Email marciaswilson@verizon.net

I made this SELF PORTRAIT AS QUEEN for an April 2007 group show -- "PEACEABLE QUEENDOM" -- at the Englewood NJ Library. I used a small hand mirror to paint myself in oils, size 8x10" oil on canvas. I looked at Lucien Freud's brilliant portrait of Queen Elizabeth II for the crown.

Since I used to think of my mother and maternal grandmother as queens, it was most amusing to put myself in the same role -- a woman who must be obeyed.

Another painting for the same April 2007 art show, only this time I felt I should be holding something so I added a cat. I used to have at least one cat but my current dogs, alas, don't have any manners when it comes to cats. How i miss them! Nothing more beautiful to paint than a cat.

I think I could have done a better job on my face if I had used a larger mirror; maybe when I get it back from the show I'll work on the eyes.

Bailey is an English setter whom I find irresistible, when it comes to painting. He belongs to another artist who dares not walk him past my booth for fear I will take more photographs and paint him yet again. This is a small 8x10" painting that I started in acrylic and finished in oils. So far I have showed you two queen paintings that were painted from life, and now I am showing you a dog painting that was painted from a photograph.

Here is another 8x10 inch oil dog painting on canvas that I painted in April 2007. I photographed this short haired red dachshund in my booth at the Hoboken art show, and painted him at home, at an easel in my kitchen.

Yet another very small (8x10") painting is this self portrait of myself as a child, painted April 2007 from my imagination. When I "make up" a painting from my head it takes a LOT longer than painting from life or from a photograph, but I enjoy the experience. The result looks more like folk art.

Two of my favorite artists -- Dan Pressley the woodcarver and Jacob Knight the painter-- could be classified as folk artists. Good folk art to me seems straightforward and pure, guileless.

I am wearing a purple smocked dress in this self portrait, one made by my grandmother when I was about 3 years old. At the time my sister and I hated wearing our matching dresses because we did not like the deep purple color, yet Mother made us wear them for formal occasions. My favorite dress was a bright red sailor dress, yet I repeatedly paint myself as a child in the purple one.

The bow in the hair is a tribute to Derain who has a charming portrait of a child in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I greatly admire portraits by him, and Vlaminck, and Van Gogh, and Matisse, and of course the late self portraits by Bonnard.

Here are a few oils that I am working on in September, 2004. This 9x12 oil was painted from a photo of my daughter's boyfriend's dog, named Kitty. His dog has a "rubber" face and she is a very good model for me.

I love painting animals from photographs. People see my pet portraits at art shows and ask me to paint their dog, cat or ferret. I charge 350 for an 8x10 size, or 450 for 11x14, plus usps priority mail postage.

Prints of any of my paintings can be ordered for 10 plus postage. Just email me and ask.

Another Kitty oil on canvas, this one 11x14 inches. Kitty lived in San Francisco until her untimely death at age 13. My daughter used to send me photos from her cell phone. I liked the fact that they were blurry because I could use my imagination. In this photo kitty was begging to get on the bed, but I changed the background to grass.

I used a combination of oil in tubes with brushes and oil paint in stick form when I made this painting. I have a box of each and use them interchangeably.....

My daughter's dog, Boris, is a mixed breed from Hawaii that she picked up on a visit. His mother gave birth to a litter of pups while she was tied up by a chain in some hovel in the hills, and my daughter "rescued" this one before they all went to the pound. Boris is a very intelligent and loving dog, with a "wolfie" personality. He sleeps in the closet and likes to howl.

Updating this page in 2007 my daughter reports that Boris is the best dog she ever had. He is extremely wise and well behaved. He gets along with all other dogs, yet protects her property. Hhe is able to discern friends from intruders and alerted the family to two home invasions earlier this year. If I were looking for a perfect dog, I would look for a dog like Boris when going to the local animal shelter.

Here is another Boris painting, also done from my daughter's cell phone photo. He looks a little older mysterious here.

Here I have combined a tree made up from my head with a dog that was inspired by a photo of Kitty on her back. I "sold" this 9x12 oil on canvas to an NYU student in New York City. Unfortunately, she did not keep her promise to pay for it.

Memory paintings are far more time consuming for me. Here I am remembering my grandma Sandmeyer (nee Almira May Stowell) quilting. However, what started out as a memory is turning out to be a fantasy composition. My grandmother quilted in the church basement, at a quilting bee, and there was no patio door behind her. She had a bird, but never a cat, unless it was on the farm where she grew up. The painting just suggested things to me, one part to the other, and now it's finished.

In 2005 I sold this painting to a California lawyer and his wife.

Another made-up theme is "Woman Selling her Soul to the Devil," which I have also been working on for a very long time. It is size 9x12, oil on canvas. During the Wickford R.I. art show my talented neighbor, Joel Beckwith, worked on the devil and I owe him thanks for making him so scary.

I started this 16x20 oil on canvas in 2002 but was not satisfied enough to continue working on it. I picked it up again in December, 2003, and finished it in 2005. I sold it to a talented book artist and writer friend named Mary Olive.

It is a memory of a day when I was about 10 years old, visiting in Clarks Summit, Penna, going to church with my grandmother. She sang very loudly, and on the way home told me she wished she had taken up the career of "choir singer," instead of goodness knows what since all she did was sit home and read the bible all day. But she had been a music major at Irving Seminary in Mechanicsburg Pa, class of 1899, so maybe there was musical talent there buried deep inside, so deep I could not recognize it in church and remember only feeling embarrassed.

Here it is December 2003. Time to post some more paintings in progress. Here is a 16x20 oil on canvas of Betsy and Me. Betsy was my bull terrier when I was a child. I meant to paint me and my sister playing but it turned out to be two versions of myself.

