"Having Difficulty With The Principle Of Sharing"

Watercolour/Gouache/Ink on paper. 10 x 14 $150.

A Couple of Framed FolkArt Fantasy Paintings

Framed "Learning To Control Snakes" (SOLD)

Framed Watercolour/
Gouache/Ink Painting
"The Cat Woman Contemplates Possibilities of The Future"

A couple of our FolkArt Fantasy mirrors

Large Jester Mirror



















Medium Jester Mirror

New Viewer?

Looking for my paintings? They are here, quite a few- keep scrolling down past the report on the fires, you'll see a few, go to "older posts", scroll down past our house and you will find more- there are a number of pages of them. (I had a lot of friends ask to hear about the fire, and before that to see pictures of our house. The fires kept us hopping all summer, so I've done very little painting the last few months...)
We will be in Menlo Park at the Pacific Fine Arts Craft Fair Fri, Sat and Sun, Oct. 17, 18 & 19
Thank you so much for visiting my blog! I hope you will e-mail me with a comment to let me know you came!

Fire In Philo

This photo is from Sept 2008- You can see where the trees have died since the under growth was burned. This is the ridge behind our house. I have not had a chance to walk over to see the actual burned areas, but when I do, I'll take pictures and post them.

July 2, 2008
Things have settled down, though there is still a raging fire near by, but there is a strike team from So. Cal. at it, up on the ridge behind our house, cutting and burning brush. By the time the fire reaches the top, there will be nothing left to keep it going...
We are personally most grateful to the Elk Volunteer Fire Dept. They were the ones who came up here to Sky Ranch and valiently fought the fire below our house. It took them 6 or 7 days, fighting the fire which was burning on very steep, inaccessable land. The Anderson Valley fire dept was busy with other fires in the area, equally seriously threatening homes in our valley. The Elk fire fighters left jobs and families to fight this fire, called the "Cliff Ridge" fire, which joined up with the Maple Basin Fire. There was a huge stretch of fire all along the back and sides of Sky Ranch, where our house is located.
Bill and Olivia and I were in Redlands (an oasis in the SanBernardino/Riverside area of So. Calif.) helping my sister and her husband build a new kitchen, when Olivia's friend Lily called and told us there were a bunch of fires in Anderson Valley. One was threatening her home, and there was one maybe near ours. We called our neighbor, Lee, who was taking care of our cat and our garden while we were gone and found out that there had been a huge lightning storm the night of June 20. It started more than 150 fires in Mendocino County alone. There was one at each end of our area, and it was not looking good. We also called Rosi and she concurred. So Bill and I left Olivia with Betsy, and drove home a week early to see if there was something we could do to protect our house, or at least take away certain irreplacable things.
As soon as we got over the Grapevine and into the Central Valley, we were in smoke. Napa and Sonoma also had big fires, as well as Monterey and quite a few other counties, and the smoke was blowing all over Calif. We arrived home Tuesday June 24 at about 3:30. It was a 12 hour drive, we left early that morning. We packed up the car and the truck with important papers, photo albums, our computer and various other things. Lee had taken Reikia to a neighbor's house that was out of immediate danger, so we picked her up there, then drove the truck to the tasting room where we left it and we headed out to Rosi and Charlie's to stay the night. We slept pretty well, then went back to our house in the morning. We spent the day moving piles of lumber away from the house. The fire fighters from Elk came over to check out the situation at our house. They told us to pile all our furniture in the center of the rooms, away from the windows. They said that the windows get so hot that the heat can ignite anything near them. The fire was going very slowly, burning only the underbrush, not getting into the canopy, but because of lack of resources they had given up hope of putting it out, and were just going to do their best to save houses. Our neighbor Swami's house was first in line, we were second. They told us what they wanted cleared away, what was a concern to them, what was not, where they would park their trucks, where they would lay their hoses. We decided to cover all of our windows with drywall that we had not yet had time to put up on our walls. First Bill covered each vent in the roof- all 150, in 52 bays- with little strips of drywall, as well as the basement vents, after the firefighters said vents are a common way for fires to get into a house. Elise came up from Cotati (thank you thank you) to help us prepare, and so did Rosi. Their help was invaluable! We stayed at Rosi and Charlies all but one night- one long, sleepless, worrisome night during which I kept asking myself, "Why did we decide to stay here tonight?" Elise took bedding and cushions, and things that could pick up the smoke smell. Rosi took other things that are "heat sensitive". My thought process was "Trust in Allah and tie my camel". It was like I knew it would be ok, but not 100%. I was kind of in a surreal daze, but stayed quite calm, just working to do what I felt was necessary- make it easier to save our house, for Whoever was going to save our house...prayers for no wind from all over the place, thank you very much! The radio reported that there was going to be serious wind on the 2 critical days for our house, but instead, there was no wind, and the Elk Volunteers were able to do a successful back-burn, and contain the fire, and now it is pretty much out. and, I am totally exhausted and cannot possibly finish this now. I put the photos and captions in this am, you can go down and look at them, and I'll finish what I'm saying another day...
It is now Wed,. July 9. The fire to the east of us, 2 or 3 miles as the crow flies from us, is blazing bigger than ever. We sat on our deck Sunday evening and watched helicopters dumping water on it, but it is still huge. They have sent 285 National Guardsmen to help, but it turns out training in fire fighting, at least on very steep terrain, is not part of their traditional training, so they have spent the last 3 days training, and tomorrow morning very early, they are supposed to to come here and fight this fire. I sure hope they can get it out quickly. It has been 105 degrees up here, which makes the situation less favorable than earlier, when we had more accomodating weather. It's not cooling down at night, either- well, it did a little- it cooled down to 83 degrees...So, in order are more prayers for no wind, and for rain...


