Dog Portraits Resumed

A former client, Lauren Gonzales, connected with me around Thanksgiving asking me to do a Mini Dog Portrait of her father's friend's pup, with a hope to gift it by Christmas. Given my ongoing neurofatigue, lack of confidence in my drawing ability due to poor hand grip, and having the home portrait on the easel first, I shared all of the uncertainty with meeting a deadline. She was thrilled with my prior drawings that she commissioned and understood about the stroke, gave me patience to do it in my time. 

I began in the beginning of December, and finished over about 6 weeks, getting about an hour of week at a time.  

Below are two prior Mini Dog Portraits, commissioned by Lauren. The first named Flint, is an Irish Setter drawn in 2024. The second portrait is of Maverick, an African Boerboel, her family's dog who was gifted in surprise for her father's Christmas gift, during 2021. 

I'm incredibly grateful for patience, understanding, and loyalty for my work by this amazing client! It's always so meaningful to make memorable art.

I'm continuing dog portraits, finished another one after March and have one in the wait list to start. I still am not able to meet deadlines, but will be opening up the commission list in the near future.

Birds in Paintings, ReEmerging

This isn't the first time birds have appeared in my work - they started in a significant painting during my senior year in art school. Since then my subjects changed directions, until they've popped into a couple of sketches in the past few years. 

Then, two weeks before my scheduled craniotomy on my skull-based meningiomas, I had a dream that birds were flying through my skull, well, according to below, it was out of my mouth! I haven't had a dream I recalled in years, and I went ahead the following day to rough sketch the dream. 

Surprisingly, I fell into a stroke which caused part of my left brain to die. This fixation on birds and my skull ended up developing into a painting after I spent time reviewing MRI / CT scans of the tumors. Additionally, on listening to an inspirational stroke survivor on TED Talk, and a neuroanatomist, author, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, I learned how she changed her lived experience due to the shutdown of her left side of the brain. My awareness of her wisdom a few months after my own stroke, moved me into more openness in many parts of my life, including art making.

This was a scan I found intriguing of my skull, ear, and staples from my craniotomy. This particular image moved me into the work below, tying my original dream, but using more recent experiences: seeing my skull, and being transfixed by Carolina Wrens, and including a meditational quote that I wrote in my sketchbook.

The painting evolved using references and intuitive approaches. Below it's a mixed media work involving watersoluble graphite, watercolor and image transfer. Currently it's untitled and I'm hopeful to build more related works in the future. Have a title idea? Feel free to reply one to me. 

Birds Supported in Therapy

I've been seeing a new therapist since my stroke, who experienced her own TBI many years ago, and has an interesting perspective in my therapy. Brittany Thompson is supportive of my practice as an artist, knowledgable of the value of art making in healing, both mentally and physicallly.

She's welcomed me into her space several times to start and continue paintings with her. The painting above, also untitled, is a rougher, abstract/expressionist/surrealist image based on my "Take a Seat" series, now involving birds. 

I have so much more to share, but it's going to have to wait until the next TraillNotes newsletter. In the meantime, have a title idea? Feel free to share your ideas with me.