I am tickled to announce that "Playing With Black and White" (20x16 oil on panel) was selected as a semi-finalist in this year's Art Renewal Center (ARC) Salon.  This international competition draws thousands of entries from across the world in a number of categories.  My painting is a semi-finalist in the still life division.  This is the first step in the competition.  On December 9th the finalists will be announced and then in January the award winners will be announced.  I have been a finalist every time I have entered and hopefully that will be the case again this year.  Wish me luck!

Introducing "Starry Starry Night" (18x24 oil on panel), my latest painting.  This painting is certainly a change from my normal subject.  A change that I thoroughly enjoyed indulging in.  The stars of this painting are three ceramic medicine horses by a local artist in the Phoenix area, Susan M. Harvey.  I bought them when I first moved to Scottsdale.  I just love them.  I am actually surprised I stopped at three.  They caught my eye on the coffee table when I was thinking about what to paint next.  As you know my last few paintings included the little fairy lights.  I decided to play with an idea using both the horses and the lights.  First task though was to get permission from Susan.  Her horses are copyrighted of course and since my painting would be for sale I would need permission.  Lucky for me Susan was more than happy to have her horses show up in my painting.   I usually have a title as I am setting up a painting.....but the title for this one came as I was painting.  I wanted it to be a night scene and as I painted I soon found myself saying starry starry night....and the title came to life!