I sold the first Betsy painting to some collectors in Edmonds, Washington and right away started another version, which I sold to a nurse in New Jersey, so here is version #3, still in progress, size 12 by 16. I sold this one as a secret gift so I can't say to whom, but it is now called Hide and Seek.

This version of Mommy Sleeping. I meant it to be me looking at my mother, but it turns out to be more like me looking at myself.

This 16x20 oil on canvas started when I was flipping thru an art magazine and saw a painting of some fleshy fat nudes called "Fulcrum" by Jenny Saville, a wonderful English artist. Fulcrum showed a bunch of fat nudes all squished together like sardines, and one had her fat forearms pressed on either side of her face, grotesque but fascinating like the work of Lucien Freud.

I had a flash of my mother lying naked in bed, which is odd since as a child my mother was never fat, and I never saw her naked in bed. So this was a flash of a FEELING. My feelings towards my mother are a combination of love and great anger, which would account for my desire to paint her as a huge fat woman in bed.

The angry feelings disappated and my painting ended up more of a story about distance between a mother and a child. Another odd thing is the mother ended up looking like me, so it became a painting of me as a child looking at me as an adult. and it's kind of sweet and wistful, dont you think?

Here is yet another version of Mommy Sleeping, size 18x24, done almost entirely with oil paint in stick form. It took two months to finish this version in February, 2004. Odd how I start out painting my mother in bed and end up painting myself. I sold these two versions of Mommy Sleeping to some collectors in Washington state.

I like this version the best, but then I always like my most recent paintings the most. I start out painting one to remind me of something I just sold, and end up with a totally new version. I painted this version in my "off" season so I had time to finish it, at least.

Here is another version of Mommy Sleeping, 18x24 inches, which I sold to a physician and his family on the New Jersey shore. Once again, it has turned out to be me looking at myself, back in the bedroom I remember as my mother's in Leonia N.J. The morning light is coming in the window. This painting is less "finished" than the previous two, and some people like my paintings better this way. It's all a matter of taste. Left to my own devices, I can paint over a painting for months and months and months.

This version is lighter, and has more atmosphere than the previous versions. I like them all.

This is a painting of my grandmother holding a cocker spaniel. I started it in Carol Stronghilos' portrait class at the Old Church Cultural Center School of Art in Demarest, NJ. The model was a young man. I was trying to "let go of the object." which means I was trying not to "tell a story" but just push the paint around and see what happens. Carol had been telling the class about a painter called Auerbach who paints kind of smushy faces of thick paint. She said that he had let go of the idea of making a realistic face, saying that was a kind of "trick" anyway, since paintings are NOT people, but just paint and canvas. What's the point of trying to "trick" people into thinking it's the real thing. I guess like Magritte painting "c'est n'pas un pipe." above a painting of a pipe. It was not a pipe, but a painting, after all.

I was stroking on the paint (using paint sticks and then turpentine), thinking about colors and shadows and this and that and how boring it would be to just have a face of a man who is no relation to me. When the pose changed after 20 minutes, I flipped the canvas upside down and painted right over the first version, still thinking la de da dont think of the object just make the painting interesting and i'm doing the lights and colors and directions and this and that and suddenly my grandmother pops into my head and it's as if she is saying "I have come to saveeeeeeeee your painting" so I just painted her in, and she is smiling with me at our little "joke," the fact that I painted her while looking at a totally different model. I sold this to a doctor in Tenafly, N.J., who bought it as a gift for his daughter.

During another pose of the young man model (who was in profile to me) I painted a portrait of my grandmother as a young woman. I had to smile to myself, thinking of how I was studying the face of a young man and painting my grandmother, but what interested me was the different colors and tones of light on the skin. The rest came from my imagination. This is only stage one of the painting, but I sold it to a collector in Washington state. I plan to finish it before mailing it out.

Here is a photo of the portait class critique, when we all put our work out for discussion. Mine are the only ones that are not of a young male model.

This Indians oil on canvas (9x12) was started about 2001, to "replace" one I had sold. I can't remember what that one looked like or who bought it, but this one must be similar.

An even longer time ago I did an etching (about 1980) of a woman tied to the stake being shot at by Indians with arrows. I called it "sibling rivalry." That one was inspired by an early American wood engraving I saw in a Dover book. In 1983, I did an etching called "mother as martyr," where I am slumped on a tree, being shot thru with arrows by my (now ex) husband and adolescent children. The source for that one was true life, haha. If I find copies of those etchings I will print them on this page, but it might take a while to find the plates and print them.

I love genealogy and after researching my mother's pennsylvania ancestors in the 1700's I got interested in Indian capture narratives. I'm sure that's where the idea came from to paint a settler being burned at the stake by Indians.

This painting is not finished but here is how it looks in December, 2003.

Here is a little 8x10 oil on canvas called walking the dog. It was inspired by a blob and some drips on the canvas and I went on from there. I guess it could represent me and one of my dogs. I gave it to a dear friend of mine, Ann Davis, in exchange for some of her wonderful jewelry.

I got the better part of that deal, but she has a sweet little canvas, don't you think? I hope she likes it over the years. My hope is that my paintings bring enjoyment to people, even comfort, although I don't know how that can come about. It gives me comfort to paint them, though.

I like this unfinished 18x24 oil on canvas of a screaming queen, but she looks more like a singer than a screamer. I will fix that. An alternate title for this painting is "my mother as queen."

The pug dogs represent me and my sister, but they could just as easily be my stepfather, seen twice.

I used paint sticks for this painting, and talk about them further down the page. I used to draw and paint queens a lot, especially Queen Elizabeth I. It took a while before I realized I was drawing my mother, who had to be obeyed. I sold this painting to a woman in Deluth, Mn.

