I’m thrilled to have been selected for a residency with the Arctic Circle program, which takes place on a wooden tall ship sailing out of Svalbard. This two-week residency in May of 2025 gives me a chance to expand on my current painting focus of transitional areas of landscapes where different elements intersect (water’s edge, rivers, mountains, walkways, bridges, roads), incorporating the vocabulary of the Arctic.
 
Sketching in the Arctic Circle will be challenging! I’m excited to share my preparations (adding vodka to my waterbrush? crocheting mittens from Newfoundland wool?) in upcoming newsletters and probably here, too.
 
You can help me prepare for the residency by buying some of my work. At the studio sale, I’ll be selling older work including oil on canvas, framed pieces and small watercolors, in addition to prints and zines.
 
Hope you’ll stop by!
 
Studio Sale
Saturday, November 2
12:00 to 4:00 pm
Memphis, TN
Click here for address
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I don't want to jinx it, but I've been drawing in my sketchbook every day since starting this one on March 26.

Daily drawing or doing a daily "thing" isn't necessary for me - I have a regular practice of making things, but trying to do it daily is (usually) too much pressure. 

But I like it when my sketchbook feels like it's my best friend and I tell it a little about my day.

Sketching imagery from our trip to Newfoundland has taken me in an unexpected direction. I'm working in an 8 x 10 Stillman and Birn Alpha sketchbook and just going through my sketchbooks and pictures from the trip and filling pages with images.

I expected to continue this and start to notice compositions making their way into my sketches. 

What I didn't expect was to need to make things other than a composition for a painting - one day in the studio I found myself drawing this house and then cutting it out so that it stands on its own.

Then I started to look at other shapes from my sketchbook - shapes that were a part of every day when we were in Newfoundland (see my previous post on shapes) - and to play around with those.

I ended up with a new shape that still gives me the feeling of the shape it was derived from. I'm now working on making this into something more - stay tuned for updates!

The evolution of these shapes reminds me what is so great about having a regular art practice. Most of this was just fooling around until something sparked my curiosity and I thought, what if I did this or made it into that? That's how this process works - you just keep working (fooling around) until you get something that you need to do more of.

I could draw this shape with my eyes closed. It's often what I see when I close my eyes because when we were in St. John's, Newfoundland, this was the view from the bedroom. I would wake up and make out the shape of the hill in the dark. Every morning I would see the sun coming up over it. I snapped a lot of pictures of it, even when half asleep.

I finally sat down and sketched something from St. John's again - this hill, this shape, of course. I did some sketches when we first got back but have had trouble getting back to it because it was making me sad! I did not anticipate the intense sadness I would feel from missing being there so much. I felt like a teenager who had broken up with a boyfriend then regretted it and stalked his instagram. 

There is a live feed of St. John's Harbor on YouTube. I visit it a lot. I can see that hill, though at a different angle than from the bed. But I like to see how it's doing, if the water is rough, what the weather is like. 

On our last full day there, I sketched the hill and other important shapes - the little yard that dropped off to the water, and the view from over the kitchen sink of the hill behind our house. So many good shapes.

I sketched so much in Newfoundland and wanted to keep up the intensity when I got back, but the reality of, well, reality, is that sketching isn't as front of mind as it is when I'm traveling. But I did manage a few fun sketches my first week back.

This was a fun one - sketched at Cooper Young Festival while listening to a band. I've always wanted to sketch this house, and this was the perfect opportunity.

So I kind of surprised myself when, instead of easing into it by sketching coffee cups or everyday items around the house, I went ahead and sketched the big hill that loomed over us across the body of water outside of our house.

When I went to New Zealand earlier this year (I know – isn’t it funny that we went to New Zealand and Newfoundland in the same year?), I had this one big grounding experience that helped me know what to do with myself while I was there. I still made crappy sketches, but that’s all part of the process.

Lately I've been thinking about how my work consists of sketching on location and experiencing places through sketching and through various actions - like walking or swimming - and then my oil paintings come from a combination of the sketches and the experiences. When I paint, I think about how well I can get to know a place through these actions – how it feels, the energy of the place, the sounds, sights, smells, solidity or airiness, wind, rain, cold and heat - and the sketches contribute to getting to know the shapes and lines that go with it. So, the point is to connect with a place briefly, so that what I paint comes out abstracted or flattened or with unlikely colors or patterns, but the feeling of the place is there.​

We took a boat tour in Auckland - a whale and dolphin safari. We saw neither whales nor dolphins, but I was perfectly happy sketching all of the little islands we passed by. I just used pencil because we were sitting on the front of the boat, and I didn't want to risk losing any sketching supplies to the bumpy ride. Keeping it simple seemed like a safe bet.

On our last full day in Auckland, we rode the bus around town to six different places that sell meat pies and I sketched every one of them, but I didn't taste all of the pies. The Mill Bakehouse and Ripe Deli were my favorites. We ended at a restaurant called Toby's, which seemed appropriate. I kept it simple here with just two Pilot Parallel pens.

After we came back, my sketching felt refreshed. Here are some from April and May, right after we returned from the Symposium. I feel like the Symposium really helped me to find my sketching sweet spot again, as did the trip we took to Newfoundland, which I'll tell you about next time!

I'm testing posting from my phone - again. This software is glitchy but I check back every so often just in case.

If it works, you'll see this sketch that I made in Mobile, Newfoundland (get it - mobile!), as a preview for upcoming posts about my trip to Newfoundland. I'll keep posting spring and summer highlights until next week, when I can start reflecting on this trip.

Fingers crossed this works!

(ETA - It only kind of worked. I'm sticking with the full online Square/Weebly blog editor.)

I went to the art museum in Auckland, and it was so nice to look at art and draw it and to think about art and to not think about it and just breeze by or say nope or to GASP with surprise and delight when I walked in a gallery and saw something unexpected.
I did this sketch on the terrace with a Pilot Parallel pen and a pencil for the background - I love how cartoonish these sculptures look in my sketch. They were pretty cartoonish in person, too. And after the Symposium, it was nice to have this time to put thought into a sketch and a little more oomph, incorporating some of what I had learned. 

I walked around at my own pace and ate two small lunches! 

I sketched at Albert Park again, trying a new thing where I sketched the same scene twice. I did the thumbnails in the smaller sketchbook, then did a big sketch (top), then went back into the smaller book (8.5" x 5.5") and did a really quick sketch of the same subject. An unscientific poll of some of my Instagram friends preferred the second one - I'm not surprised! When you draw or paint a thing twice, you get the awkwardness out in the first one.