Meet Beulah, a big, comfy cow resting in a sunny patch on a green Southern hill… 18×24′ Pastel on Pastelbord
Beulah, 18×24 pastel
Over years of creating art, I have noticed cycles of creativity. Every winter, I get a touch of those dreaded “winter blues.” Art to the rescue! Tired of the same old, same old, I try something new. This year, I’ve been very much inspired by the 1940s and 50s, draw to images from that era.
If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you’ve seen most of this new art. But it’s past time for the website debut!
Airstream sketch
While my husband drives, I take pictures of the sky, the fields, the cities, old buses…whatever strikes my fancy. My phone is always clogged with potential art subjects. My art journey into the “Retro South” started with a quick snap of my phone camera on a trip through Alabama, when I captured a shiny RV and bright blue skies. I loved the angle, the iconic Southern image it presented.
I turned it into an Airstream, and voila! It was the first in a new journey of Southern art.
Airstream, 12×15 pastel
Sloss Furnace Sketch
Next, I moved on to another picture I took from the car window, as we drove through downtown Birmingham. Sloss Furnace is a huge and historic part of my city’s skyline and heritage, and I love it’s rust and age. The significance of Sloss Furnaces is stated best on it’s website:
Sloss Furnaces produced iron for nearly 90 years, which gave rise to the city of Birmingham, AL. Now recognized as a National Historic Landmark, Sloss Furnaces with its web of pipes and tall smokestacks offers us a glimpse into the great industrial past of the South and our nation.
Sloss Furnace, 12×14 pastel
Continuing to tell the story of my place, I painted another historic Birmingham, Alabama landmark: The Alabama Theatre. This beautiful building opened in 1927, and I love to go watch old movies there with popcorn and cherry coke. Check out my earlier post about the Alabama Theatre to see some photos of the gorgeous interior.
Alabama Theatre, 7×12 pastel
Other pictures are coming, and some have already been shown, such as my new “Old Rusty Train.” I have lots of plans for more art, so stay tuned!
For the month of January, my fabulous art group The Eclectic Art Social Club had a group show at Rojo in Birmingham. Here is a quick photo recap from our show!
Be sure to pop by and “like” our group Facebook Page “Eclectic Art Social Club“!
First Snowflakes
At school, I watched intently out my office window, watching the ground, watching the weather reports, watching for school closings. As the ground grew white, I grew nervous. A test drive around the lot and my fears were confirmed. There was snow and ice on the ground, and I had a school full of preschoolers and teachers.
I gave up on the school systems and called it: “Come get your preschoolers!!”
An hour later, 35 of the 70 preschoolers were still sitting, eating, playing and waiting with many teachers, with a few snowbound parents and even some wandering, freezing high school students.
Outside the ground was white, the sky was white, the cars and roofs and bushes were white. The trees stood in dark contrast to the landscape: a world of black and white.
But inside, a study in contrast where lights warmed and hot drinks and food nourished the bodies and spirits of the stranded, my decisions were anything but black and white. Outcomes changing by the minute, as more snow smothered our chances of progress, I scurried back and forth communicating and arranging what had turned into a strange sort of rescue.
Stranded, ink sketch
After parents had tramped and slipped for miles through the snowy hills of Mountain Brook to their happy, carefree children; after answering calls from parents whose cars were in ditches and ten car sliding pile-ups; when only a few were left, I traipsed across a flawlessly blanketed courtyard, breathing in the icy air and looking for the next step as my soft footsteps marked my path. Behind me lay decisions and carefully placed prints; ahead lay the next phase of this snowy adventure.
Hours have passed and evening approaches. A few remain, but most are home…one way or another. I’d long ago given up any expectation of going home. Here till the end like a captain and her ship. With a few preschoolers remaining, we buddy up and find refuge for the night.