I am putting a lot of my unfinished oil paintings on my web page today. My current work is the most interesting to me, especially things in progress. This is a 9x12 oil on canvas of a fiddler playing a tune to a woman and child. I don't know what inspired it but here it is, as of October 4, 2003. I will continue to work on it.

Here's a self portrait with dad, unfinished, as of October 1, 2003. It shows my father as a "big shot" off to work with his important briefcase and three-piece suit, me looking sort of bewildered and lost. As a child I thought my father the most dazzling and important man in the world. I never quite forgave him for leaving my mother, my sister and me...although in hindsight I think life was probably better without him.

This painting reminds me of the work of Charlotte Salomon. I admire her gouache watercolors very much. I sold this painting to a woman in Maryland.

Here is a second version of Daddy and Me, on a smaller scale since this oil on canvas is 16x20. I am using oil paint sticks on this. You can see that even tho I do the same theme, my paintings are different. I sold this painting to some collectors in Washington state.

I just realized this is not a painting of Daddy and me, but Daddy and my sister. She looks like she must have felt when Daddy did not come to her wedding to give her away, but sent a telegram from NYC which is less than 10 miles away from home, where she was married in December, 1957.

Here is a 16x20 oil of a Day in the Park just evolving. I don't remember the inspiration for this painting. It was either started from one of my assistant's doodles, or I made it up from out of my head. But it appears to be some women and a baby in a park, and as of November 2003, I like it.

Here is another oil on canvas, a man on a horse, size 8x10. This is how it looked November 2, 2003. I scratched thru the oil paint (paint sticks) with a small mat-cutting blade. The theme is similar to an etching I had made. I like to draw and paint men riding horses, because they're usually pursuing something.

This 8x10 oil on canvas is barely begun. It appears to be a mother chasing her child, with her hand raised as if to spank. That comes pretty close to defining my relationship with my mother.

This bride and groom in a grove of trees, size 16x20, oil on canvas, is done almost entirely with paint sticks, scraped away with the pallet knife in layers of colors. The bride reminds me of a mediaeval madonna and child statue, altho it is purely coincidental and of course there is no child in this painting.

The image reminds me that I have always loved being dependent upon a man. "Yeah, men and women are different, aren't they," the boyfriend once said to me.

I sold this painting to an opthomalogist and wife from south Jersey.
Here is a new version of Bride and Groom, oil on canvas just begun on a 16x20 canvas, in November 2003. I used paint sticks and turpentine on this one. Of course, it is far from finished, but I got the mood right and that is the most important thing for me.

I started using paint sticks in July 2003, having bought them in an art store while waiting for my daughter to finish shopping. They are very expensive, but lots of fun. Like painting with lipstick, and they work exactly the same as oil paint in tubes.

I buy mine them from The Fine Art Store, aka Rochester Art Supply, because they match Pearl Paint's prices and seem more grateful for my business.

The photograph of me working was taken by Mel Rabinowitz at the Washington Square Outdoor art show in NYC September, 2003.

My idea of a good book is PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen. It inspired this 16x20 oil painting. Of course, Elizabeth had dark hair and this bride is more like Lucille Ball, and she would probably slip off the horse in real life, and the horse is oddly proportioned, but it is my idea of "happy ever after," two people riding off together with bright hopes.

I did not look at anything but just started painting, with a brush and tubes. I ended up using some paint sticks at the end, which seems to be my medium of choice these days. Of course, as I was painting I thought of myself and the boyfriend, but the bride bears a closer resemblance to my mother.

I tend to keep working on my paintings forever, but as of September this one is sold to a housewife and mother from Lincoln, Massachusetts, so I guess it is finished now.

When I was a child I visited my grandparents every summer, two weeks with one set, two with the other. This is a memory of dinner with my grandparents, Harry and Vena Hubler, in Clarks Summit, Pa. I am about 13 years old in this painting, sitting in the lower front center.

My grandparents are on either side of me, with two cocker spaniels. (They only had one dog, but I made two. It reminds me of how Grandpa would come down and feed the dog breakfast, and a few minutes later, Granny would come into the room and feed him all over again. He grew fat and roly poly, with tangled hairballs in his ears.)

My mother and sister are in the back, having a good laugh between them. They were a team, and I often felt like I was on the other side.

In this painting I have made my grandfather pay attention to ME, which he willingly did. He was generous with his time and attention to everyone and we all loved him. He is holding out a dish of yellow corn from his garden, where he also grew potatoes, tomatoes, and green beans.

My grandmother looks a little out of this world, because she was. She used the bible as an escape, I suspect. And also as a way to judge others. Perhaps she is grouchy because she is sitting next to my mother, whom she found especially irksome. But she loved animals, and I believe she loved me. She praised my painting and framed some watercolors I did. She had a lampshade covered with butterflies, but she explained that she never killed them, just collected them when they died naturally.

My grandparents are a wonderful memory for me and I miss them. But in my paintings, they come alive again. I sold this painting to a couple in Edmonds, Washington, and I miss it.
Whenever I miss a painting, I start another. So here is a new version of dinner with my grandparents, size 16x20. I used a lot of paint sticks in starting this one, and it is far from finished as of November, 2003.

The quilter (18x24 oil on canvas) shows my paternal grandmother making a quilt. She was a very quiet minister's wife who spent her life serving others, so I painted her in mousy colors, but the quilt is very bright, showing perhaps a more lively inner life. My only basis for that is remembering my grandparents' bed springs squeaking. I was puzzled as to how come they were allowed to jump on the bed at night when I was not allowed to do that during the day.

