PAINTINGS
Click a painting to see the story behind it. And feel free to Contact me if you are interested in purchasing an available original painting or discussing a commissioned work. Prints of many of these paintings are available on my Zazzle store.
“Creation is an ongoing process. The Artist has not yet cleaned out the brushes. The paint is still wet. Human beings are the small clumps of clay and breath, and we have been handed brushes of our own, like young artist apprentices. The brushes aren’t ours, nor the paint or canvas, but here they are in our hands, on loan. ... What shall we make?”
Oil on Canvas - 2010 - (available - $650 USD) - 46cm x 61cm
For centuries, Morocco has been known for its quality tanned leather. This composition particularly grabbed my attention for the stark difference between the white and brown vats, divided diagonally, with the tannery worker contrasted above the lighter vats. It was a challenge to capture both ancient dry masonry textures and slippery wet hides. The painting is varnished and unframed.
oil on canvas - 2010 - stolen in 2012, Marina Smir, Morocco (please contact me if you have any information)
oil on canvas - 2012 - 50cm x 50cm (19 ¾” x 19 ¾”) - (available)
oil on canvas - 2012 - 50cm x 50cm (19 ¾” x 19 ¾”) - (available $800 USD).
He was sitting on the same bench as “Record Keeper” … like good and bad consciences on a cartoon shoulder. He had to be Law Keeper as the most solid of all the Keepers of Chaouen who sit around the edges of Uta Hammam Square. A veritable human representation of the scales of justice with the confident reliability of one who watches over the Blue City.
Varnished and framed in black wood
oil on canvas - 2012 - 50cm x 50cm (19 ¾” x 19 ¾”) - (available $800 USD)
They say that Love keeps no record of wrongs, but this guy seems to watch over Uta Hammam square with a laundry list of mis-steps and sins. Sitting on the same bench as “Law Keeper” like a cartoon bad conscience, Record Keeper is visibly poisoned by the grudges and unforgiveness in his keeping.
Varnished and framed in black wood, as the rest of the works in the series.
oil on canvas - 2012 - 50cm x 50cm (19 ¾” x 19 ¾”) - (available)
Oil on canvas - 2000 - 20in x 30in (commissioned, private collection)
I grew to love and respect this man as I worked on this portrait after also doing a drawing of him, commissioned by his sons. He was a woodworker and Sunday School teacher respected by many and clearly loved by his family. It was my second oil portrait project and I was captivated by the process of capturing the likeness and spirit of a person … like trying to remember someone dear to one’s heart whom one has never met. The family was very happy with the results and soon asked for one of their mom.
Oil on canvas - 2013 - (commissioned / private collection)
With every move around the world, she prayed that God would help her to be truly free to love her new neighbors … rather than fear them, as she was prone to do. There are no neighborhoods on any continent where such a request cannot be heard. Those who commissioned this painting wanted her to remember this … and her neighbors can attest to the answered prayers.
Pastel on paper - 2000 (NFS, private collection)
My mom found particular comfort in this story from John 8:1-11 during one season of her life. I illustrated it as a gift to encourage her. It is about a woman caught in the act of adultery and dragged by the religious leaders to the temple courts for judgement. That had nothing to do with my mom’s story, but she had a growing awareness that her sin, in many of areas of life, deserved judgement. The Law of Moses called for such a person to be stoned, and they were testing Jesus to see if he would order the punishment. But when he suggested that whoever of the large group of men present was without sin might throw the first stone, what happened next was powerful:
“When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
“No, Lord,” she said.
And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” (NLT)
The woman was left standing, free to go, in a warm sunny courtyard strewn with powerless stones. That is what forgiveness feels like. I think that image helped my mom feel free too.
Oil on panel - 2014 - (NFS, private collection)
Another early plein air sketch coached by dear friend and master painter Sam Paonessa during our plein air painting residency in 2014.
Oil on panel - 2014 - 22.5cm x 30cm - (available, $100 USD)
One of the delightful aspects of Chefchaouen, Morocco, is the seemingly random way in which paths and staircases meander up and down organically through the town. It is the closest I have ever been to believing I am actually IN a sandcastle.