Marin County

Open Studios!

| Susan

About six months ago, I moved into a fantastic art studio in Sausalito’s ICB building which houses over 100 artists. I LOVE going to the space to create new work and just mess around. It’s been an incredible experience being around so many wonderful creators!

Next weekend, December 6-8, I’ll be showing my work during the biggest event of the year, Winter Open Studios. I haven’t done anything like this for about six years and at that time, I didn’t have to curate and hang it all myself. As one of the other artists confirmed, “It’s a steep learning curve!”

In case you’re unable to attend (I’m thinking of you, Prem and Mary) I am posting most of them here. Many are for sale or available as prints. Please send me a message if you’re interested in anything; I don’t have an e-commerce site anywhere (yet?) so am doing everything old-school.

I hope you enjoy them!

Without further ado, here they are:

Color in the hills

| Susan

Our wet Winter brought brilliant wildflowers to California in the Spring and I was delighted. While on my walks, I photographed the variety of colorful blooms and then went to the studio to paint.

Flower painting in my studio
Sizes ratios are not consistent here
Sometimes it’s hard to identify the species, even with the Seek app.

Spotlight on Pride of Madiera

Pride of Madiera is an invasive species that thrives in NorCal coastal areas. The blossoms on this bush start as cone-headed shoots, which grow into a plethora of tiny purplish blue flowers, some with fuchsia hairs . The bushes can grow to be 20 feet tall.

This year, I pulled off one of the little buds to find that it was its own gem: an incredible curl of plant with tiny periwinkle colored flowers along with that fuchsia hair and buds. I was mesmerized and drew numerous studies of the flowers.

Pride of Madiera from a variety of distances and angles

Here are some photos of Pride of Madiera in action

Incredible, right?
Some of the blossoms are pink, some are more on the white side
Hillside surrounding the Robin Williams tunnel entry going into Marin County from the Golden Gate Bridge