I have been working on this painting for a few months now and it has changed a lot. Finally it is starting to feel like my grandmother, so that makes me happy. After all, the point of making "memory" oil paintings without looking at a photograph is to bring to mind the feeling of a person. I sold this painting to a knitter from Englewood, NJ.

This unfinished oil is painted over an old canvas I found in the trash. Of course, after all the layers of paint, the previous painting (a seated nude, seen from the back) is no longer visible.

I started this by blotting my pallate on the canvas, which gave a symmetrical medly of colors (because I use folded glossy paper for a canvas, so it looks like a colorful inkblot). After all the paint I have added subsequently, though, that initial pattern is obscured.

I kept adding paint and scraping parts of it it off with a pallate knife until I arrived at this scene, which looks like a screaming man and dog in a valley of trees. It is not finished yet. I like "discovering" pictures from pushing paint around. It is an adventure, and the trip this painting is taking me on is not over, as of September 2003.

I have to work on this painting some more. The man looks like he is screaming because somebody has cut off his jewels. I will have to go back and make sure everything is where it ought to be.

Here is another 18x24 oil painting in the same feeling, made up from my head, on a used canvas from the salvation army. Some day my prince will come is one of many themes that come to mind when I look at this painting.

Of course, my prince has come, in the form of the boyfriend. Our relationship is flawed, sigh, but if I found the perfect man, what would he do with me-- woman who never cleans, never cooks, and is terribly self absorbed?

I used oils and paint sticks to work on this painting and I'm not finished yet. I was thinking of Bonnard's magnificent painting of the circus horse when I did the white horse.

Yet another version of my self portrait in the bathtub is taking shape. This 16x20 oil on canvas is about version #5, and not finished but here is what it looked like May 10, 2003. I sold this to a collector in Havre de Grace, Md.

My oils seem to take forever to finish. Here is a little 8x10 oil painting of a mermaid that is painted over about 3 paintings beneath, the most recent being a horizontal mermaid. But this one is so cute I think it is almost finished. The texture, btw, comes from putting on paint and scraping it off w/ a pallete knife. This is especially effective when the underneath paint is a very different color from the one on top, but I don't always plan it that way on purpose. Of course the underneath paint has to be completely dry for this to work. Here is how she looks in August 2003, but she is not finished.

Here's another little 8x10 mermaid oil on canvas. (When I do themes, I often do them more than once.) I had an oil painting of a nude that I had made about two years ago, but it wasn't "happening." I painted it at the Art Center of Northern NJ in their Tuesday night painting and sketching class, taught by Peregrine Higgins. What to do with it. Ah ha. I turned it into a mermaid. It is not finished as of May, 2003, but coming along. I will change one of her arms to my favorite position behind her head, and keep working on the background so it looks as though she is sitting on a rock next to the sea. I sold this painting to North End Trilogy gallery in Barnegat Light, NJ.

Here I am working on the little mermaid behind my booth at the Summit NJ art show in May, 2003. The photo was taken by Bob Currie with a Nikon camera.

My last 8x10" oil painting of a mermaid is this one. It is heavily textured from scraping paint off and putting it on again. There is probably another painting or two underneath this one, but I can't remember which one. This painting is not finished, but here is how she looks in May, 2003.

Sometimes my assistant helps me with my paintings. He strokes in a background and I do the rest. Here he is painting over an old oil on canvas of an old woman and child, supposed to be my oldest daughter and her babysitter.

After he finished the background, my helper said "mayo yeh-yeh" which means "no more grandpa" in Chinese. The painting we were painting over was supposed to be Miss Huber with my eldest child, but my boyfriend thought it looked like Jimmy Carter. So I now it's a floral fantasy instead. Sorry I deleted the photo of the result, and I can't seem to find it. The problem with computers is files get LOST forever, sigh.

This is a better example of a collaborative painting. My assistant put in the first 8 or 10 strokes, and I worked from there. It appears to be an orange man with a frantic dog. My assistant started this painting with a few deft strokes. I find this system very inspirational and freeing. It is like "finding a painting in a rock," when you stare at something until images seem to come up inside it. I enjoy finding images out of "nothing." Here's how the painting looks in August, 2003. I sold it to a law firm in New York City.

Sometimes I get bogged down and a painting is going nowhere. That's when my assistant comes in and lends a helping hand, adding a few strokes to loosen me up. He has chosen oil sticks, in this case, which act just like oil paint in tubes. [whoops. once again, i have lost the image! too bad. it shows sammy painting a big x on the canvas, as i recall. mw]

Here is the finished result, after much more paint and oil sticks and scraping away with the pallet knife.

This 18x24 "hot dance" oil on canvas was started in 2002 and finished March 2003. It comes from my imagination and was meant to transmit a feeling of lively energy and happiness. I sold this painting to a knitting-teacher friend of mine who says she loves it. (Isn't that nice!)

This 9x12 oil on canvas is of a red dachshund in honor of my daughter who raises dachshunds in Hilo, Hawaii. She has red, black and tan, and dapple varieties and loves them all. Unlike most breeders, she does not cage her dogs but lets them run free in the house and yard. That's why they have such good dispositions.

Here is a 9x12 inch oil on canvas of a red-haired boy in bed. I started out to do a self portrait in bed w/ my two dogs, but it ended up being a little boy. I guess I was thinking of my son when he was little, or maybe my grandson.

Most of my paintings are done from my imagination, without looking at a photo. They look a little amateurish, I guess, but I still want to keep painting from my mind's eye instead of looking at a photograph. It's more of an adventure that way.

Sometimes painting for me is a kind of comfort, and this is one of those paintings. I was trying to paint my little bedroom with the two dogs, and me in bed. I did not expect to turn out looking like a red haired little boy, but once I get involved in a painting it kind of takes off. So even tho this is not me in the painting, I know what that boy is thinking and he is feeling peaceful and safe.

