Best Foot Forward... Oil Painting

Best Foot Forward.....12x12.....Oil on Canvas.....$150

I have been painting in the last week, just not blogging. Much has happened, much to tell.

First, the above painting is for a new blog project started by my friend Karin Jurick. The blog is called Different Strokes by Different Folks. Her beloved dog, Jack, had to be put to sleep this week. She found a positive outlet for her sadness by starting this blog. Every Wednesday she will post a photo along with the invitation for any or all artists to paint the same photo in any medium or form...abstracted, cropped, whatever. The first photo for the first week was, of course, Jack. The above is my version. Click on the link to see others, along with Karin's and the original photo.

Next we move along to hurricane Gustav. Things got pretty crazy on the coast here in Mississippi as shell-shocked people got ready to face the first real threat since Katrina. My art show was set to be Saturday afternoon, but people were evacuating and boarding up and such. When Saturday turned out to be the calm before the storm, so to speak, and was sunny and calm, we decided to go ahead with the show. It looked great and we were all set. The bad news is that we had 3 customers all afternoon (that weren't related to me) the good news is that two of them bought paintings. I could have had 50 people come and maybe not sold more than two paintings, so I was very pleased. We have rescheduled for the 20th and will do it again when people are less occupied.

But we are not through with Gustav. We returned home fairly early Sunday so as not to get caught up in too much evacuation traffic. I got a phone call from a dear friend in Baton Rouge (the one who guessed the trailer painting name a few posts ago). One of her good friends was in Jackson (where I live sort of) and could not check into the hotel they had reservations for (let's just say I will never use Orbitz again after what they did to these people). They had confirmed on Thursday, had their conf# and email in hand and were turned away! We are talking about a woman(talented nurse), her very kind and patient husband, her 80+ parents and her 80+uncle and their dog. So they came to stay with us for a couple of days. Considering we had never met them before, we have three dogs of our own, and it was a very stressful situation for them, I could not have hoped for it to have gone any better. We hit the lottery where unexpected house guests are concerned. They were the sweetest people and we are so glad that we were able to help them. In the meantime, our friend in Baton Rouge had a huge oak tree fall into the middle of their home and have had to move out while it is repaired. Please say a prayer for them all as they recover.

One more prayer request...our Hawaiian friend Ivan has devastating news about his father. They had just returned home from Hawaii last Saturday where they had gone to help Ivan's dad move into his new assisted living quarters (at his request, I might add). They got a call on Tuesday that he had had a massive heart attack. By the time our friends got there there was nothing but bad news, organ failure, no brain activity...now hard decisions will have to be made. Ivan just lost his mother not very long ago so my heart goes out to him.

I have an appointment, so I must head out, but I will post more paintings tomorrow.