Ta Da!

You have no idea how long it took me to put this little guy together. Now multiply that times  five hundred and, well, it's just embarrassing. HOWEVER, I am happy to announce that greeting card packages featuring some of my favorite Washington, DC cityscapes are now available for sale at Periwinkle and other DC shops!

Art and Advertising

 J. Crew's September 2011 catalogue

Edgar Degas

Monday Match: Hurricane Edition

{Every week I post an image of an interior that reminds me of a work of art either in its palette, composition or mood.}

Anthropologie interior

Paul Cézanne: Still Life with a Ginger Jar and Eggplants

* Friends, I hope you are all safe and sound post-Irene. I couldn't sleep Saturday night. Instead, I spent the earliest morning hours watching the pea green leaves of the sassafras tree outside my bedroom window bending almost to the ground and whipping back up to a sky the color of the walls in this picture.

It's the Weekend!

Happy Weekend, Friends! I'm sorry that I was a bit MIA this week, but my New York sister surprised her two DC sisters with a visit! We spent one whole gray afternoon wandering through the tiny hidden neighborhood where we grew up.

It's a place where trees grow through porch roofs...

all gardens are English gardens...

houses have hand-painted signs...

rope swings hang in the middle of paths...

and every lot is overrun with flowers!

Now we are plotting how we will all move back and open art studios and cafes!

Monday Match: The Better Late Than Never Edition

{Every week I post an image of an interior that reminds me of a work of art either in its palette, composition or mood.}

Mattie and Den's New Mexican home via

"Miron" by Juan Usle

*P.S. -- You know how some parents push their teenagers into summer jobs involving exhausting physical labor and disproportionately small paychecks in order to encourage solid study habits? Well, I kind of wish someone had forced me to sit in an artist's studio at all hours of the night doing such mundane things as, oh, I don't know, let's say stamping gift tags and cutting ribbon. Please excuse my dropping of the MATCH ball yesterday. I've been silly busy packaging some new products. More to follow...

Happy Weekend!

image via

Happy Weekend, Friends! I am now booking my fall commissions (September through the end of December.) If you are interested in having a portrait, house portrait, cityscape, or other original commission painted as a gift for one of the winter holidays or special occasion, now is the time to contact  me. 

I'm spending this last official weekend of the summer with friends in the mountains. I hope that you have a fantastic adventure planned too! 

Art and Advertising

John Berger's little gem of a book, "Ways of Seeing," is crammed full of fascinating information on, well, ways of seeing. One of my favorite chapters in the book addresses the function and intent of publicity. One of his claims is that publicity relies on historical artistic references to sell products because 'it would lack credibility if it used a strictly contemporary language' (chapter 7, p. 139). So in honor of this idea, I will be posting an advertisement each week which appears to reference a particular work of art. 

Vera Wang by Serta

Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss"

Have you noticed any good ones? I'd love to see them! You can mention them in the comments section or send me an e-mail and I'll post one each week.

Monday Match

{Every week I post an image of an interior that reminds me of a work of art in either its palette, composition or mood.}

Suki Kwon's apartment via Apartment Therapy

'Olivia' by Ann Marshall

Hello, Friends! I'm home now and feeling the scattered post-vacation buzz that always accompanies getting back to real life. Both of these images echo the same vibe. Now off to empty the suitcases and jump back into the studio!

Happy Weekend?

Friends, my vacation has finally come due! Ten days to soak up the last of the summer heat! Never fear though, I'm bringing along my sketchbook and some watercolors so that I can share my view with you afterwards. Happy Early Weekend, Everyone!

When Is "Real" Authentic?

OK, I admit it. If I wasn't painfully aware of just how tacky fake flowers and fruit were, I would buy arm loads from every Michael's and Pottery Barn I happened past. The bottom line though is that they are just things trying to be other things, and posers are never cool. It is possible though to pay homage to some particular thing in a reproduction by making certain changes.

A Functional Change:

These ceramic plates elevate a common object by borrowing the aesthetic of another common object.

A Conceptual Change:

Elaine Tin Nyo's 

Tete de Moine Cake addresses issues

 of "liability, replication and the integrity of an artist’s work." The work was displayed but not available for consumption in a

 six month installation at the Phillips Collection. 

The Change of Scale:

Claes Oldenburg's 

Spoonbridge and Cherry is a classic example of how altering the size and context of an object creates an entirely new thing.

Real things are authentic by virtue of being themselves. Reproductions are just copies unless they involve a change of function, concept or context.