I sold this painting to a widow who is going to give it to her son.

This 9x12 oil on canvas shows me having tea with Miss Huber. It is a fantasy. I don't think I ever looked like that and Miss Huber died in 1975 at age 87. But I like to paint things that are comforting. It is nice to imagine myself having tea with Miss Huber, and what's wrong with giving her a nice string of pearls and matching earrings?

Cinderella gets a new dress from her fairy godmother in this tiny 8x10 oil that is almost finished as of November, 2002. What can I say? I did a lot of scratching with my pallet knives and worked on this for a few months. I just keep putting on paint and scratching it off until it looks like something.

I started this 18x24 inch Sun Dance oil painting so long ago that now, in October 2002, I dont recall my original inspiration. Last summer I started a lot of dancing figures; it must have been the heat. The fiddler came from a memory of Chagall, although his fiddlers are usually men with black hats.

I suppose the woman is me, and the two dogs are mine. The man is the boyfriend, but he would be mortified to be dancing without any clothes on. I don't think while I am working but it probably represents life.

I worked on this painting a long time but tried to stay loose. I am very pleased with the result and should have charged more but sometimes things get sold before I have time to think. I sold it to a patent attorney in Frederick, Md.

Speaking of no clothes, this is a self portrait of myself in the bathtub, aka the birth of Venus. It is not finished as of October 2002. I have to work on the dog and the walls and the colors and everything. It is inspired by Bonnard's many paintings of his wife in the tub. The painting is 18x24 inches, oil on canvas. There is a smaller version of this same theme farther down the page. I sold this painting to a New Jersey jeweler friend of mine.

The problem with starting a painting six months or more before it is finished is I forget what my original intention was. But looking at this 16x20 oil on canvas "Pastoral" I would say I was thinking of Bonnard and also my daughter in law and grandson, and I guess I am represented by the third person in back. Of course I have made us all slender and lovely. The landscape is noplace in particular. Perhaps I should have thought about someplace I knew, but I didn't.
This painting was purchased and paid for by a delightful printer in Edmonds WA. Look at how nicely he framed it. My paintings usually improve with a nice frame.

My third Valkyrie oil painting is a 16x20 oil on canvas just like the others, but I like it better. Here is what it looked like May 17, 2003 when I worked on it at the Summit NJ art fair. I sold this painting to a writer in Connecticut.

Here is my fourth version of a 16x20 oil on canvas Valkyrie in progress. It has a long way to go but here is how it looked October 1, 2003. Each one is different. Similar, but different.

Here I am painting on the Valkyrie behind my booth at the Summit NJ art show May 17, 2003. The photograph was taken by Bob Currie.

I call this oil painting (size 18x24 inches) "Women who run with the dogs." It is July 2002 and I am not sure it is finished. I have been working on it a while. I don't remember what was my inspiration; sometimes I just push the paint around until it looks like something.

I sold this painting to a woman who said it reminds her of freedom from a formerly oppressive relationship. Isn't that a nice goal!

Here is another self portrait in the tub, finished July 2002. It is small, I think 9x12 inches, and features me relaxing, with my dog on the mat. All fictitious, since I take showers only, and my dogs hate water and won't be caught dead near the tub when there is water in it. But this is the way i FEEL.

I sold this painting to a young artist in my home town who I met thru the internet.

Another oil painting from my subconscious, this one of a red cow running through trees with a person on its back, and a dog alongside. It is an 18x24 oil on canvas. I sold this painting to a gallery owner and sculptor from Havre de Grace, Md.

This 18x24" oil on canvas, called The Big Chase, evolved, like a doodle, from me slapping paint on an empty canvas in the back of art class led by that great teacher, Carol Stronghilos. I could hear her yelling at some other student to "Get a BIG brush and use some PAINT!"

I got quite invigorated and slammed some red and ochre onto the canvas and then sliced it back with my pallet knife and before I knew it I had a dog chasing a frantic lady in a little dress. Then came the hard part, fiddling w/ the painting over a period of months while I tried to make it "work."

I started this painting in June or July and sold it in October 2002, without photographing it in its finished state. So this website photo is actually patched up from a fragment of the finished painting pasted onto a photo of the unfinished version.

Perhaps the buyer, a Maryland engraver who did the back of the 10 dollar bill, will email me a photo because it is one of my favorite paintings.

Here is an 18x24 oil of my daughter in law and my grandson. I wanted to do a painting of us having lunch together but left myself out. I used a photograph to lay out the initial sketch of the foreground figures but then had some fun adding the still life on the table and darkening the foreground, and the woman with the apron in the background is "stolen" straight from Bonnard. I saw that figure in the background of one of his paintings and was struck by how simply he was able to demonstrate a gesture without any detail at all. We just know that woman is pouring tea.

I am not finished with this painting yet. I just want to work on it some more. But it's been fun to do. I have lots more photos of my grandson and daughter in law and thought now is a good time to make use of them as inspiration for one of my favorite things -- impressionist style interiors.

Another portrait of my grandmother. done without looking at a photo. It is an 11x14 oil painting. My boyfriend says it looks as though she can't find her way home. I sold this to a woman in NYC who said she could relate to that feeling. She told me it hangs in her bedroom.

This 16x20 oil came straight out of my head but I was thinking of a book I had as a child of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales, and there was a lovely painting of a mermaid on one of the pages. I thought I was finished with this painting but now I think I would like to change a few things. It was fun trying to paint water and fish and make it interesting. I thought of Delacroix and how he was able to make a rowboat at sea very interesting by not using a flat horizon, but filling up almost the whole canvas with water and diagional motion.

