featured articles
Eccentric Heaven: Painting with Poetic License
Eccentric Heaven: Paint... Last weekend I had the best time creating a piece based on a friend’s new...
Spooning All Night: A Mixed-Media Love Story
Spooning All Night: A M... What can I say, things got a little out of hand. I’d had no intention of...
Feasting on Passion: Love, Food and M.F.K. Fisher, Woman of Appetites
Feasting on Passion: Lo...   “Food is what she wrote about, although to leave it at that is...
Scribble Singing
Scribble Singing... Scribble singing:  An ode to transitory thrills, ephemeral beauty and the fleeting...
Coco Before Chanel: The Top 10 Zesty Artista Takeaways
Coco Before Chanel: The... Have you seen Coco Before Chanel yet? I finally got my chance this week, happy as a...
Time to Get Your Zesty On: The Power of Committing
Time to Get Your Zesty ... O, the dithering. The wondering. The choir in my head singing yeah-buts and...
random articles
recent from Artsy Eccentric Heaven: Painting with Poetic License
Eccentric Heaven: Painting with Poetic License
Last weekend I had the best time creating a piece based on a friend’s new poem.  If you’ve never used a great piece of writing as a springboard for your art, you should try it.  It has you go beyond your usual subject matter, directions, even media, as you allow yourself to be led down a path...
recent from Featured Articles Eccentric Heaven: Painting with Poetic License
Eccentric Heaven: Painting with Poetic License
Last weekend I had the best time creating a piece based on a friend’s new poem.  If you’ve never used a great piece of writing as a springboard for your art, you should try it.  It has you go beyond your usual subject matter, directions, even media, as you allow yourself to be led down a path...
recent from Gallery Spooning All Night: A Mixed-Media Love Story
Spooning All Night: A Mixed-Media Love Story
What can I say, things got a little out of hand. I’d had no intention of getting caught up in anything serious that night, but you know how it goes.  Something catches your eye, sparks your interest.  You toy with new possibilities. Flirt a bit, even. Nothing wrong with that. But I lost my head...
recent from Ramblings A Zest for Life: Anne Marie Schlekeway’s True Voice Found After Loss of Speech
A Zest for Life: Anne Marie Schlekeway’s True Voice Found After Loss of Speech
Allow me to introduce you to Anne Marie Schlekeway, the first of many inspiring and Zesty types I plan to share with you. You can thank me later for this one. I promise you that taking the time to watch her presentation will give you a whole new Alice-in-Wonderland door to unleashing your own happiness and...

A Zest for Life: Anne Marie Schlekeway’s True Voice Found After Loss of Speech

A Zest for Life: Anne Marie Schlekeway’s True Voice Found After Loss of Speech
Allow me to introduce you to Anne Marie Schlekeway, the first of many inspiring and Zesty types I plan to share with you. You can thank me later for this one. I promise you that taking the time to watch her presentation will give you a whole new Alice-in-Wonderland door to unleashing your own happiness and creativity.  I kid you not.  Anne Marie Schlekeway: Business muse,...

Eccentric Heaven: Painting with Poetic License

Eccentric Heaven: Painting with Poetic License
Last weekend I had the best time creating a piece based on a friend’s new poem.  If you’ve never used a great piece of writing as a springboard for your art, you should try it.  It has you go beyond your usual subject matter, directions, even media, as you allow yourself to be led down a path you might not otherwise have found.  I haven’t painted in...

Expose Yourself: Seeing Green is Good for the Mind and the Soul

Expose Yourself: Seeing Green is Good for the Mind and the Soul
Yesterday morning, this was the scene outside my studio office window: treetops popping with electric green leafage, the weathered fence enclosing my back yard, the outbuildings beyond belonging to two different neighbors, the sun expertly illuminating the redbud tree so that it almost looks as if its brilliant magenta foliage is lit from within. Each morning when I get up,...

Spooning All Night: A Mixed-Media Love Story

Spooning All Night: A Mixed-Media Love Story
What can I say, things got a little out of hand. I’d had no intention of getting caught up in anything serious that night, but you know how it goes.  Something catches your eye, sparks your interest.  You toy with new possibilities. Flirt a bit, even. Nothing wrong with that. But I lost my head this time, and I’m woman enough to admit it. I was up in my...

Feasting on Passion: Love, Food and M.F.K. Fisher, Woman of Appetites

Feasting on Passion: Love, Food and M.F.K. Fisher, Woman of Appetites
  “Food is what she wrote about, although to leave it at that is reductionist in the extreme. What she really wrote about was the passion, the importance of living boldly instead of cautiously; oh, what scorn she had for timid eaters, timid lovers, people who took timid stands, or none at all, on matters of principle.” Cyra McFadden, San Francisco Examiner, on...

Scribble Singing

Scribble Singing
Scribble singing:  An ode to transitory thrills, ephemeral beauty and the fleeting nature of life I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m a little prone to wanting to hang onto things as they are. That might come as a surprise to some who know me.  “You?” I can imagine them saying, hands on hips like a row of skeptical Rockettes, their left eyebrows all cocked in...

Coco Before Chanel: The Top 10 Zesty Artista Takeaways

Coco Before Chanel: The Top 10 Zesty Artista Takeaways
Have you seen Coco Before Chanel yet? I finally got my chance this week, happy as a clam at high tide in the south of France at the prospect of going to a movie with one of my daughters, and even more delighted to be doing so in a theatre that serves vinho verde. I loved Audrey Tautou in Amelie, figured I’d like her in this, and I was right. The film is, as you would...

Sam Reluctantly Said Good Night: In Praise of Melodrama and Tormented Characters

Sam Reluctantly Said Good Night: In Praise of Melodrama and Tormented Characters
The great find that inspired this piece was a bit of text in a real bodice-ripper of a vintage novel that is my absolute favorite source of melodramatic verbiage: “At last, after his hostess had swallowed many yawns, Sam reluctantly said good night.” I suddenly feel the need to explain myself to the horrified bibliophiles out there.  Let me just say that I long ago got...