Once upon a time, I would go to Final Fridays at the Pendleton Art Center and dream of the life I thought I could have had as an artist there. Today, I am celebrating my third anniversary in Studio 507 on the fifth floor right across from the elevators and I still feel like pinching myself to make sure it's real!

On my mind today are my original studio-mates who made it possible: Sondra Morris, who went to her reward in January 2007 and Nancy Rembold, who I caught up with yesterday. Stacie Seuberling, my next studio-mate, now has her own place on the sixth floor and is doing well. Tonight, Glenda Suttman, Dodie Loewe and I are looking forward to hosting guests with a party to celebrate Glenda's birthday and mine, the Pendleton's 18th birthday in this space, originally the Krohn-Fecheimer Shoe Factory, built 100 years ago in 1909.

Please join us from 5-10 pm. There's a wonderful silent auction in the 8th floor gallery from 6-9 pm. I looked last night and if you've ever been to Pendleton before and admired anyone's artwork, you can probably pick up an original by one of those artists and get a great bargain!

The piece I've posted wasn't painted today but the original framed oil is on sale in my studio tonight and there's a nice limited edition giclee print in the silent auction. I love our studio at the Pendleton! It's a great place to paint, a wonderful community of artists and I'm very grateful to be part of it all. Many thanks to all the friends who come to Final Fridays and their generous support and encouragement.

Check out http://www.pendletonartcenter.com/ for directions to 1310 Pendleton St. in Cincinnati OH 45202. On Final Fridays, there's valet parking at the front door for $4 and a free shuttle bus from the Bell Center parking lot at the corner of Pendleton and Reading Rd. (where it comes in from I71S to Central Parkway.

Here's what painting every day is like! The Cincinnati Art Club provides its members an opportunity to paint or sketch live models twice a week. So on Monday, these were the 3 sketches I did. The first two were quick studies in oil on canvas sheet and the last one a multimedia sketch with oils and colored pencils on illustration board, using ideas I learned from C. F. Payne in February.

I don't do commissioned portraits of people: only homes, buildings or scenes like that. This is more like working out every day or practicing the scales on a musical instrument; teaches me how to see. This girl was maybe 18-19 years old and had a youthful freshness and spirit that I think is challenging to capture in a painting. Which of these three do you like best?

Saturday September 19 was a beautiful day: sunny and breezy. Enjoyed chatting with all the golfers at Devou as they teed off on the first hole. In fact, that's what I titled this 16 x 20" framed acrylic -- "Tee'd Off"

People who attended the FreshART auction at the Behringer Crawford Museum that night got some great bargains on original artwork. I was glad to honor Wolfgang Ritschel, a friend from the Pendleton Art Center, whose support has meant so much to this organization. I'd haved loved to have bid on his piece "Fresh from the heart," but the bidding got too rich for me!

Next year, perhaps I'll paint the 9th hole green and clubhouse as a finished work.

The 4th annual Mason Arts Festival was busy and quite a success Sunday, despite the on and off soft rain that day. My Pendleton studio-mate, Dodie Loewe, won first prize for her painting of "The Slider" and my two pieces will hang in Mason's City Hall for the next few weeks.

I'm donating 30% of the price of any home portrait commissioned during Habitat for Humanity's Construction Gala, this Saturday Sept 19 at Longworth Hall in Cincinnati. If you'd like to commission a painting and have 30% donated to Habitat, give me a call or contact Ryan Derrow at (513) 719-6313 or ryan.derrow@empowermm.com.

Here are the details off the Habitat Gala site at www.habitatgala.com

7-11 pm Saturday, Sept 19, 2009
Longworth Hall, Suite C, 700 Pete Rose Way, Cincinnati, OH
To celebrate another successful year of building families, community and hope in Cincinnati. Proceeds benefit Habitat for Humanity

$30 per person
Cocktail attire, open bar, restaurant sampling, live music, raffle prizes, silent auction, artwork on display amd friends!

Here's the ninth hole green looking at the Devou Park Golf Course club house. Painted this little 7 x 9" acrylic color sketch from photos I took at the course last Friday night after 7:30 pm. Have to decide whether to paint this one, or the one I did of the first hole tee box, this Saturday Sept 19 starting early in the morning.

That night my painting, and those painted that day by all the other artists, will be auctioned off in a live auction at the Behringer Crawford Museum to benefit children's art programs sponsored by the museum. It's a lovely evening including cocktails, silent auction items, dinner and dessert and coffee for an all inclusive price of $60 per person. For more information visit www.bcmuseum.org or call (859) 491-4003.

Took this photo at the "Chihuly Reimagined" exhibit at the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus Ohio on Sunday. Absolutely amazing! A beautiful day, all the flowers and plants, and my favorite glassmaker's pieces displayed more creatively than I've ever seen. I feel like I'm drowning in inspiration lately, which is good. Have lots of photos to save up for paintings. Saw quite a few of Dale Chihuly's original drawings that he does to collaborate with people in his studio. Think it would be cool to display one he did before making the piece, my photo of the piece itself, and then a painting of it.