I sold this painting to a school teacher in New Castle, Pa.

I am not finished with this painting of a woman selling her soul to the devil. There is another version of the same theme at the bottom of this page unless I delete it at a later date.... I am trying to make this painting interesting and a little spooky but don't think I have yet succeeded. I am trying to think of the figures as landscape which is a quote I read in a book on Impressionist paintings in the Musee d'Orsay in paris, next to a painting of a woman with an umberella on a hillside by Manet. It is a 16x20 oil.

Tiger Maiden is inspired by Delacroix who did quite a few gypsy women attacked by tigers. This oil on canvas is 11 by 14 inches, oil on canvas. I guess it could represent the perils of being a vulnerable young woman alone in the jungle out there...

I sold this to an accountant in Jersey City, NJ. She now owns quite a few of my paintings and seems happy with them. I am very pleased with this painting myself and I'm pleased that it has found a good home.

Sometimes I play a game with myself by painting things i dont know how to paint. In this case, I made an 11x14 oil painting on canvas of my paternal grandmother without looking at any photographs.

This painting succeeds on one level, just to have it feel like her. I wanted all muted colors to show how quiet and shy she was, and it is semi-successful for that. She never liked pets so what could I do to describe her, well in the tiny space left I decided to have her sewing a little part of a bright quilt.

I sold this painting to the family of a French-speaking buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue.

This oil of a figure on horseback with two dogs was inspired by Delacroix. I I worked on this painting over about 2 yrs, but most of my paintings go on that long. When I say 2 yrs, I dont mean every day. I work on a painting as far as I want to go, and put it aside. Later, sometimes much later, I pick it up again. Sometimes I paint over the whole thing, other times I make major revisions. I don't even remember what this painting looked like to begin with, except it did have two people on back of the horse, a clown and a woman. Some famous writer, when talking about rewriting, said, "Kill your darlings; kill all of them!" This is a perfect example of that. This painting was finished Aril 2002. It is small, 11 x 14 inches. I sold it to John Harris who paints large oils of water. I will try and remember to link his web page to mine.

This portrait of my dog Mookie was actually the first of my dog portraits. I did it without looking at the dog or any photograph, unlike the pug painting where I looked at quite a few photos of pugs to refresh my memory.

So this little 8x10 inch oil painting has more of a folk art feel to it. The dog resembles some kind of cross between an intense doberman and a german shepherd. And of course I have my favorite dancing-tulips wallpaper in the background. My daughter has asked me to reserve this painting for her but I decided to sell it to a lovely woman from Virginia instead.

This 16x20 oil painting is called The Assumption of Bertha Huber. It is the third version I have done of this theme. Miss Huber was godmother to my three children. She died at age 87 in August, 1975 and I told the children I would paint what it "really" looked like.

Miss Huber was from M½nich so I know she was expecting nice blonde angels waiting for her in heaven. The previous versions had a lot of cherubim but I found that tiring so this time I opted for two big ones instead. Actually, in the first version I also had little pug dog angels because Miss Huber was very fond of our dogs.

At the bottom of the painting is supposed to be me and the three children weeping for her at the nursing home where she had expired just moments before our arrival. It was a very good nursing home, btw, named Calvary, in the Bronx. My daughter has asked for this painting also. So I guess I will be starting version number four before long... I always like to have at least one nice version for myself of themes I really really like. But these versions change a great deal, one from the other.

Another version of Red Riding Hood. I'll keep making them as long as people buy them because I always want to have one at hand. This oil painting is 16 by 20 inches. It was painted in November, 2001. I think it's pretty cute.

Please forgive the shadow along the top. I took a photo of this in my kitchen using available light.

I sold this painting to a craftsperson who makes ceramic wind chimes. She has a daughter and a black german shepherd and this reminds her of them. I am always delighted when I sell stuff to a fellow craftsperson or artist. We have a certain comraderie, having withstood wind, rain, insufferable heat, and all sorts of adventures together.

Here is my latest version of Red Riding Hood, unfinished and a long way to go in October, 2003. It is 18x24 inches and has been painted mostly with paint sticks, or pigment sticks. That gives it a fuzzy kind of pastel or crayon look. I got the idea of the rear view of the wolf from a children's book illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger. She's hot stuff. I sold this painting to a lovely lady from Frederick, Md.

This painting shows a bunch of guys in pointy hats groping their way towards the light. It is an old painting that used to have an angel in it but I changed it in November 2001 to the way it is now. After I finished it I thought about people in the World Trade Center trying to find a way out. But when I did it I was just thinking of mankind muddling our way through life. It is oil on canvas, 16 by 20 inches.

I sold this to an artist from Mechanicville NY who makes stone and metal sculptures. Here's what it looks like in a new frame in his home.

Here's a photo of me in my booth in November, 2001. As you can see, I am a very old woman. When I started doing art shows, I was 33. Now I am 64 and people ask if I need help setting up my booth.

I am putting a check in my wallet, which accounts for my smile.

If you look closely you can see a painting behind my head of a little girl (me) jumping rope with two dogs. I sold that to a filmmaker from Somers, NY. The painting is 18x24 inches. I was not sure it was finished but he said it was so I signed it and he took it off as a present for a woman. (I wonder if she liked it.)

Here is a new version of one of my favorite themes-- the Tooth Fairy. It is very small, only 8x10 inches. I think it is finally finished. I started it last summer but finished it this November, 2001. I think I sold this painting but darned if I can remember to whom.

Here I am painting at an outdoor art show in October, 2001. I am working on an oil painting of the Tooth Fairy, and in the background you can see an unfinished version of Cinderella.

