New paintings in progress

November and December, 2011 were extremely busy months for me, as I spent most of my waking hours submerged in my glass studio (freezing cold!) creating hand-made Christmas ornaments, wine stoppers, bowls, candle holders, and other assorted trinkets for the Holiday season.  Besides making the items, I have to "cold-work" the finished pieces; sign them; price and inventory each individual item; and deliver them to the various galleries that I supply.  I was also one of the featured artists in December at Arareity Jewelry & Glass and of course, kept regular hours at my own studio, Bell'Arte Studios which included two 2nd Saturday shows for the masses.

I love working with glass -- I've been working with it in various forms since 1999 and am drawn to this shiny and complicated medium like moths to a flame.  Working with glass is physical.  And challenging.  And can be extremely frustrating....especially when you're working in the studio while the kiln is burning, and you hear a distinct "fffpprtttt", which generally means something has exploded during the firing.  Yikes....you'd think after all these year's I'd get the annealing schedules down but it's complicated sometimes.  And this complexity is what keeps me interested.

Now it's January and I've stayed away from the glass studio, gearing up for some future classes and attempting to paint again after a 2-month hiatus.  The painting hasn't flowed like I had hoped it would but the past few days I finally hit a bit of momentum.  Here are some of the works in progress  (just click on the first painting to begin the slide show).  These are rough shots but proof that I haven't been sitting on my lazy behind :-)  I'll post final shots as I finish the paintings.  Enjoy!