The sun was bright red in the middle of the day, and you could look at it the smoke was so thick. For some reason, the camera would not pick up the red colour. We took a lot of red sun pictures, but deleted them all but this one because of that.




This is the N-east side- drywall is screwed over the upstairs windows, ridgid insullation is stuffed into the door openings.










This is the s-west side, the side the fire was headed towards. Sara, Justine, Allan and Brent came from Emerald Earth and helped get these pieces of sheetrock up. They also helped protect our pump and backup-generator, and Sara put mud up on some of our bales that still had uncovered straw! Thank you all so much! (Boy, we shoulda had more kids so we'd have help around the homestead, like they did in the old days! ...give birth to the farm hands!)












The back and side of our house with drywall screwed over the windows and ridgid insullation over the french doors.









This looks benign, but there is so much smoke that the ridge on fire cannot be seen. This is the view from our deck. We were so lucky that the smoke was blown away from us until the last few days, so we were able to work out in the yard without breathing foul air. The day after this was taken, however, the smoke was thick around our house as well, and we couldn't go out without a mask- for Bill and I, that meant one of Sebastians bandanas soaked in water.





Rosi and Serena after a day of moving wood and clearing brush. Thank you guys SO much!! We sure do appreciate it!
You can see the silver of the insulatin pushed into the window openings on the inside. We didn't have enough drywall for this side, the insulation is too thick to screw onto the outside of the windows, and these windows are placed at the outside of the walls and don't have cavities to shove them into on the outside. The light quality was really eerie because of the smoke obscuring the sun, but inside it was- still is, they're not down yet- really creepy, because it is totally dark during the day, and it just feels icky. Thurs. July 9- We've taken the covering off some of the windows now, but we're leaving the hardest to reach windows covered until the east fire is totally out.. If a wind comes up, it could ignite again, possibly getting into the canopy. This fire has been like a lava flow... The last 3 days have been exceptionally hot, so we've pretty much stayed indoors, but before that all we did every day was cut underbrush. Now we have alll these flammable piles! We have a neighbor with a chipper, so next week he said we can use it. We'll chip what we've got and spread the chips on what will be the "chicken run". We still will be far from done, however. It's incredably slow work, cutting underbrush, and pruning the trees- but it's looking really nice! It was always something we intended to do after we finished the house... but I can also see that having trails all over the property would also be good to help in the event of fire, and that's another thing we've been putting off until the house was done. I actually love digging trails...so maybe this winter I can work some on that, with a guilt-free conscience. We really want to get a trail down the property to the fire road and creek below. (about 2,000 feet) Of course, it only takes days and days to do... Ah well, at least it's enjoyable! ...One of our latest ideas now to generate income, is to finish the house and then rent out the first floor as a "vacation rental", like a week at a time or something. (We have the kitchen in the basement that we've been using now coming up on 3 years! So we'd live in the basement and the top floor- plans include a separate outside entrance for the top floor, for a fire escape and so Olivia can sneak outside at night without us knowing...) [Don't worry, she will never see this, is totally uninterested in my blog!] ...Stay in a genuine straw bale house run by solar energy in beautiful remote countryside, lots of gorgeous trails for hiking, a waterfall that looks like Hawaii but is freezing(!), only 15 minutes to river swimming, 35 minutes of fabulously beautiful road to the beach, winetasting at "mom and pop" wineries only 20 minutes away...I'm sure that sounds really attractive to people with a fire breathing down our necks!... well, at least next year, with all the underbrush burned away, the fire danger will be minimized...I guess breathing smoke so many days- even though it's certainly not constantly smokey, it's enough to addle my brain...
Anyway, I'd love to hear from any of you who care to write! love, Nancy
ps. No photos of fire. When we did see it, I didn't even think of photographing it! Smoke doesn't photograph so dramatically...ah well...After it's all over, I'll go take photos of the burned areas and put them up here...

