Family painting projects

As an artist who also teaches painting workshops and team building painting projectsat my studio in eastern Puerto Rico, I invited the owners of two area guest houses to come visit my studio and participate in one of the painting projects that I have tailored to families, couples and small groups coming to Puerto Rico. Not only are my projects unique ways to spend quality, creative time with loved ones, but they're wonderful activities for rainy days in the tropics or sunshiny days as well!

Ray and Gwenn came from their guest house, Coquis Hideaway and Wally and Marina came from their guest house Villa Sevilla. Both guest houses are an easy drive from my studio, and are also located up in the mountains of eastern Puerto Rico, not far from El Yunque and the Caribbean National Rainforest. They're guests are welcome at my studio to take classes, work together on group painting projects or simply enjoy the collection of original paintings and fine art prints that I have here for sale.

The picture you see here is one my friends created together from my "Be Me/Be We" project. I provide all of the materials (water media) and everyone just gets to play with paint. This activity is really just about releasing your creative spirit and doing so with family and loved ones. The result is always a fun, free, spontaneous abstract painting that I mat for you and you get to take home as a unique momento of your time spent here in the Caribbean.

It's a blast!

Hurricane Relief

Omar be gone! We made it through the storm unscathed thanks to a last minute shift in direction of Hurricane Omar. Like threading a needle, the center of the storm passed between the islands here in the northeast Caribbean and we all came through with little damage. Yahoo!

This was actually a good dry run for me. Usually I'm little Miss Civil Defense, starting my initial hurricane preparedness at the very beginning of each season. The last couple of years I've gotten lazy though and when I went to do things to prepare for Omar, I discovered issues like stuck and loose hurricane panels. Ack! If this had been a serious storm I would have been seriously screwed!!! So I'm grateful for the warning.

I'm a firm believer in signs. We get them all the time. We just don't read them. Omar was a sign. Lemmee go get my glasses.

Rain Rain Go Away

Lot's more rain comin' this way. We had around 30" just a few weeks ago and now we've got another storm headed in our direction. I'm happy that I live up high but worry about mudslides. Every place we choose to live is a trade off, I guess. Californias are fighting fires, Oklahomans fight tornadoes, we fight tropical storms.... at least it's not snow!

I can remember the day I made my decision to leave upstate New York. It was an April morning, theoretically SPRINGTIME and I was trying to chop my way through a layer of ice on my car so I could get the key in to the door lock. It was still dark and I was wet and frozen with sleet and something told me that in another life, I didn't live like this. By May I was living in Key West.

Now I'm even further south and waiting for more rain. Sigh. It will be a good week to stay inside at my easel and get some work done.

All is right with the world.

Oh Happy Day!

Yesterday's rainbow truly was a portent of good things to come. I had an exhibition last night and sold 15 paintings. Joy! Joy! Joy! I'm happy. My bank's happy. It's a happy kind of day!