Work in Progress - excerpt of a Mother and Daughter portrait

These last weeks have been crazy-busy... but I really am working hard! Just to show you that I'm not being completely lazy, here's a little excerpt preview of the 16x20 portrait I'm working on right now.

These bigger, more detailed paintings usually take me several weeks, since I under-paint them with so many different colors (it's currently in the "purple and gold"-stage, as you can see.

 This painting is a new experience for me, since I'm painting it on so-called Aqua-board. This is in essence a layer of clay that has been sprayed onto a board. It's slick, and takes water (and color) very differently from what I'm used to. I am still trying to decide whether I love or hate painting on aqua board...

(oh, and the weird shiny blob in the top left corner won't stay shiny, i just painted protective misket over it so that I don't paint over the pink flower with the darker hair color)

Woven Together, 6x8 illustration

A few weeks ago I was approached by an adoptive Mom who asked if I could paint a picture that honors both of her daughter's mothers - her first mother (birth mother) and her Mommy. It took me over a month to come up with a good solution - I wanted the picture to be pleasing to a child, so it wasn't allowed to be sad or too serious, yet I wanted it to convey something deeper, too.

While reading a book about adoptive parenting, I came across a beautiful metaphor for an adopted child's life: the daughter, her birth mother, and her adoptive mother are each holding a ribbon or string of a different color. As the daughter grows and matures, those three strings become intricately woven together, because they are all part of her identity, her past, her future.

I will have prints of this painting available in my Etsy shop in a week or so. Shoot me an eMail or an Etsy message if you would like to reserve one. I'll have 5x7 and 8x10 available.