Prints now available

We had our Open Studio Tour last weekend- what a lot of fun it was to have people going through our house appreciating everything! We are 6 1/2 miles from the main highway, the last 2 unpaved. Though it doesn't seem so to us, it was quite an adventure for most of the people who came out here! They said they kept thinking they'd somehow missed us. Well, no, it's hard to miss us! Just keep going! Dirt roads seem much longer than they are because you're only going 15-25 MPH...

One of the best sellers on the tour was small prints I made of my paintings- 8"x 5", on heavy, high quality, acid free, matt photo paper, $10 each; and a full page print, 8 1/2" x 11", $18.

Most any of the paintings you see in here can be made into a print- If I have a photo of it, I can do it.
E-mail me, or call to place an order! nancybill@mcn.org or 707-895-3134

"Unmasking The Future"

I find that most all of my paintings turn out to be horizontal. I wanted to paint one to go vertically, because most of the display frames we've made are verticle and I wanted to use one to frame one of my watercolours. So here we are. I should take a picture of it in its frame- it's hard to do well, because the "glass" across the front (it's actually acrylic) reflects the light. I will do it though- also a few others that I've framed in our crazy folky display frames.





10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $150.

"Cat Dream"

I know it's in her nature and she can't help it, but I'm mad at my cat for going after the little creatures around here. We plan on building a courtyard that will become her outdoor experience, but until then I cannot make her be a house cat...I was very happy the other day to see a beautiful skink, the kind with the bright blue tail. We see several a year, really not many. The next day I found it dead, obviously the work of Reikia. She goes after lizards, too, but she just gets their tail. Maybe skink tails don't come off.

Watercolour/Gouache/Ink 10"x14" $145.SOLD

Three "Vintage" Oil Paintings

"Betsy's 21st Birthday" 1980. Oil on canvas 38"x48" NFS
These next 3 paintings I did after graduating from CCAC. The paintings I did while in school I did not like, and I did not save any. They were more abstract, more sophistocated, more what I felt people wanted to see in the class critiques, and didn't really feel personal to me. I appreciate a wide range of styles, but what I want to do myself is more funky, primitive, and very personal... what really turns me on is a folk art quality. This remains true for me still.
This one I did from a photo I took of my sister on her 21st birthday. In the photo, the woman on the left was our mother, but the proportions were not right, so I changed her to me, taller, which balanced the composition better. I added in my sister's dog, and my cats. In the right background is a variation of one of Rob's paintings. The banner in the upper left is one I made for our wedding. I use those banners a lot in my paintings still. We really did make that amazing cake, with little flags and umbrellas sticking out all over it!

"The Divorce" 1978. Oil on canvas, 38"x48" NFS
I had started this painting a year or more before my divorce from Rob, and was having a heck of a time. I just couldn't figure it out. I painted most of it over several times. The day Rob drove away for the last time, I felt devastated. Even though I was the one who wanted the divorce, he was my best friend, and I felt like I would cry forever. He moved to New Mexico. I started working on this painting again, and it just all came pouring out, and I finished it in about a week. It did not start out having anything to do with Rob, or our marriage, let alone a divorce. But as I painted on it after he left, it became my "liberation", expressing my freedom and my starting over. In it also appeared my little girl again, the child I didn't have yet, a blonde, blue-eyed minx...little did I know it would take me another 16 years, but she would finally come to me! (We were divorced in 1978)

