Yay Monday!

After a long weekend of turkey and family, pie and pooping out(all day Sunday on the couch in front of the tv!), it's great to get back into the studio! I had planned to get at least one day of painting in, but of course that didn't happen. Actually, I did get into the studio for about an hour of painting on Saturday, while I waited to meet family for lunch. That doesn't really count though since I was just getting started when I had to stop!

I must say, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Lots of family, food, and football! We actually had the whole family together this year(except my dad, who we saw a week or so ago). I ate way too much, but it was all so yummy! The best part was, we went over to my in laws for dinner, so we didn't have to cook!

I LOVE my job! How many people can say they woke up excited about getting back to work this morning?! Even though Monday is my day to catch up on bookeeping, filing and all around office work, just being in the studio makes me happy!

I'm thinking about issuing some special edition prints for the Holiday season. Not neccessarily holiday art, but limited edition prints that will only be available until the end of the year. I also have many, many notecards to post in my Etsy shop. So keep an eye out for some fun new items in my shop in the next week or so.

Holiday Special!

From today thru December 15th you can buy one item in my Etsy shop and get the second item(of equal or lesser value) for 50% off!! Just wait for the revised invoice before you pay.

Happy Holidays everyone and hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Eat lots of turkey!

Thanks Ren!

For calling and letting me know that my "beautiful music" handpainted guitar made it onto the front page at Etsy.com! Check it out! I'm so excited! Now...if someone would just buy it!!! :)

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=16030

Secret revealed

So, if you read this blog with any regularity you remember me mentioning a connection I made while set up at the State Fair in September. The deal is happening now, so I think it's safe to announce without jinxing it! My art/designs are being licensed for a fine art handpainted needlepoint company that sells wholesale to shops. I'm so excited, it's great to finally be able to share the news! Below is a photo of my second design. The first design was already sent off for production and I forgot to take a pic of it. How it works is I will paint the original design on needlepoint canvas and then the original is sent off to a painting service that makes the copies that are sold. If you've ever seen a needlepoint canvas, you know that the weave of the canvas is open to allow for the threads to be sewn in. NOT easy to paint on! However, it is fun! My designs will be premiered at a trade show in January, so keep your fingers crossed for me that they do well!


Also below is my latest daily journal painting that I am about to list in my Etsy shop.

Misunderstood, 8 x 8" watermixable oils on canvas board

Silent Auction Art Show this weekend

Not sure what happened to this post?? It just disappeared!

Anyway, I will be participating in this show today!

Absolute Arts

I took the plunge today and have started an artist portfolio at Absolute Arts. I will no longer list my larger, more expensive original paintings on Etsy. You will now find all my originals other than my daily journal paintings at the following link; http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/m/manlewis/

Please do me a favor and check out my portfolio and let me know what you think! Thanks!

New Work, Finally!

It's not that I haven't painted anything new recently, it's that I haven't been keeping up with photographing and posting new work!

The first painting is the large canvas I've told you about in the past couple months. Finally finished!! I was so pleased with how it turned out. This is a 40 inch square canvas in watermixable oils. The second photo is a detail of the middle of the flower. I plan to post this one for sale on Absolute Arts, that is, once I get signed up for an account on Absolute Arts.

The Vortex, 40 x 40" watermixable oils

Detail

The other three paintings are daily journal paintings, 8 inches square.

In Time

Simple Spiral

Agitated

First Friday at the Factory on 5th; Tonight!

To all those who live here in the Albuquerque area, come down to the Factory on 5th tonight for our November First Friday show!

6 -11pm at 1715 5th Street

Over 20 artists will be showing with lots of free refreshments and entertainment by my wonderful husband, Aaron Lewis, on guitar!

Hope to see you there!

I will get back to posting more photos on my next post! :)

Day two of photos!