Painted two small 7 x 9" acrylic studies yesterday of the Devou Park golf course from photos I took up there Friday night at twilight. I'm satisfied that I have what I need to do a good painting in Devou this Saturday for the FreshART auction but I couldn't photograph the paintings today because the camera's still full of all the Chihuly photos I took in Columbus. Definitely worth the trip up there and the park is neat too; my friend was working at the "From Field to Table" event introducing the new community garden. Took some sting out of the heartbreaking OSU-USC game I'd attended the night before.

Stood in front of the biggest canvas I've painted in awhile last night (2 x 3 ft) in the showroom of Performance Lexus at the Kings Auto Mall. Because I like the work I've painted with other people around (rather than alone), I thought last night's party would be a good time to begin this portrait of the Roebling Bridge and Cincinnati skyline. See some great photos of the event in Meredith Edelman Raffel's Facebook album. Meredith is the director of the Mason Arts Council.

To inspire myself before I started executing this, I spent some time reading about the history of this bridge and its builder's background. That sure did the trick! I learned all kinds of things I hadn't known and then became eager to paint it!

If they have this Celebrate the Arts party again next year, I'd recommend attending. Actually, I didn't get much painting done because I was having too much fun eating, drinking and talking to people. There was a great variety of talented artists demonstrating and I wanted to see what they were doing too; so that was a distraction. I loved talking to the children there and seeing this photo touched me; lots of kids the age I was when I first started painting. Great to have a chance to pass on some of the information and encouragement I received back then.

I've never been in a car dealership like this: very impressive and the people who work there are too. Friendly, helpful, curious. The shrimp was displayed more artistically than I've ever seen. I'm grateful so many friends came by to say hello.

Today I'm off to the studio at Pendleton to work on this big painting, three little 5 x 7 inch ones, and finish the family tree commission. It's a beautiful day and last night's event is motivating me to get going.

Before I go to sleep tonight, here's something I strongly believe: what makes a painting art is that it communicates life to someone other than the person who painted it. That art is like correspondence - someone must read the letter another wrote, and understand it, for it to have value.

Blogging is kind of interesting in that regard, isn't it? Sometimes I feel like I'm writing this just for myself, like a journal. To keep myself accountable to the task I've set for myself, painting every day. But then, there's also the possibility that someone else will read it. And the journey shared is so much better than that taken alone!

Another thing I did today (while not painting) was to share the experience of trying to earn a living as an artist with three others who are doing the same thing. It's helped me to share the journey of operating my own business with an entrepreneurs' group called eBrats once a month. But today was different, because these 3 entrepreneurs are also artists. So I plan to take time once a month to meet with them too. More inspiration. My cup runneth over tonight with it so we'll see what translates to paint and canvas from that tomorrow or the next day or the next.

I didn't paint at all today. There I admitted it! Probably a good step for me. However, today was an important day in my artistic career, I think. Because art isn't just about execution but also about inspiration. In the beautiful movie I saw tonight, Local Color, the apprentice asks the master to comment on his painting and the master tells him "it's not speaking clearly and, because it's not, I don't know what you're trying to say." Another artist who was at the movie said she thought a major theme was "awareness," citing how the master showed the apprentice how to see that clouds were not white by showing him a white hankerchief and making him see the comparison.

I am aware of how much inspiration I've been receiving lately that I believe will influence my future paintings. (maybe even tomorrow) Like a lot of what the apprentice learned from the master in Local Color.

Besides that movie, the play "33 Variations" that I saw last week at the Ensemble Theatre. A week later, I'm still thinking about the woman who wondered whether Mozart loved the waltz he wrote the variations on or was making fun of it. Remembering how the play made me aware of all that lives on after death. And I'm thinking about it in the context of another creation that's having a great influence on me now and that's the novel "Luncheon of the Boating Party" by Susan Vreeland.

Many times inspiration comes without awareness. But it's exciting tonight to be so aware of the soul-touching inspiration I've received from these 3 other works of art: a film, a play and a novel. I believe seeds from those works will flower in paintings I have yet to create, so I'm excited about what I'll work on tomorrow.

It rained yesterday on Labor Day holiday but I had a great time working on my 5 x 7 inch SecretArtworks. I can't post them here because they're supposed to remain secret until the auction on Friday November 20 at the Westin hotel in Cincinnati, so I'm posting a small acrylic sketch of a home portrait I've been working on instead.

Love the artists I paint with in Mason every Monday. Yesterday, after painting, we went over to one's house and ate lunch together then watched DVD instructional videos by Millie's favorite, Richard Schmid, and one of mine, Kevin MacPherson. Got so inspired I came home and kept painting afterwards.

Small acrylic sketch of one of my own personal favorite places: the beach on Holiday Isle at Jetty East in Destin Florida. Testing my theory that I think I paint better when I stand up than when sitting down and that I paint better among other people than alone.