Do I dare to eat a peach...

Hmm, what is it about a basket full of fresh juicy, fuzzy, aromatic peaches.  Is it because they look like orange furry bums?  Is it the daring act of biting into one, knowing the juice will drip down the chin.  So the above piece is one I worked on in a mixed media workshop at Fleisher, in Philly.  It is made with an assortment of inventory papers made in class and pasted on green matt board.

It has a kind of Eric Carle feel, which I initially did not like because I felt like I stole his ideas... But now, I am ok with it.  Learned from him, went on to express peaches in other ways.

And this one is the peach in the photograph with other decorative papers as a collage on a cigar box top.   If you've ever driven on I 85 south you might recognize my subtle nod to the Gaffney Peach of South Carolina, see it? 

And here is a mixed media on clay board piece in progress.  All of the pieces were inspired from that same photograph I took in Ellijay, Georgia and a love for peaches, of course.

Cherry blossoms

Recently framed this mixed media collage and hung it in my studio. Found a few other paces in the house where it worked well also. Will have to do more of these as I am pleased with this one and working with red back grounds. Currently reading "An Artist of the Floating World" by Kazuo Ishiguro, a novel about a Japanese artist set in postwar Japan. Also experiencing cherry blossoms in real life... A chilly, but welcome spring.

I took a class at the Pennyslvania Academy of Fine Art in Japanese brush painting.  Keiko Miyamori was our instructor and I learned all the traditional strokes for bamboo, plum blossoms, orchids, rocks as well as learning about Japanese paper.   These blossoms I tore from practice paper that I made in class.  The paper for the branches is handmade paper that I purchased at the book, paper scissor event at Th Philadelphia Frre Library.

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