Friday reflections

It's another rainy, gray and dark friday and I'm heading to the studio to fill my world with colour!  I've been spending this week painting (!!crazy!! I know) while my pots from last week were drying out and heading into the bisque kiln.  I had a meeting early in the week with an interior designer and potential client who came to look at paintings (but ended up buying pottery) and I realized how many paintings I have that are 'half finished'.  It feels kind of good to start the year off completing ideas rather than always starting ideas, so that's what I've focused on this week.  I'll try to post some of my new paintings this coming week.

Just a couple of links and reminders:
The lovely Lisa O and her amazing painting series called 'Klein'.  I see she has some new paintings on her shop worth having a look at- LOVE the red ones, personally!

Don't forget about my give-a-way and thank you to those who commented with such encouraging remarks! I will announce the winner on monday (it will be a random draw of some sort...too hard to pick one person!)

I'm now on Pinterest, just got started and am trying to get the hang of it all.

There's been some very honest talk from other bloggers/makers out there about the direction of their blogs (phew, it's not just me!).  This post (with some really insightful comments!) is from the long thread- my go-to blog for crafts and projects to do with the boys. I think there's been such an over-saturation of blogs out there these days and people are either losing interest or just looking for the very best blogs to connect to. As someone with a pretty small and intimate kind of blog it is interesting to think of larger, more established blogs questioning their place in the blogesphere.  Should be an interesting couple of years ahead to see whether some of these blogs forge ahead...

A studio visit: Lisa Ochowycz

One of the big advantages to being part of a building full of artist studios is that you meet the most amazing artists who soon become good friends.  Lisa Ochowycz happens to be one of those people, a great painter, passionate about her work, super inspiring to talk to with an immediate connection that I find so warm and welcoming.  So we've had some lovely studio chats over the past couple of weeks. Mostly chatting about our work, our struggles, giving each other feed-back and ideas that can help.  There's nothing quite like a visit like that to get the year started.
Lisa spent the fall working on a series that she calls 'klein, small, little' and she recently launched an online shop to feature and sell this series of work.  It's amazing work, very evocative and emotional, at the same time, minimal and abstract.  And affordable.  Really, a great combination for someone looking to start an original art collection and not break the bank doing it.

I happen to love Lisa's studio (a wee bit of studio envy on my part, just a tad).  It's kind of a loft studio with these lovely little windows and a skylight that look out over the city.  It's the windows I love, these little glimpses of what is happening from above.