Bundled and loaded, we embark on a snowy trek: a teacher, two three year olds, two toddlers, a young neighbor and myself. We walk uphill, around a curve, up another hill, down and up and around again. The snow crunches, the air like ice, the world shrouded in a silent muffle of white. With two deposited at their temporary home, and carrying the three year old (whose first language is Chinese), we walk and huff and puff till the end. Four weary, frozen travelers finally enter a warmer world: a glowing room, crackling fire, flowing drinks, warming meal, smiling welcome. A refuge of Southern hospitality.
After nourishment and recuperation, a long night commences… sleeping in clothes and comforting weepy, home-sick children. My baby in my bed, refusing to remain in the loaned crib, she rotates all night with glow-in-the-dark passy, feet in my face and little hands smelling of cake. Reminded of days having an infant, I hummed and sang and deliriously whispered to her of puppies and kitties and cupcakes and flowers to keep her from again waking our little friend on his pallet.
Little Sidekick, ink sketch
Deep freezing temperatures give way to hot coffee and a kind breakfast, day old clothes and friendly conversation, frozen plans but warm hearts. Seeing the news that so many spent the long, cold night in cars or walking down iced interstates makes us even more grateful for our situation, and also questioning when we could make it home.
Snow, ink sketch
After a wintery walk back to the preschool to restock supplies (diapers are a must!), a sudden chance arrives…a window of opportunity to attempt the journey home. Again, we are rescued by the kindness of others, as a Tahoe-driving preschool dad comes to our aid. We begin the detouring, slow-sliding, wreck-passing, sidewalk-driving, careful-navigating, backtracking, long drive to Homewood.
We pass a tangle of chaos: cars upended, cars in rivers, garbage trucks and mail trucks abandoned, car pile ups blocking entire roads. People walking everywhere, people helping everywhere, people hosting in homes, pushing stalled cars, offering rides, sharing advice, giving encouragement.
Through one last snarled junction, I see my snow-covered home and my sweet little preschooler’s worried father. Relief, appreciation, joy…hard to describe the emotions that filled my soul.
At the end of this adventure, as I sit by my fire in my chair in my home, a simple thought covers my mind:
No Place Like Home
Special thanks to my amazing staff of preschool teachers for keeping the kids warm, happy and safe; to Bonnie Hartley, for creating a food and drink-filled refuge in the fellowship hall; to Nikki Still & Celeste Henderson who stayed till the end; to the Alex who pushed the double stroller of babies up snowy hills and took in two children; to Alex, Linda and Scott Kingsford for opening their home to “preschool refugees” and sharing their food, love and resources; to my little three-year-old sidekick for the night, for his calm and cheerful disposition and trust in me; to his parents, again for trusting me to care for their baby; to Scott Miklic for driving us home when the outcome was only a chance; to my husband and daughter for walking through the snow (twice!) while they were sick with the flu, to pick up our son and our neighbor; to my Dad for helping us get our car back days later; to Heather and Barry Brown for sheltering and comforting other stranded preschool families, that they had never met, for the night and the day; to the drivers who picked up walking parents and helped them get to their children; to teachers who slept at schools and kept children safe; to good, kind people everywhere who made an unbearable and dangerous situation for so many Southerners an experience of the greatest humanity and love.
Southern hospitality at its finest.
Intermission over, the curtains raise. The mother enters.
Another night passes and we find the mother once again fixing breakfast in the kitchen. Boosted by the happy ending of her suspendered adventure of the previous day, her outlook is bright.
The work day commences and comes to a well-ordered end in time to make an early carpool arrival – ensuring a timely appearance for her daughter’s second piano lesson. In line for half an hour, with snacks prepared and resting thoughtfulness underway, she sketches and thinks and waits.
Rear View Mirror Doodle, ink on napkin
Ah, the cars crank and brake lights glow. Ready for the slow crawl around the corner towards the school, she turns the key. Tick tick tick – nothing.
tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick – nothing.
It’s too much. It’s the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
With wide, glazing eyes she waves the moving carpool line around her unmoving car. She calls her husband and her mother and her stamina fails.
She cries.
She sits in carpool line and cries. Pitiful.
Knowing the eagerly awaited piano lesson will be missed, she sits deflated and calls the instructor. But wait! Cancellations have been made and another lesson time is available whenever the mother can get there! Saved from the tears of her daughter on top of her own, another surprise approaches.
