Sometimes You're the Catch

"Sometimes You're the Bait.  Sometimes You're the Catch" 18"X18"

I found this cat fabric and was dying to use it as a border for a fish painting.  The problem was that the white background didn't go with the rest of the painting.  So I painted in the black bars and the green/blue background, which took the same amount of time as rewatching the entire Season One of Downton Abbey.  What is now nagging me is this question: Why did they have to make Maggie Smith's character increasingly sympathetic?

This Is Not Your Grandmother's Quilt

"Why Swim Upstream?"

The beginnings of a new body of work.  I am incorporating fabric, painting and text to accomplish storytelling.   I consider this work to be an homage to Faith Ringgold and her storyquilts (a personal hero who was herself paying homage).   I had a lot of figuring out to do with using mixed media materials and not having everything fall apart.  Then there was the issue of having to fight my impulse to paint really juvenile, thumbing-your-nose-at-convention subject matter (still funny to me but apparently not to others).  And finally, I kept running into the challenge of trying to keep it from looking too "craftsy" or outdated, like macrame.  For one thing, I would like to charge "fine art" prices and not "quilted potholder" prices. 

"Tar Beach #2" by Faith Ringgold