painting on some new canvases.
Another problem is the shop is filled with a mower, hand tools, wood working, and metal working tools. There isn't any wall space. So while I will paint in the shop, I must store and look at my work elsewhere. The painting gallery will be in our motor home because my husband says the paintings are still wet and give off fumes long after they are dry to the touch.

APE at Albany Carrousel Workshop

Original one of a kind watercolor on hot press Arches paper , 4 1/4 x 10 1/2" folded like a card, For Sale, $12.00

Thursday The Albany Painting Enthusiasts painted at the Albany Carrousel Workshop. The wood carvers have been busy at work making fragile animals for a future carrousel in a new building that will be built on the workshop site. I sketched in an accordion folded watercolor paper.

What I learned from being commisioned to illustrate J.H. Sweet Foo and Friends books

My vision for illustrating Foo would have been somewhat better informed if I had actually seen this sculpture. This spirited ceramic garden sculpture was at the Classical Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon where I saw it for the first time yesterday. My own clay model didn't have cheeks, or the characteristic ceramic treatment of eyebrows and mane. Another problem with my Foo is that people in Albany, Oregon cannot tell my illustration is a dog let alone a ceramic one. To my knowledge Chinese brush paintings are of nature not of ceramic images of imaginary animals like their lion sculptures. And I agree that a traditional Chinese rendering is not suggestive of a modern neighborhood in America. A different medium like pastel would show the ceramic quality and be compatible with the location of the story.

When I started, I was elated at first. It was a thrill to have a chance to illustrate a children's book with the main character being the Lion-like dog guardian ceramic sculpture. I could make animated expression for a dog that comes to life at night when the people in the neighborhood are sleeping. The commission was also a great way to have a project with a cousin who I just met through the Internet. The books were free for downloading on the Internet with the promise that someday they would be published.

The first book was very exciting for me, but the second one was more complex and I was not as happy as JH Sweet seemed at first. Soon after the illustrated book appeared on her web site I was itching to rework it. JH Sweet didn't want me to work on it any more. furthermore and more importantly, I felt I was tweaking her story with my illustrations. The bronze gorilla character turned out to be more like a chain saw cedar carving. I began to be more and more bothered by problems with the targeted age for early chapter books. I was illustrating for a picture book level. It occurred to me that JH Sweet needed to own her own story by making the illustrations herself. She did to my delight. http://www.jhsweet.com/ Her WISHING WELL and GARAGE SALE are early reader chapter books with just enough visual imagery introduced at the right places in the chapters to spark the imagination of seven to ten year olds.

Valentine Gardenia Tango

11 1/2" x 8 1/2" mixed water media on paper, now framed and selected for my exhibit at Sam's Station in Corvallis, May, 2009. $290 each.

Three Wearing Allbany Water Department Hard Hats

Unknown to the water pipe layers today, their yellow rain gear caught my eye. Now I am trying to analize if there is any hidden meaning to three workers and a big screw. The painting is gouache on paper 12" x 9".

Painting Again

I am over joyed to share a change in our neighborhood. For 20 years, ever since the city took over our private road, we complained because the road needed resurfacing. We complained because of the constant mending of our water pipes were inadequate. Well, the economic stimulus plan must be the reason we are getting a good water pipe and a newly paved road.

Here is Tango Painting #1 completed today even though I feel very sick with the virus that is going around. The painting is gouache on watercolor paper. 12" x 9"