I never know where a painting idea will come from.  Any artist will tell you that they get inspiration from life experiences.  I guess that I’m no exception.   It can take years for an idea to come to fruition as it percolates in the back of my mind.   Then finally, I will decide that the time has come to pull the idea out from my imagination and recreate it with paint.

Several years ago my husband and I were taking a leisurely walk around a small lake in a nearby park.  I’ve always admired an abstract sculpture that sits beside the lake.  The artist crated this sculpture by welding scrap metal pieces together to form a kind of serpent-like creature.  Over the years rust has given the sculpture a wonderful patina.    We strolled past the serpent on that day as we have many times.   Suddenly out of nowhere a Belted Kingfisher flew up and perched right up on the top of the serpent’s head, using it as a vantage point over the water.   I didn’t have my camera with me that day, but that image has stayed etched in my mind ever since.

I decided to redesign the serpent to be as it would if I had sculpted it myself, using the idea of old rusty metal.   I wanted it to be more dragon-like to give traction to my idea.  It was fun to come up with a three dimensional sculpture idea based loosely on one that I had already seen.  The result is my painting “The King’s Dragon”.

“The King’s Dragon”

Male Belted Kingfisher, (detail)

With the annual Natureworks Wildlife Art Show only two short weeks away, I’ve been painting like a crazy woman.   I must apologize to people who regularly check in on my website for the loooong span of time with no updates.     But I have a surprise in store for all of you.  I am in the process of doing a complete website overhaul.   Most of my design work for it is done.    My dear techy husband is the one who makes the magic happen.  I am hoping after the show that he and I can find some good, quality sit-down time together to implement all of the changes.

In the mean time, I will post my feature piece for the NatureWorks show here.   It is a rather large painting for me, at 24″ x 36″.

“Sun-Kissed Orange”

For computer users who love wildlife art, I want to announce the release of a new screen saver featuring a collection of my wildlife images  of animals from around the world.   This screen saver runs on Windows operating systems.     It is available for download in my online store.  Below are just a few examples of images included in this collection.   Images appear one at a time and fill your screen with the wonderful beauty of nature.

For more information on the new screensaver click here.

I want to announce the release of my first wildlife art calendar.  This wall calendar features animals and birds of North America.  Shown below are each page of the month with the cover at the top.    The calendar is available in my online store or by contacting me directly.

Enjoy!