Shanking.

Last week I checked out a live portrait painting demonstration by Nelson Shanks at Studio Incamminati here in Philadelphia. Two fellow painters from North Carolina, Kiki Farish and Jill Eberle, had the good fortune of taking a full intensive two-week course at the school, and they were kind enough to save me a front-row seat for the demo. It was great! Much better than the one I went to a couple of months ago at the Union League here in Philadelphia, where we were in a HUGE room and people in the audience/standing around schmoozing on the periphery were super-chatty and distracting. This was a more intimate setting with serious students, and was a delightful and informative session. Here are some photos of Mr. Shanks' painting of his son Alexander, in progress through the evening:

The painting in-progress

This photo courtesy of Jill Eberle

Just beachy.

More posts to come soon, including one about the Nelson Shanks painting demo I went to last week. But I'm just coming off some time at the beach, so please give my brain some time to re-focus.

Metropolis!

Just saw the re-released, extended version of Metropolis. Now these are some great dance moves, folks:

Lancaster.

Here are some more photos from the weekend's road trip to the wolf sanctuary and Amish country out in Lancaster County, PA:

I looove black-eyed susans

even Amish get the blues

little Amish piglets

EXTREME chocolate milk. EXTREME.

Dibs on this for a band name.

No matter how many times I see the Amish riding in their horse-driven buggies on the modern streets, it will never fail to look really weird - and kind of awesome.

Disapproving Amish rabbit

L'anniversaire.

Today = 8 years since I became a Feissel!!
These have been the best 8 years of my life - actually, the last 11 since I've been with the amazing Mr. John Feissel have been super-great.
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Here's the first painting I ever did of him, back in '99:

jf1, 1999, oil on board

Here's another one I did a couple of years later, a personal favorite:

nap8, 2003, oil and alkyd on linen, 11"x14"

Happy anniversary, baby!

Los lobos.

If you're a fellow northern hemisphere inhabitant, you may have noticed that it is summertime. As such, it has been hot, and under such conditions I find it difficult to focus on much other than having fun and taking one's mind off the heat. Now, I definitely have fun while painting – don't get me wrong – but keeping a tight working schedule with my painting has just not been happening in this weather. The mind wanders, the body moves with great slowness. The mind moves with great slowness. The body moves toward the nearest cold beverage (or the nearest purveyor of fine ice creams). All this to say, painting is going very, very slowly. Yet, there is inspiration a-plenty here in Philly and beyond... most recently, I have found some splendid nature-based inspiration, found at the Wolf Sanctuary of Pennsylvania. Wolves! Definitely expect to see some in my paintings in the future:

Also of interest: the Amish! Endlessly fascinating, and perplexing. Especially perplexing are the Amish dolls for sale at The Amish Village: spooky.

Mayo.

I may have mentioned that I'm in the middle of a bazillion painting projects at the moment, no one of which is getting the time it deserves, alas. Here's one I think I haven't posted yet, a small-ish (16"x20") painting, insprired by a photo taken a couple of years ago when I made a quick visit to see some friends at an artists' retreat on the west coast of Ireland - County Mayo, I believe it was:

work in progress, tentatively titled the long road to someone else's home, oil on linen, by me.

Sorry for the crummy photo quality, btw, it's not that yellow-ish in real life - bad lighting. I'll post it again when I'm done and have taken a decent photo.

Speaking of mayo (sort of), this new place in our neighborhood called Kraftwork is completely rocking my world, and my palate: their herbed fries with mustard aioli are to die for. Mmmmm.