A kind stranger, circling back, pulls in front and signals for the mother to pop the hood. With jumper cables and an understanding smile, with his bouncing daughter watching from the back seat, he starts her car! Again, the mother cries, but this time overwhelmed by the kindness of others.
The day is saved and the mother carries on.
Night falls and the tired mother sinks into the couch, a glass of wine and a heated blanket. Surely, surely, that’s enough fun for one week. With an inner pep-talk, she tells herself that tomorrow is Friday…just plain Friday. Work and done.
With little sympathy where there should be more, the groggy mother impatiently fusses at father for not taking his medicine. Upon further discussion over medicinal locations, and the lack of discovery, she exclaims in short-tempered exasperation “You’re a MAN!!!” and stomps to the shower. Poor father, getting the brunt of a bad week at 6:00am.
With a haggard disposition and weary eyes, she puts her head down and pushes through the day. A pendulum of kindness and frustration, she tries to regain her balance and clarity. She takes father to the doctor, with three silly kids bobbing and chattering behind her.
Lysol
The diagnosis seems a cruel joke: severe flu and bronchitis.
Father is settled onto the couch, as quarantined as one can get in a small home of five people. The mother takes a deep, careful breath and puts on another metaphorical hat, dosing medication and spraying lots of Lysol. A spaghetti dinner and chicken noodle soup are readily provided by friends, and the mother continues to scurry back and forth around the house, tidying and germ-killing and care-taking.
Sitting at her desk in the quiet of an afternoon family rest, the mother reflects upon the strange, yet ordinary stories of a long, long week. There always seems to be a snag, a hole, a bump, a crash that must be navigated. She knows you can’t change it, you just have to take what comes and find some humor in each adventure. It helps her carry on and find a warm spot to rest at the end of the day.
Curtain closes.
“Maybe we do the right things, maybe we do the wrong, spending each day, wending our way along. But when we want to sing, we sing. When we want to dance, we dance. You can do your betting, we’re getting some fun out of life.” -Some Fun Out of Life, Madeleine Peyroux
Tired Artist with Tiara, charcoal sketch
Check out the previous installments:
One household, five members full
In fair Homewood, where we lay our scene
From busy morns break new delays
Where civil snags make civil mouths unclean
From forth the tragic flaws of these few days
A mother of three children takes the stage
The curtains raise, the mother enters
Rising early, she has the morning routine skillfully arranged to ready her family for a day of work and school. With father at work and car in the shop, her mother’s car sits in the cold, frost-tipped morning waiting to be warmed.
Children bundled and lunches packed, they prepare to load and buckle and drive.
With fogging breath, the mother discovers that the car seats and stroller have been mistakenly driven away to an early morning meeting. A few icy breaths worth of thoughts and the choice is clear. The cold walk to school, baby carried close, must begin.
Undeterred by this small flaw in an otherwise clockwork morning, she ignores it as a bad omen of things to come. Chattering away about the luck of living near school and the brisk, bracing exercise, she encourages her chilly people all the way to the school doors. With kisses for their cold noses, she sends them in and trudges back home to wait for the returned carseat.
Through the day and a night and into the morning, we find the young mother pulling on striped pants and red suspenders. Circus Day has come again.
Let the audience remember that dreaded day past, when a costumed carload careened down the icy slopes of suburbia. When the mother, in the same red suspenders, clung tightly to the wheel as her children squealed and the tires slid on the incapacitating and unexpected Alabama snow.
With these memories in the forefront of her mind, and dismissing any fear of repetition, she observes her appearance in the bedroom mirror. Quite pleased with the ability to wear such garb in public – for Preschool Circus Day explains anything – she grabs her mug of coffee and wrenches open what frozen car doors she can, loading the children and heading to school.
Circus Day brings costumes and popcorn, cotton candy and laughter for hours at her little school, full of happy children. No snow, no ice.
