I am tired after a week preparing for the annual High Road Studio Art Tour here in N. NM. The bistro sold a lot of meals and I had an opening in a gallery in Taos on Friday night.  A wonderful artist named Allegra Sleep offered up her 'Temporary Gallery of Art' and asked that local artists paint on cardboard to be shown at Artisan's gallery on Bent St. in Taos.  
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I'd like to say that painting on cardboard, regardless of how many times you prime it, is no walk in the park, you can practically hear the cardboard drinking up the paint as you work on it.  I did get a new idea for a technique I hadn't tried before from working on this piece.  After finishing the painting I decided on wanted the surface to look like Encaustic so I mixed a tiny bit of Golden Indian Yellow Hue in some Golden Regular Gel (Matte) Medium.  I found that I needed to squeegee it on in order to minimize lines that were made by my usual use of an old credit card to smooth the medium.  Once I squeegeed the gel which I had applied with a matt knife, I also put a very fine mist of water down over the whole piece, once it dried it had an Encaustic quality about it which I liked very much.  I will put a photo of the painting up here as soon as I get it back from the week long exhibit.

Truly I don't know what I was thinking when fueled with my success with the cardboard that I tried painting next on some Claybord that I had in my studio.  I am on my third painting using the Claybord and I have to say cardboard is simple compared to what Claybord has in store for you when you paint on it.  I am still trying to find my way with this new surface and I will let you know 
where the experiment takes me.

Have you had some interesting experiences trying new mediums and surfaces?  Please let us know about them.

Hi fellow artists, welcome to my site.  The month of August I put up a POP UP art gallery in a nearby village.  The building my show is in is an old post office.  The name of this town, which is well known for the oldest galleries in the state; is called Truchas, which means Trout in Spanish.  The town is perched 8,000 feet up on the top of a mountain and you take the ‘High Road’ to get there.

So far traffic has been very sparse at the gallery, many of the local artists have told me that this is the slowest summer in fourteen years.  I’ve been hearing and reading rumblings that the Art Gallery is dead and perhaps it is being pushed aside by people such as myself, putting their work up on the Internet.

Personally, I believe that there is value in going to the Internet to look at what is out there when you can’t attend a show that is far away from where you live.  However, I do not think that the Internet is a substitute for seeing a show in person.  

Having said that, my friend has graciously made me a website for my art; just in case you can’t make it to my POP UP show the month of August in Truchas, N.M.

Last November I decided to begin painting with intent.  I have made art all my life and I am an art school graduate.  But my day job sometimes prevents me from getting in my studio regularly.  So I decided, no matter what; I would find the time to paint everyday until spring when my job becomes busier and see what I could accomplish.  The Abstract and Figurative paintings that are up on the site now represent what I accomplished from November until June.

Please feel free to leave comments, I would appreciate reading what you have to say about my work and I will happily answer questions on the blog.