Day two of posting photos, today, more Grand Canyon and on to the Sequoia National Forest! If you didn't see the photos I posted yesterday, be sure to scroll down. I'm discovering that I am way too camera happy when I'm out with my camera! I still have a couple hundred to sift through! Stay tuned for day three! :)

This one I took of another hiker to give you an idea of scale!

After the Grand Canyon, it was on to the Sequoias, first photo shows the scale! huge!

I can never resist taking photos of pretty fall leaves!

Tomorrow I'll start posting the California coast and San Francisco photos.

In closing, I have to say it's SO GOOD to be back in my studio. I'm working on finishing a large painting that I've posted about before and I'm very pleased with how it's turning out! Can't wait to finish it and get some feedback! So, back to painting I go!

Home Sweet Home!

We arrived home last night and today I'm finally back at my studio! I'm so inspired by our trip that I can hardly wait to get back to painting. Seems there is always something to delay that. All in all we had a wonderful trip, check out a few photos below. I am going thru all the photos a little at a time. I took over 300 pics! These first few are from the Petrified forest and Grand Canyon, both in Arizona. Tomorrow I will get some more up. It's hard to pick which ones to post!

I hate to even mention it because I don't like to dwell on the negative, but the only bad thing that happened on the trip was having our van broken into while we were staying in the city! We ended up spending one of our days finding a place and waiting to have the window replaced! They only got Aaron's book bag and our hiking backpack because we took everything of value with us to the hotel room.(not that Aaron's music theory books aren't valuable, you just wouldn't figure anyone would steal them!) We're from Albuquerque, NM, we know better than to leave valuables in the car!

On the way home we stopped in Gallup at the House of Lyndon Gallery where I show my work. We dropped off new work on the way out and picked up the old work on the way home. I will be showing more new work at a show there in December. Lyndon now has the painted guitar, Universe and several other pieces. If you live in the area, please drop in and take a look at the new work and say hi to Lyndon while you are there! They have recently expanded the gallery to another room and it looks amazing!

OH AND DON'T FORGET this Friday is First Friday at the Factory on 5th. I will be showing the paintings that just came back from the gallery which will be new to the Factory since they've been at the gallery since before I moved in! :)

The first three were taken in the Petrified Forest National Park.

The rest were taken at the Grand Canyon. First and second are your typical tourist shots, the last three were taken on our grueling 4-5 hour hike! It was so awesome!!!

My birthday in San Francisco!

Today we rolled in to San Francisco! What a crazy, cool place! The trip so far has been way awesome! So far we've hiked the Grand Canyon(not the whole thing just a couple miles down) and Sequoia National Park, Oh and we stopped off at the Petrified forest on the first day out!

Today, my birthday, we had lunch in Santa Cruz and a great dinner in Chinatown! Tomorrow, we will go to Fisherman's wharf and around San Fran in general. Thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes, here on the blog and by phone today. So happy to know that so many people care! I'm feeling kinda old as my knee and back are in pain from all the camping, hiking and walking! But, I'm having fun, so I don't care!

I have taken around 200 photos that I still haven't gotten downloaded to the laptop! I will try to get that done tonight so I can post some. I'm not sure that will actually happen until I get home though, but I promise to eventually share!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day, week, month and life! :)

Taking a Trip

Been busy the past week or so getting everything wrapped up before we take a trip to San Francisco. Getting everything packed up and ready to go today. We will be gone for 9 days and will start at the Grand Canyon for a couple days, then on to Sequoia Natl Park before getting to San Francisco the day before my birthday! I can hardly wait, should be lots of fun.

In reality though, this is meant to be mainly a business trip! We will be scouting out the area for galleries and shops to sell my work to, as well as looking for venues for Aaron to play guitar. Hope to also see a long lost friend that we haven't seen in ages! Also, this will be Aaron's first time to California and the Pacific coast!

Anyway, hopefully my camera batteries will cooperate on the trip so I can post lots of pictures when I get back!

Any Etsy orders that come in while I'm gone will be shipped out the week after Halloween when we get back.

