What's on the Easel?

My husband and I took a trip over the weekend to Lynchburg and Staunton, Virginia, to look at some wonderful art and attend a panel discussion about the painter Philip Geiger, who just died on January 6, 2026, much too young, of ALS. I have followed and loved the work of Philip Geiger for decades. If you don't know his work, look him up. You're in for a treat.  Since I've been back I've gotten busy with framing some paintings that are going into the Art at the Mill show (more on that in a later post.) While downstairs in my framing room, I noticed, in a stack of paintings against the wall, my "B" painting. I've been working on my alphabet series, "Still Life A-Z" for over 20 years, on and off. (As you know, I'm now up to "N".) "B" was actually the first painting I completed for this series. I started with "A", of course, but somehow it wasn't coming together, and I was fighting it so much that I put it aside ...

Today I worked for about 1 1/2 hours. I felt kind of foggy, so I had lunch, then went for a walk. My 45-minute walk cleared my head, so afterwards I went back to my painting. I think I worked about another hour and a half. I realized that my drawing was a little off, so I moved things around. I had put the flowers in first and then had to paint the background around them, not easy when the paint is wet! I used a lot of paint and pushed it sloppily around. This painting is feeling freer than usual. I ran out of steam before I ran out of blank canvas, so I stopped before everything was covered. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to put the rest in. Click the picture for a larger view

I finally really zeroed in and concentrated on my "N" setup. I was kind of dissatisfied with it, so I dismantled what I had and completely redid it. Then I rearranged it again. And again. I decided to lose the Nesting Ninjas. I also took the Nutmeg out and added Nerve Plant and a Nutcracker (even their shadows will be important.) Also a color picture of a Nimbus cloud on the wall. I took all three Nancy Drew novels that I got at the Goodwill and stacked them up. I took pictures of each new arrangement. I was getting feedback from my daughter, husband, and painting friend, but finally I just decided that "composing by committee" wasn't going to work for me, and I said "Good enough!" and starting getting the drawing committed to the canvas. First I gridded out my blank canvas into quarters, and quarters again. I have this nifty viewfinder that I recently made, so I looked through it to make sure my painting included all the objects with their correct dis...