Flat Tire View
At the end of the day, with lights off and doors locked, she installs her tu-tued baby in the car and pulls out of the lot. She notices the car jiggle a bit. Hmmm…. Continuing on, the jiggle worsens to a wobble. On a beautiful, scenic, sloping curve, the mother pulls off to assess the predicament.
Standing in the cold, in red shoes and red suspenders, she discovers a very flat tire. Finding refuge from the chill, she climbs back in the car, makes necessary rescue calls. She laughs, the baby plays, and they wait.
and wait. and wait. and wait.
Once the other children have been fetched from school, father arrives in answer to the distress call. As with most repairs, the tire changing encounters several troubles and delays. In one harrowing instance, the car rolls forward off the jack towards the sloping hillside, mother and baby still inside. With baby removed, the now-frozen clown-clad mother and helpful father continue to try and change the tire. In the background, one hears the older children arguing and the baby wreaking havoc in the car behind.
Spare tire on, car lowered, the mother sees that it too is half flat. With red suspenders, crossed fingers and slow driving, she makes it to the tire store. With children and father back home, the mother walks confidently into the store and explains the situation. In questionable attire and with her mother’s car, she is perhaps mistaken for a younger person rather than a weary adult, and the owner takes pity. Waiting in clown clothes, drawing a few looks, the mother is surprised to hear the owner say the tire is repaired “at no charge.”
Red Shoes & Linoleum, marker & colored pencil
The happy clown mother bounces into her mother’s car and home, just in the nick of time for her next adventure.
Curtains fall. Intermission begins.
The Red Suspenders, ink & colored pencil
Such is Life, Act 4: “An Ordinary Tragedy” part 2 to come…
Check out the previous installments:
Always moving, never resting, the time had come to stop. No phone, no work, no have-tos. I pulled the emergency brake on my full, ever-pursuing busy life.
As I approached my front door and weekend respite, I felt the embrace of a self-chosen hibernation. Once the door closed behind me, nothing or anything lay ahead. Quiet, rest, refueling was expected.
More like a shaking, grinding, shuddering, momentum-stopping standstill.
Welcome to my Saturday morning: the aftermath of a much-needed break from everything.
I slept…I puttered…I slept…I puttered…I ate at my parents, then returned to climb in bed at 7:30pm. My head hurt all day, like being purged from the addiction of busyness.
Come Sunday, I felt clear. I felt calm, rested, connected in a real ways. Detoxified of stress, anxiety, pressure, burdens, I began to recover and reemerge with a more restful, more mindful perspective. A greater goodness crept into my tired should. My thoughts settled on family; I said “yes” more to my children. Half-formed thoughts stirred and stirred.
I followed the free string of my thoughts, now cleansed of distractions, and found myself thinking of our stories. My heritage, how I came to be here through my family. We seem to listen so late, wait so long before grasping the value in the stories of family. I decided it is time to listen more intently, to learn the stories in the lives of others. To understand the paths of my family that kept converging until mine began 32 years ago.
Like a magpie, I’ve collected treasures: symbols of the past, bits of history, connections to another time and place. I looked at a few of my favorite things and ended my weekend journey with a crock pot of taco soup and a dinner visit to my grandparents, where my children played dominoes with my Paw Paw and my baby sang “Wheels on the Bus” with my grandmother. It was a night that unexpectedly glowed. A moment that would not exist if I hadn’t stopped and listened.
I found a different peacefulness from pulling the brake. It equipped me with a new grounding that helped me survive the tangled week to come…
At night, especially on these clear, cold January twilights, I hear a distant train whistle blow. Signaling approach, calling goodbyes, reminding us to pay attention. The train pushes on, going places in the darkness with light bright and pace steady, knowing when to stop, when to refuel and when to commence another journey.
Old Rusty Train, 8×10 pastel
On Christmas morning, the family is gathered round the tree, sharing thoughtful gifts and making memories. We’re all there, my mom and dad, my three kids and husband, my sister, brother-in-law, my little niece and nephew. We’ve spent time and effort choosing meaningful gifts to share and enjoy.
