GARDEN PARTY CELEBRATION

Loring Park was a fantastic art festival for me. I suspected it would be, as I have sold so many art pieces to visiting Minnesotans in my home state of Florida. I love the warm sweetness of the Midwesterners. There’s something about them that really resonates with me. 

It was at this festival that I met a wonderful couple who were visiting from North Dakota. My work touched them very much and it was a joy to see them walk from piece to piece saying lovely things. They thought about buying one of my paintings that I had on display but when I mentioned that, should it not be the right size, a commission was another option. They immediately latched onto that idea, grabbed my business card, and asked me to make a reproduction of it, but on a grand scale.  That is how Garden Party Celebration was born.

Prior to beginning, the clients sent me photographs of their space which was full of delightful color, and I was in heaven. I was traveling when I started it so its inception began in a hotel room that I set up as a temporary studio.

After the devastation of hurricane in this was the first piece that I went to, to get my hand back in to the habit of painting. This wasn’t an easy task. I was truly shook by the experience of that storm, even though my house did not retain any serious damage. Exhausted from months on the road,  the devastation of my long-loved area of Florida, and the great loss so many friends are facing, shook me to my core. Such a happy painting was exactly the antidote I needed to begin working again. 

Doing a painting, like this, using all of the crayons in the box, so to speak, is an absolute delight. With music, playing loud and dancing about in between art strokes, painting just doesn’t get any better than this. It’s my hope that everyone who views it experiences the same joy that I had in creating it.