More older new work

What I mean by the title is that this painting is an older new piece that I haven't yet posted here or on etsy. Today is the day! I'm working on getting everything posted that was skipped during the State Fair when I was too busy to post regularly. I hope to also have my two painted instruments up in the Etsy shop today. I finally put the beaded strings onto the guitar but still have to take some good photos.

This painting is called "Universe" and it's 20 x 20" oil on canvas.

UUGGHH!

Working on my portfolio today. Updating my bio, resume, and writing my artist statement. Writing is one my least favorite things to do. At least this type of writing. I journal and blog all the time, but this is professional writing! I have to sound educated and interesting. English was one of my better subjects in school, I always got As, but it is so difficult to write about myself. Anyone else out there have this problem? I almost wish I had one of those fill in the blank forms I could use and just input my information. I've been browsing the Art Biz blog for help. How fitting that she has been covering this subject recently! Alyson sure is a huge help!

Other than forcing myself to work on the business side of things, I'm getting ready for our trip to San Francisco. I can hardly wait! It has been over 20 years since I've been to California. One of the things I've been doing to get ready is searching galleries online in the San Fran. area. WOW! There sure are a lot to see. I'm trying to narrow it down online so when I get there it won't be so overwhelming. We will only be there for 4-5 days so I want to see as much as possible without wasting time on galleries where my art wouldn't fit in.

Here are the photos of my new studio that I've been promising for months! The photos are taken from the door looking in and going left to right respectively.

Office area with the portraits I've painted of my sweet hubby

Storage/Work area, I also have a nice tall window although it's east facing

The back wall with some of my older work

My painting area with comfy chair for reading/writing, large painting in progress

Finally! New work!

Dancing Sun Rise and Shine (SOLD!)
Sunshine (SOLD!)
Centering (SOLD!)

Actually, these are paintings I did while I was at the Fair. Just now finally getting them posted on Etsy and here. Currently, I'm working on a new large canvas. I will take a photo soon, I promise. Actually, this painting has been started for over a month, but the finish took a while to come to me. Still not finished, but at least I know where it's going.

I had to buy a new easel to accommodate the larger size I'm working on. I've realized that the small canvases are restricting my inspiration. So, it's time to go big!

We have made plans for a trip to San Francisco at the end of October! I can hardly wait. It's meant to be a business trip, but my birthday is the 25th, so it's going to be fun too! The plan is to scout out galleries in the Bay area. I have had many people tell me my work would do well there. We shall see!

First Friday, October

Tomorrow is First Friday(Arts Crawl) at the Factory on 5th. Come on down from 6 to 11 pm to see my studio, new work and the work of over 14 other artists. Free Parking, refreshments and guitar music played by my husband, Aaron Lewis.

Factory on 5th
1715 5th Street
Albuquerque, NM

Hope to see you there!

In the Studio

After a well needed break, I'm back in the studio today. Spent most of the day working on a large painting I started a couple months ago. I had been stuck on it but finally had that moment of AHA when I knew exactly where it would go next. I love it when that happens! I will try to take a progress photo tomorrow. I have been itching to get back to painting! I did some painting out at the Fair, but nothing big. I plan on doing more big paintings in the near future.

This week is First Friday at the Factory on 5th! I only have three more days to get my studio cleaned up and art hung! Yikes!! I'm working on getting all my art hung, old and new, in my studio. Brought in several older works that I had at the house. A few landscapes, a few portraits. Thought it would be interesting for people to see where I came from before painting my spiral abstracts. I don't think I've posted a photo of my studio since I moved in, so I'll try to get that done too, once I have everything hung.

Hope everyone is having as wonderful a day as I am! Smile, it will make you happy!! :)

I Survived the 2007 NM State Fair!