Here is a self portrait in my bedroom with my two dogs-- a small 11x14 oil on canvas, started in 2001 and "finished" in July 2002, unless I work on it some more later.

I made this up out of my head, imagining myself in my little bedroom with my two dogs on the floor. Bed is one of my favorite places to be, especially with my head near the window so I can hear all the night noises and feel the light of the day. I sold this painting to somebody but darned if I can remember whom.

Even smaller is this 8x10 inch oil of my dogs fighting in the back yard. Of course anybody who has dogs probably realizes they are not really fighting but playing. The house is supposed to be my house and the yard is supposed to be my yard, but I made the yard look bigger than it really is.

One lady looked at this painting and said, "Oh look at the dog fighting with his shadow!" I hadn't meant it that way, but it's an idea.

I sold this painting through RIVERBANK Gallery in Stockton, NJ.

This is a self portrait of myself as a young woman with curly blonde hair. Now I never had curly hair, let alone blonde hair, and I never had a bosom like that or a dress like that and I only had a dachshund like that for a week until she killed my parakeet, but in painting, one can take liberties.

This painting started out with a memory from the past: I remember tearfully telephoning Miss Huber in the middle of the night. I had just had a big fight with my husband and was very upset.

"Come on over and I'll make you some tea with schnapps," she said. So I hopped a cab from 68th to 82nd street at something like 4 o'clock in the morning and Miss Huber was like a mother to me.

This painting was very satisfying for me to do because it is a memory of me feeling cared for and loved at a time when my heart was "broken." I sold this painting in October 2001 to a lovely young science teacher from Brooklyn.

I was looking at an asian brush painting of branches when i started this oil painting of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. The interaction of the branches gave me the organization of this piece. I just "saw" my images and went for it. The oil on canvas is 18 by 24 and was painted in 2001. I started with orange paint over a linseed oil-ish kind of wet canvas and scraped away my initial images with a pallet knife. Then I went back and added glazes of colors. I sold this painting in October 2001 to a lingerine retailer from Brooklyn.

Sometimes people ask me if I look at anything when I paint and the answer is usually no. I prefer to "copy" from the inside of my head. It's extremely satisfying to paint what I don't know how to paint and draw what I don't know how to draw.

It took me a long time to get to the stage where I find painting "relaxing," something I fantasize about doing when I imagine the most peaceful, enjoyable part of the day. I have my oil paints right next to the kitchen table and telephone, and my unfinished paintings hanging on the kitchen wall right next to me so I can sit and listen to the radio, or watch tv, or talk on the phone and work away with the light of the windows over my shoulder. Just as nice is painting outside at an art show where I can listen to people comment in my booth while I work.

Being a "real" artist is like being a real actor. Both require taking your pants off in public. The great drama teacher Stella Adler used to end one of her lectures to students holding her skirt up over her head, revealing her underwear, saying, "An actor HAS NO SHAME!"

This 9x12 inch bride painting of the Sleeping Bride started out quite differently with a clown and a ballerina and gradually changed. Sometimes I have two or three paintings underneath the finished version. This photo has been cropped at the sides very slightly. (Sorry-- I didn't hold the camera straight.)

During a previous state, the man had a top hat on and my boyfriend quipped, "Who is that? Eleanor Roosevelt dancing with Abe Lincoln?" so I changed the hat to this kind of bowler shape. I am not sure what this painting means. A person in my booth said it reminded him of Chagall. I kind of like it. It is a dream and I am the bride.

Of course I am the bride! When I was a kid I had paper dolls and the bride doll was always the best. Being a bride meant all your problems were solved. I explain this to the boyfriend but he doesn't take the hint. Tonight I asked him if, at age 68, he has ever regretted not having a wife. "Nope," he said.

Here is a portrait of my boyfriend as a clown, with two dogs. Originally I had the clown scowling but when I repainted it with the dogs, I had to add a smile because the boyfriend always smiles around dogs. My father used to smile around new cars. I noticed in old photo albums my father was smiling near cars but not usually when he was near my mother. But I digress.

My college friend from North Salem NY took this one home also. I think she liked it because my black dog Mookie looks like a miniature vershion of her German shepherd. I made Mookie much smaller than she really is because, like I said previously, you can do anything in paint; it's not real life.

The painting is very small, only 8x10, oil on canvas of course.

I guess, from the size of this woman's midsection, this 18x24 oil is another self portrait. I am running through the woods and my dogs are playing in the foreground. But if I call this the joys of middle age, it might be appropriate because it looks sort of like summer turning into fall, and the dogs play fighting could be a metaphor of the dangers lurking ahead of old age and its infirmities. Ah, but perhaps I read too much into this. When I started it, it was a young girl with a jumprope, then a dancer, and then the dogs stopped dancing and started fighting, and the girl became a very small but fat woman.... that's how my paintings evolve.

I sold this painting to a schoolteacher in western Pennsylvania, the same person who asked for the bathtub one.

My friend Beverly Baur Mavus took this shot of paintings in my booth in August 2001.

This painting is something I started at least a year ago but reworked quite a lot. I worked mostly on changing the woman and the fiddling man and I also changed the background. You'd think I would remember every stage of a painting, but I don't. The nice thing about being forgetful, however, is that every day starts out completely fresh. This painting is about 11 by 14 inches, and it's on canvas, like all of my oils so far. As for influences on this painting, well Charles Schultz did some wonderful dancing Snoopy dogs, and Chagall did some wonderful fiddlers and those images are stored someplace in my memory bank occupying space that could maybe be better used to recognize people I meet on the street.

I sold this painting in the fall of 2001 to a sweet young thing from San Francisco who paid for it in faithful installments over the course of a year.