Some of us may or may not be wearing some wonderfully horrible pajama shirts from the 80s, recently recovered from the attic. Some of us may or may not be wearing spectacularly tacky (and award-winning, I might add) Christmas sweaters. Some of us may or may not have received man-sized superman jammies, and home-made ties.
Yes, we are very silly. We had a jolly good time. Merry Christmas!
This year we introduced “Granny gifts.” You see, my Granny – whom I reference quiet often as passing down art and so much goodness into my life – she gave some terrible gifts. I mean it. One year, “the year of the beret,” she gave almost every girl a red fleece beret. It was a little weird (somehow I was overlooked..whew!). In her memory, we decided we would sneak in a Granny gift here and there, and you never know when it’s coming.
My sister is opening a small watercolor of her son on his tricycle. “Awwwww…” Then she opens a watercolor of her beloved Golden Retriever. “Ohhhh…Eloise!!!” Then a sketch of her baby girl. “Ooooohh, so cute!!!”
Then BAM. The Granny gift. A large, obviously framed, picture-sized gift awaits unwrapping. I can hardly contain myself. Snickering and rocking back and forth in my Christmas sweater, I watch her warily tear the paper.
It’s an ink and colored pencil portrait of my sister and Tom Jones – that’s right – riding a unicorn with a backdrop of rainbows. Boom.
Full Color
I’m sure you have your share of inside jokes, and I’m sure my Facebook have been unable to avoid my sister and my “obsession” with harassing each other with Tom Jones. It all goes back to her move to Savannah, when she met her neighbor, the non-singer Tom Jones.
Upon hearing the name, I belt out in “She’s a Lady” and “What’s New Pussycat,” to her confusion and horror. She had never. heard. of. Tom. Jones. Flabbergasted, we first call mother and let her sing a few tunes, proving I am not the only weirdo around.
Then we proceed to google Tom Jones.
OMG.
The wealth of questionable pictures readily available on the web sparked a flood of fun. We text and post and share awkward Tom Jones photos with our own captions like there’s no tomorrow. You should try it, it’s fun. And if you’re looking for a treat for the eyes and the ears, just take a peek at this video (give it a minute, you won’t be sorry):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UxU8s7Au0A
Anyway, back to my story. I mean, how could I not create and give her such a treasure?! Oh, Tommy, what fun and joy you bring to our little lives.
After a few weeks of intense commission completion, making sure the fur moved correctly and the eyes sparkled appropriately, I was ready for a few doodles.
The first doodle to share with you is a 5×7 watercolor of Jerusalem, a gift from my family to some friends who travelled with my husband to Israel last Spring:
Jerusalem, 5×7 watercolor commission
My sister was the Christmas recipient of several watercolor and ink doodles to adorn her new built-in bookshelves. When I say “doodle,” I mean I didn’t take time to sketch first, or stick strictly to detail. I give myself more freedom and relaxation as I doodle away with a brush or pen!
Oh, but there is one more special treasure coming…stay tuned for the grand finale of doodles…
While I’m parading pet portraits, here’s one more I did as a Christmas commission. In this pastel, I put two friends together from separate photos, two beloved pets who passed away recently. I was touched to hear on Christmas day that the gift was treasured, thoughtfully given and happily received!
I'm a self-taught pastel & watercolor artist and instructor, raised and based in Birmingham, Alabama. I constantly collect stories and pieces of the world around me, turning them into works of art. Inspired by nature, I love to share what I've learned and build connections and community. I invite you to browse and join my site. I hope you find something that inspires you!
Voted one of Birmingham's Best Local Artists 2013, Birmingham News & al.com
Featured in Birmingham Magazine, March 2018
Visit the Commissions page on the top menu to find out more about my pastel & watercolor portraits. Portraits are drawn from photographs in a timely manner with the highest quality materials to ensure they will be enjoyed for generations!
Thanks for visiting my site! I am an awarded pastel artist and instructor based in Birmingham, Alabama. A self-taught artist, I have been working with pastels for over 6 years, selling in shops, galleries, shows and by commission. I teach pastel workshops for adults, and love to help emerging artists on their journey into the art community.