Made it through another year at the fair! Always fun, always exciting! Thursday was the most exciting day. One of the Belgian Draft horses got loose and charged into the Arts and Crafts area, causing the characature(sp?) guy to go diving across the tables of the booth next to him. Luckily, the horse made a sharp right turn and ended up out in the street instead of going through our tents.

The same day we had a cloudburst of rain(1 1/2 inches in 20 minutes) that created a river through the entire Arts and Crafts area. Of course, this happened at the moment Aaron decided to go check out the south end of the fair and my booth neighbor had gone on a bathroom break, so I stuggled to get tarps up while rain poured in and got everything wet! Luckily, the next morning everything looked much better than it did when we closed early. Thank goodness for Clear Bags! Nothing of mine was actually damaged, all the water stayed on the outside.

The last weekend ended up being the best of the Fair, so I ended up doing well on average for the whole show.

I'm very excited about a contact I made on the last day, but I will keep that a secret until I work out the details and make sure it happens. This contact is a woman who wants to license my art for a special product! This is the type of direction I have been wanting to take my art and I'm blown away by how everything seems to be coming together for me!

As always, I met some very wonderful people out there, thanks to everyone who made it a wonderful show!

This week we plan on taking it easy! Today we will do nothing but lay around the house and watch movies! Seventeen days straight of 12-14 hour days is difficult when you aren't used to it! We can finally have some homecooked meals (no more Fair food!) and actually do our grocery shopping! Not to mention getting the house cleaned up and doing the laundry!

Tomorrow I hope to get back in the studio for a few hours. I have a couple more shows scheduled for the month of October, I will post info about them once I get back to work. Plus I have several new paintings to photograph and post. Until then, hope everyone is having a wonderful day, week, month and year!

Six days to go!

At my studio today. Taking a break from the Fair to ship out orders and rest a little. Aaron is out at the booth holding down the fort. Last night was his show at the boxcar stage, it went VERY well! The State Fair has been lots of fun, but very exhausting! This Sunday is the last day! Next week we will take it easy, in fact, Monday we plan to do nothing but sleep in and watch movies! I can hardly wait.

I've sold a couple more of the framed daily journal paintings!(Fire and Bold as Love) So, if you are interested in buying one, I suggest you do so soon! Of course I plan to make more.

I don't usually like to write much about my personal life here, but my two younger boys are giving me fits! Teenagers! They seem to think at 17 and 14 that they are ready to move out on their own! They don't even have jobs! So, along with spending 12 hour days at the fair, we've been coming home to arguments and hassles with the boys. We even had to call the police the other night and didn't get to bed until way past midnight! Aaron is about ready to kick the 17 year old out on his butt! It wouldn't be the first time! Actually, we did kick him out, but he came back a couple days later and "says" he'll follow the rules. We'll see!

Funny thing is, everything else in our lives is going wonderfully! I hate to wish away their childhood, but I am looking forward to having an empty nest! Why is it that teenagers think we are doing things to try to hurt them? I'm just trying to help them have an easier life, you know, graduate from high school, get a job, etc!! I've decided that they act this way so I WON'T miss them so much when they finally do grow up and move away. Anyway, sorry, but I had to vent about that!

New Daily Paintings and Painted Instrument

Just listed four new Daily Journal Paintings in my Etsy shop. Also, I've been keeping busy at the State Fair by painting one of my recycled instruments. This time it's a Russian Balalaika, another stringed instrument. My husband has had this one for some time, it is totally unplayable as it doesn't have a soundboard. So, now it has been recycled into a wall hanging. I'm not completely sure I'm done with it, please let me know your opinions!

Handpainted Balalaika

Business at the Fair has been pretty slow, which is why this instrument is taking me MUCH less time than the guitar. Also, I finally finished the guitar, stringing it with beads. I will try to get a photo posted soon.

Spiraling, 8 x 8" Daily journal painting

Let it Rain, 8 x 8" Daily journal painting

Hypnotized, 8 x 8" Daily journal painting

What the World Needs. . . ., 8 x 8" Daily journal painting