Salt Works and Nasturtiums

This is Salt Works Beach on Martha's Vineyard, one of my favorite places. I painted it on a cloudy, rainy day in October with nobody on the beach, not even a dogwalker, ( who are permitted to walk on beaches in the off-season months.)

Nasturtiums from my Dad's garden, also painted on a cloudy rainy day, I kept changing my mind as to how much light and shadow there was. So cheerfully orange! I shall paint them again.

Both these paintings were bought by astute art-lovers at SOWA open studios on May 15, 2011.

Mastodon Skull

This is the skull of the Harvard Mastodon which resides in the Harvard Museum of Natural History in the room of giant extinct mammals. It is huge, dark and scary, it cried out - or trumpeted - to be drawn with my blackest charcoal pencil.

The HMNH has a great collection of articulated animal skeletons as well as stuffed creatures and they are welcoming to artists. I did these drawings in 2003; they are darker and more dramatic than my usual work, but that's what the skull called for.