Hi there , 

I didn't realize until today, it's been 20 years since I officially started TraillWorks in Boonton, NJ. Seems like yesterday, but it's surely not. And, I've kind of come full circle, and enjoying so many moments of teaching art in middle school again! Of course, there are many challenges, after all, it is middle school. 😉 But there have been glorious insights and moments where just yesterday two students after a discussion about symbols and attributes in portraiture, declared they had no idea there was so much symbolism and meaning in art. And during my adult class, we got into an in depth discussion about the difference in size of pigment particles, organic vs. inorganic pigments, and how that affects the paint quality. My head exploded! This is why I teach! 

Middle school is wrapping up with only 3.5 weeks of instruction before we shift to end of year testing. I also completed teaching a new class last month at Durham Arts Council, called Watercolor Further, and am currently in another round of Beginners and Beyond Watercolor, wrapping up in two weeks.

Through all of the teaching, I'm still finding time to create and keep TraillWorks (really my own work) still going. I'm currently fine-tuning a home portrait that I've been working on, and then starting a new commission for a homeowner in NJ. See below for progress shots of the painting and some of my student work and demos.

In the midst of work, I have some health news to share that will impact the summer, and possibly into the fall. Last February, after an unsuccessful attempt at trying to manage what I thought was a sinus infection, my ENT ordered a CT scan and called me with news. He shared that surprisingly my sinuses were clear, but they found a mass. After reading the report and being referred for an MRI, the determination was an intraosseous meningioma in the sphenoid wing, and another small one on the sylvian fissure. What this means is that there are small (likely benign) tumors growing out of the outer layer of the brain and one has spread into the bone behind my eye. I like to get a little geeky about anatomy. 

This is a simplified (and slightly exaggerated) rendering of what the bone is doing to my left eye. I sought immediate support and got in to see my friend's Neurosurgeon at Duke who had performed her craniotomy two years ago. The early prognosis was watch and wait. During my last visit, the NS said to be prepared for future surgery. That got me asking more questions and a referral to his colleague. Suffice it to say, while I'm not in imminent danger, there has been impact through expansion of a bone behind my eye, proptosis (protrusion) of my eye, mild effect on the rectus muscle, almost constant eye pressure and shifting of the optic nerve. After speaking to the 2nd NS, he told me if I were his family member, he would have surgery this summer. Sooooo - I'm scheduled for a craniotomy on July 1st, and hoping for an earlier appointment to allow for more recovery time prior to school starting in August. 

I was planning on teaching at DAC this summer, creating new work, and traveling to tour colleges with my son. My summer class at DAC is now canceled and everything else will be a wait and see. My recovery time is 4 - 6 weeks, but from all I'm reading and my friend's experience, there are other lasting impacts that take longer to heal. This is not the summer I had imagined, but I'm hopeful that it will ease some of my discomforts and assure that my vision will be protected for the future. I'm grateful to the access of Duke, and confident in the skill and expertise of my neurosurgeon.

I will continue to update you when I can and hope to finish the 2nd commission prior to surgery with any luck, and keep TraillWorks alive in some way during this time. 

Creatively,

Preview of NC Home Portrait:

This marks my first NC Home portrait commission. The owners are good friends, and were actually our first made when we moved to Durham. They are a tremendous source of support in friendship, spirituality and health. I'm sad that they are moving this summer and leaving Durham, but I know that I'll still be connected, both through this painting that memorializes the home where their girls were born, and through our friendship. 

The painting is an oil on panel, 14" x 11". I'm planning on framing it, and the homeowner asked for one minor addition, which I'll do this week.

Watercolor Further at DAC

Watercolor Further was a terrific class that allowed more experienced painters to stretch their experience and gain more individualized support. We started off with exercises, then delved into personal projects and wrapped up with studies after admired watercolor painters. Above is a collection of one student's selection of studies for larger works.

The work below was a reattempt at the same subject matter that she worked on with another instructor. She came to my class determined to figure it out. My only regret is that I don't have the photo before she made all the adjustments, turning this into a successful painting. 

The rest of the works show a breadth of approaches and subject matter, as well as notes and sketches by students. I also continued a practice I started while teaching in NJ of offering a 10-minute watercolor meditation prompt, influenced by artist / author, Lisa Solomon. The last sketch here shows one of those which was inspired by artist, Alma Thomas, who also happens to be the focus of my current middle school projects (see below). I truly will miss teaching this class over the summer and hope I'll be able to reoffer it again soon.

Art at Lucas Middle School

Since mid-January, I've had a fresh bunch of about 125 students that I've been working with from 6th - 8th grade. At the moment, each class is learning and making the same thing, trying to save myself some sanity while I'm planning everything right now. Given the limited supplies I began with, students worked on learning line and shape through various types of artworks depicting plants in my classroom using observation, blind contour line and collage. 

Then the students started exploring value, making basic value scales, then learning about artist, Alma Thomas. From there, we have used her work to learn to create thumbnail drawings using contour line, then recreate her works using shading - seeing value in color. 

After value, students learned about color terms, made color wheels in oil pastel and explored mixing their own colors.

7th grade artwork after Alma Thomas

Now, they have implemented all that knowledge into artworks that either recreate Alma Thomas' work (as seen above), or to influence original artwork that utilize her style but depicting ideas of inspiration to each student. These works were layered paintings using oil pastel marks featuring a range of values and vibrant colors in Alma Thomas' style, overlapping watercolor washes. 

6th Grade artwork

6th Grade artwork

CURRENT CLASS at DAC

Beginners and Beyond Watercolor is a quick, foundational class that guides students from the very basics of loading and caring for a paintbrush to the variations in watercolor techniques. We're moving into Week 5 out of 6 weeks and it's been a fun journey. 

After we explored our brushes, painting color wheels, value scales, and color swatches, we moved into techniques and gradually building a painting using still life objects. These are my demonstrations from last week and this week. Above is a wet on wet demonstration in monochrome.  Below is a complementary colored painting of the mandarin orange. 

And finally, getting into full color. I used just a few colors for this orange. Can you guess what they are? 

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