Napa Valley Open Studios 2010 - second weekend

Entrance to the Calistoga Art Center,

where Yvonne Henry and I welcomed visitors for Open Studios

For the second weekend of Open Studios, I brought in over twenty portrait studies, to add to the paintings and drawings I showed on the first weekend.

Some of my portrait studies

Here you can see some of them. I painted these in my costumed model painting and drawing group in Carmel, between 1997 and 2000. Each of these was done from a 1 1/2 hour long pose. I switched to drawing for my last months in the group before moving back up north, drawing large graphite line drawings on paper. I may share those in my Open Studio next year.

Pencil drawings – two Baby Squashes and a Baby Pumpkin

Last year, the Arts Council asked me to present an exhibition at the Napa Senior Center. The seniors enjoyed it – and it wound up being there for nearly a year! I collected it in time for Open Studios. I called the show "Simple Pleasures." It included six still life pencil drawings, of which these are three, and four larger graphite drawings with acrylics, used in a watercolor manner, which I also brought to Open Studios.

This was the first year that Calistoga artists were listed at the beginning of the catalog, rather than at the end – and we had about twice as many visitors as in previous years (which seems to have been true for other Calistoga artists I've talked to so far). It was a pleasure to get to meet everyone, and to share our work with them!