Xmas Pioneer and Lone Survivor

Pioneer is the theme over at Illustration Friday this week. Here is a holiday blast from the past: I made this two-color woodcut for Christmas 1991, the year I graduated from art school and got married. I cut the panels, then Paul and I set up a little production line in the livingroom of our tiny apartment(and because we used oil-based ink, the place stunk for several days!) Inspired by the yearly holiday prints of one of my teachers, Homer Johnson, I think we intended to pioneer our own tradition of hand-made prints every year for Christmas...just shows the kind of spare time young people without kids, a house or a full-time job have! However, the next year we bought our first house, and then the Christmas after that I was on bedrest pregnant with twins...and this turns out to have been a one-time only "tradition". Fun though! :->

~All the blessings of the season to you and yours~

Undone

Undone is this week's theme over at Illustration Friday. Yes, I am a little late...I definitely feel a day late and a dollar short pretty much continually these days as we careen towards Christmas...or as I think of it, Stressmas! ;-) Cake definitely helps if you can get some.

Last Slice, oil on canvas, Nancy Bea Miller

Welcome

Welcome
is this week's theme over at Illustration Friday. This fairly recent painting seems to fit the bill.

I started painting this in a white-hot fit of inspiration, then suddenly...stopped. Six months later it is still unfinished, and I can't seem to muster up the aesthetic energy needed to bring it to conclusion. Yet, I feel it kind of has something good going, and I am not quite ready to abandon it. Maybe some help is needed? Any constructive criticism would be very welcome!

In the Doorway, oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches, 2009, Nancy Bea Miller

Impossibility

Impossibility
is this week's theme at Illustration Friday. My work almost never deals with things that are impossible...I so deeply love the real and physical world that I rarely feel the need to go beyond its inexhaustible inspiration. Nonetheless, I am enjoying looking at other people's flights of fancy!

The tie-in with this week's IF theme is that it is an impossibility to make a dog pose for you for more than thirty seconds at a time! I had to take about 30 photos of this good-natured corgi, only one or two of which worked as painting reference. Thank heavens for digital. (The island referred to in the painting's title is, of course, Monhegan Island: how I love that place!)

Island Dog, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches, 2008

Fleeting

Fleeting
is the theme this week at Illustration Friday. Thought I'd put a toe back into those waters. It's been a busy and difficult winter. Fortunately time is fleeting for both the good times and the bad (although the tough times sure feel longer don't they?)

The woman holding the little girl in the this picture was actually pregnant at the time, and now both her children are past the toddler phase. Talk about fleeting! This painting is currently hanging in the biggest one-person show I have ever had: 50 paintings! Not quite a retrospective, but something approaching it, for my Genre of Inclusion project. If you want more info on the show, which is up thru the 22 of April, click here.


In the Gallery, 16 x 20 inches, oil on canvas, 2004

Flawed

FLAWED
is this week's theme over at Illustration Friday (yeah it is indeed Thursday, I am just squeaking in under the wire here!) This is a painting I did last spring, and it was the card image for my one person show at Sherry French Gallery in June. I remember the canvas was still wet when I photographed it. Down to the wire is my usual state I am afraid!

While painting the set up I became entranced with the big tear in the broad hydrangea leaf. Which I guess qualifies it for this week's theme of flawed.

Blue Hydrangea and Bagels, oil on canvas, 24 x 18 inches, 2008, Nancy Bea Miller