Here is my newest painting of Adam and Eve, oil on canvas, 9" by 12". It is made up out of my head and started by just washing the canvas with sepia and wiping it off. Then I went in and reworked the background with a yellow sky which has now been changed to tourquoise.

The expression of Eve came first; Adam was more difficult for me to do. I usually have the snake climbing up the trunk of the tree, but here it made more sense to have him horizontal in the branches. I took this photo with my digital camera on a bright sunny day so it has a lot of glare. Sorry.

I enjoy Biblical themes, one benefit from of all those years of Methodist Sunday school. This small 8x10 inch oil is yet another of my Jonah and the Whale paintings, inspired by a hammered aluminum sculpture that I saw in a book long ago by Asiru of Nigeria. He gave me the idea of a transparent ocean and Jonah's arms crossed in an attitude of resignation as he meets the whale. I don't think about technique but in frustration often end up scraping away layers of paint to reveal an under layer. That's what happened in the water and I like the effect. I think this is an older Jonah painting that I reworked this year. It may be from the year 2000. You know I have a lot of half finished and finished but yukky paintings hanging around my house and when I have nothing better to do I grab one and start to rework it. Some of them end up getting signed about three times, with different dates each time. I sold this painting to a very discerning man at Bell Port Long Island on July 4 2001 so I think I can say with finality that it is finished.

People often think this is a biblical theme, so I guess it is. It is a woman selling her soul to the devil. He is giving her coins with one hand and holding her soul in the other. I was thinking about one of my favorite paintings which is in the Frick Museum in New York City-- The Temptation of Christ by Duccio, an Italian painter from Sienna in the 15th century, or maybe the 14th. It is very tiny and shows Christ on top of a cliff with the devil behind him, a skinny little black figure as I recall. Of course, this painting is very different, but I was thinking about Duccio when I did it. If you scroll way down the page you'll see another (larger) version of this same subject. I really should delete stuff from my web page when I add new things (from the top, where the new things are), but maybe some of you will be interested to see different versions of the same themes. Some people say that artists paint a theme over and over because they want to make money. I think it's more because the artist wants to keep his favorite paintings with him and when one is gone (hopefully, sold) he has to replace it. My booth at art shows, after all, is my little art gallery, and I like to show off my favorite pieces there. Since I don't do reproductions I have to paint another original. I gave this painting to my daughter in Hawaii.

I have been taking painting lessons from Carol Stronghilos at the Old Church Cultural Center in Demarest, N.J. One of our assignments was to copy a painting from a master so this painting is after Matisse, but I added my own touches, changing the composition, colors, adding a cat, flowers and making the dog look like one of my own. Well-known painters often copied the masters, because there is so much to learn that way. In this painting Matisse taught me the joys of framing people with crooked trees. I sold this painting in July 2001 to a man and wife in Wickford, Rhode Island.

Here is a photo of Carol Stronghilos teaching her painting class in October 2001. Carol is experienced and wise and I agree with almost all of her opinions.

By the way, the red painting in the foreground is mine. I often start with a orange and red because it's easy to sketch in my shapes by wiping them away. Charles Chapman taught me that, but he used brown. I got the idea that my paintings would look brighter if I started with a better color, like orange. This is actually the beginning of another Red Riding Hood painting. It will look quite different when I am finished.

Now I am remembering my other favorite teachers, long gone but not forgotten: Robert Brackman at the Art Student's League, and Ralph Fabri at the National Academy of Design were inspirational. But I only could afford to take lessons for one month from Brackman back in 1972, and about the same amount of time from Fabri.

And of course the marvellous Adolf Katzenellenbogen (art history) and Concetta Scaravaglione of Vassar College. And my neighbor Charles S. Chapman, giving me lessons at age 13 in Leonia, NJ. He said I was the messiest painter he had ever taught and added that he had been teaching for almost 50 years.

This is a small (8x10") family portrait of myself as a child, on the extreme left, with my sister and my mother and our bull terrier, Betsy. My father is on his way to the office, where he stayed virtually all year, coming home for a couple of hours on Easter and Christmas. We got postcards from time to time, saying he was on a business trip.

Of course now I realize that he was maintaining a NYC apartment with a girlfriend, later to become his second wife.

My mother has a stiff upper lip. Denial was fashionable in the 30's and 40's, and my father held up his end by allowing her to charge our living expenses. I remember our soap and toilet paper arriving in a large cardboard box from B. Altman & Co in NYC. I have a big smile on my face, which may have been a little dose of denial as well.

I sold this painting in July 2001 to a Philadelphia artist and her attorney husband who said he is becoming fond of my mother thru my artistic renderings.

These oil paintings were finished on or before March 2000 and all are either 8 by 10 inches or 9 x 12 inches or 16 by 20 inches or 18 by 24 inches. I go to Pearl Paint and buy a large quantity of stretched canvases and sit in my kitchen painting, hanging them on the wall with pushpins. When they are more or less finished I put frames on them and move them into my car, ready to go to weekend art shows. Here is a self portrait of me watching television in my kitchen. Note my two dogs and cat. I painted this while my boyfriend was washing the dishes and just imagined what I must look like. I finished this painting in November 1999 and my little pit bull Dolores (standing next to the boyfriend at the sink) died a month later of bone cancer. I went to the pound and got a new dog the next day, who is in my newer paintings. The kitchen is the center of my universe, second only to being in my bed. I sold this painting to a business owner. In 2002 someone saw it in a Teaneck NJ market research office.

Here is another Adam & Eve painting on canvas, this one only 8 by 10 inches. I don't think I was inspired by anything but a vague desire to paint in the folk art style. I sold it to a couple who live near Cold Spring, NY.

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