Simplify

My word for the year is "Simplify."  That mainly means a lot of long overdue decluttering and cleaning up, but it's also about mental focus.  Trying to narrow down the things I do to those that are really important to me.

Last year I was catching up with posting my 2016 stitch components, along with showing how they were joining together, and also showing my 2017 daily stitch project.  I needed stitching to have a separate post each week, but this year I'm going to mix my stitching in with painting in one weekly post.  The stitching is coming along slowly.  When I do it, I enjoy it, but I am not feeling compelled to stitch everyday, so I'm letting this project evolve as it will.  Here's one I did over the course of a week.  I am already thinking that I might like to join them together and do more in the white background area.

I seem to be more absorbed with painting than stitching this year. I thought I was going to do the 30-in-30 painting project this month, a painting a day for 30 days.  That didn't last long before I simplified it to 30 paintings in a month, since I often work for days without finishing one, then might finish 3 on the same day.  And then I decided to simplify that even more to just painting for 30 days straight.  That now fits me.  I am a slow painter and often have to work on a piece for at least 5 days before it's done.  Even when it looks loose and random, it takes days for me to get it that way.

I seem to always be reacting to what I just did.  I was painting dark, heavier paintings for quite a few days, then wanted to switch over to much lighter ones.

The thing I come back to over and over is my love of mark making.  That's definitely my favorite part of stitching or painting.

Lots of Painting

I'm feeling deeply immersed in painting these days, and that's just the way I like it.  I'm continuing with Nancy Hillis's online Studio Journey class, which gives some structure to the month.  For Feb. we will be focusing on color contrast.

I also decided to participate for the first time in Leslie Saeta's Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days challenge.  I thought it would be good for me to try to finish a small painting a day since I usually am slow and ponderous with them. But I quickly realized that that's not how I work.  I need to have a bunch going at one time, then finish them as it happens, which doesn't really lend itself to a painting a day.  I decided to skip posting on Leslie's site and aim at completing 30 paintings in 30 days, rather than getting caught up in one a day.  The main objective is to try to keep moving and get things done.
My constraints for the project will be 12" square pieces, and I want to try to experiment with something a little new to me in each one.


I started working with a different palette for me.  I was taking a walk at sunset on a crisp winter's night, and was attracted to all the pastel colors in the sky.  I think I've spent my life avoiding pastels, so thought they would be fun to play with.

The first one a little heavier on marks.

Then the second one simplified a bit.

 I'll be posting more of my paintings on Instagram and am planning to do a weekly summary of how it's going here.