From Charleston to Easton

Haul and oats

Ah the adventures of a migrant art worker. Lots of moving around and bushels of work for little pay, kind of like a draft horse. My route is pretty cool and this time I ended up in my fav place in South Carolina. I heart me some Charleston, love the folks and the architecture. It's like South Carolina and New York got married and had a child with the best of both gene pools; sophistication, gracious southern charm and good looks all rolled into one. I went up to visit my gallery, Horton Hayes, and to participate in a 4 gallery/ Plein Air Painters of the Southeast exhibit. I'd never heard of 4 galleries teaming up but it occurred to some of us in the group that there were 4 galleries on the same block with PAPSE members and we teamed up. Brilliant. Part of the deal was that we needed to show our faces and be seen. I needed to take them new work anyway. Preferably regional. While there I did a couple of nice (don't usually say that) paintings, the one above and a little boat thing that I forgot to get a picture of.

I like painting horses, they are so good looking. In my next life I'm coming back as a flying horse because that would be cool and what girl doesn't like a flying horse? We were all supposed to be painting in the same two blocks but being the rebel I am I said screw that and went down another 4 blocks to the stable where the tourist buggy critters are held. This guy was tethered for about an hour and I got as much as I could done before he left for work. Then the next guy came in and darned if he wasn't about the same color. The cool thing was that as I was painting the sun was creeping along toward the stables and in the last few minutes a little beam of light crossed horse #2's face and lit him up. It helped give it that little zing. I love it when a painting works with me.

While there they had the Spoletto festival and let me just say. You should go. Martha came along on this one and wanted to go see stuff. We saw a killer live action/animation musical and an even more killer band called Joy kills sorrow that would make Stephen Hawkings tap a foot. I couldn't stay for the opening because I had to be in Easton the next day for a workshop. I left Martha with the car and flew up from there.

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Easton. Taught a 3 day through the Easton School and saw lots of old friends, made a few new. I had 9 students going in but by the time I got there 3 dropped out. I'm not sure how people do these things but there should be a minimum penalty of half the fee for backing out in the last week. Airfare ain't cheap. However, it was a good class, filled with enthusiastic middle level students which makes my job so much easier.

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From there I went to stay with friend Hai-ou and her husband Henry near Annapolis. We went to the National Museum in DC for further inspiration where I got to see another of my favorites. A Sargent painting of a woman on a couch. Simple but so f-in good. If I could pick one painting to own, this would be it. I am convinced that if I only had the magic Sargent brushes I could paint like him. And the rich parents. And the 4 year tutelage of Carolus Duran in France. And people who wear clothes like that. And huge buckets of talent.