Proud of Pride

Peace Pride, oil on canvas, 12 x 12", completed

This weekend is the Albuquerque Pride Festival and I will be there with my art at booth # 27. For those who don't know, Pride is a festival that celebrates the gay, lesbian and transgender community.

My first and only time(so far) at a Pride Fest was a couple of years ago when Aaron and I went with my dad. My dad was a gay man and I have to say I was very proud of him. It can't be easy to come out of the closet in a country full of hate crimes and discrimination. I am dedicating this show to the memory of my dad. He would have been here cheering me on and we would have had a wonderful time. So, in his memory, I plan to have a blast this weekend.

The Pride Fest runs thru Saturday at 8pm. Saturday morning there will be a parade down Central Ave. into the state fairgrounds. There will also be concerts and a pet parade.

I had planned to do a whole series of paintings for the show, but only ended up with time enough to finish one. "Peace Pride" is available for $300, plus I will have prints available for $20(13x13" matted) and $8(6x6" matted).

Mi Vida Loca

Peace Pride One, 12" oil on canvas, in progress

Hectic, crazy, overwhelmed, emotional.......this is my life currently! We are in the crunch time for preparing for the grand opening of Chroma Studios. Picked up our postcard announcements this morning. I have to get busy writing blog posts for my other blog(Chroma Studios) to introduce all our studio artists. Because I've been so busy and haven't started yet, I'm going to have to group artists together instead of everyone getting their own daily post. We've hired my youngest son to help with getting all the trim painted at the studios. Thank God for summer break and bored teenagers!

This weekend, same as last, we have to travel down south to Las Cruces/El Paso. Aaron has a gig on Saturday in Las Cruces and we have one more load of stuff to clear out my dad's house. Gas prices are skyrocketing so basically the money Aaron is making on the gig will all go towards gas! Oh well, it's all about the exposure, right?

I'm working on a new series of Peace paintings, incorporating rainbows, for an upcoming show. I have a booth at the Albuquerque Pride Festival this year and wanted to do some special pieces for that in memory of my dad. The painting above is the first one, in progress. It's a 12" square oil on canvas. I plan to make prints and notecards of these images.

New Lettered Mats!

Today I'm working on something a little different. I call these my lettered photo mats. The top one is currently for sale in my Etsy shop. They are all 10 x 20 inch mats. The Peace mat has 3 x 4 inch letters and the baby mats have 4 x 6 inch letters. I have filled the Peace mat with small giclee prints of my daily journal paintings. The baby mats are left empty so you can add your own 4 x 6 snapshots. The Peace mats are selling for $25 as it has my prints in it and the baby mats are going for $15.

I can also cut custom lettered mats with any name or word you would like. I plan to put up a listing for the custom lettered mats and they will go for $20.

Peace on Earth

Click Here to Buy

Today's daily painting is called Peace On Earth. It's been quite some time since I painted a peace theme, so, being that it's the Holiday season, I figured today was as good a day as any to paint peace! I used the red and green to give it a holiday feel, although being in New Mexico I guess it could be a chile theme as well. For those who don't know, the official question in NM is 'red or green?'. This is another 8 x 10 oil on canvas board and you can find it in my etsy shop for only $30! In fact, all of my daily paintings are specially priced for the holidays at $20 off the regular price.