"The Wedding" 1974. Oil on canvas, 38"x48" NFS
Actually, I should call this "The First wedding"...I married my first husband in 1973, painted this in 1974. And since I forgot- again- that this is a BLOG, and the next painting I put in will come BEFORE this one, as you read this you will already have seen "The Divorce". Oh well... In this painting, you see myself and Rob in the wedding clothes I made us, with our alter-egos- I was "The Cat Woman", he "Prince Gang","the bird man". The little kid-faerie people represented our kid-selves, and our unborn children. One of the reasons I wanted a divorce was because I REALLY, REALLY wanted children, and he did not. Want any. At all. On the right side of the table there is a little glass box. This was a wedding present, as were the two "pickle" goblets. The cats are Equadablick and Olive. I had gotten "Quadie" when I was 19, because I knew that I really wanted a baby, but I also knew that would be totally ridiculous. He definitely became my baby, and I was devastated when he died, at only 7 years old. I vowed not to become so attached to a cat again, then got Moon, and was devastated when he died, too young also.
(We did not have a cake anything like in the painting, nor did we get married in a Rousseau painting, but we did get married in a redwood grove.)

Dunvegan on Forestis Haefen

Here is the view of our house from the back. It looks huge in the photo, but in real life it doesn't. And inside it seems just right, neither too big nor too small. When I designed it, I used my experience of our old house to help me- "The dining room would be just right if only it were another 2 feet wide." "I'd like the kitchen, which is a perfect size, to be open to the family room so that I can visit with everyone as I wash dishes." etc. The house is burmed in, so what looks like the bottom floor in this photo, is actually the basement. The front and left side are completely subterrainian, the right side and back have windows to let light in. The slope of the land was absolutely perfect for a walk-in basement, no need to mess with the slope at all. The basement is all storage now, and our temporary kitchen. Eventually the carpentry shop will be in it.

Here is the front room, used as our bedroom, office and meditation room these past two and a half years. One day our "real" bedroom, upstairs, will be done- but for now the upstairs room is Bill's workshop- where he mills the wood for our furniture and frames, and puts the pieces together. Downstairs, I cut out little pieces to paint or stain, and glue them onto the doors, then paint or stain the big pieces as well.

This is the living room, in the back of the house. This is one corner of a large room in which I do my work on the furniture, as well as much of my painting, especially when the weather is cold. In warmer weather, I have a studio upstairs in the front I paint in. It is also my sewing studio- a weird combination, I know, but it is working pretty well for me.
You can see the thickness of the straw bale walls around the doors and windows. I added a lot of clay to the bales to get that lovely undulation in the surrounds. They are like big sculptures, and I never tire of looking at them. I love all the imperfections, the curves and bends, the bumps and texture of the walls. I purposely did not put a really smooth and refined finish plaster over the clay base plaster. I smoothed them up cursorily with several coats of lime wash worked into the surface of the clay with a stiff paint brush, then painted on lime wash with colour pigment added, natural yellow ochre and sienna Italian clay, mixing the ingredients untill I got the shades I wanted. The dividing walls are regular dry wall, on typical 2x4 framing. Bill did most all the framing on the inside walls, and he did all the dry wall. He did most of the drywall taping and mudding. We both did texturing on those walls- I wanted them to look like clay walls- we would have made them of clay, but by the time we started on them we were pretty much doing it all ourselves, and time was becoming an issue.The perimeter walls were done with lots and lots of help. Daryl Berlin of Emerald Earth, here in Anderson Valley, was instrumental in our building process, and he brought groups of people that he had helped train in natural building skills, for us to hire. It was a lot of fun to have all these interesting people around working with us, and made it go very fast. The outside got its final coat of lime plaster from a team of Daryl's people after just a few months over a year from starting- it would have been less than a year, but the first time they came to work, we had an unusually wet spring, and it rained and blew so hard they could hardly work, got one wall done, and had to arrange to come back a few months later. Most of the inside Bill and I have been doing, though Juan did work with Bill on some of the inside framing. Our neighbor Steve, also a carpenter, and excellent cabinet maker, did the stairs, and also hung the exterior doors. We also had help with the basement from various people- more about that another time...

Our house, "Dunvegan", April 2008

This is the right side. You can see that I've started staining the light grey lime plaster the beautiful, mottled rust colour, by applying ferrous sulfate (Iron) mixed with water.

Here is the front of the house.
I forgot that this blog site posts new things on *top*, rather than under what's already been done...so you will have already seen the other parts of the house before you see this picture of the front...!
I designed the house in March, 2003, as I lay in bed sick, at our home in Oakland. I was furious that I was sick, because there was so much I needed to do to get the house ready before we could sell it. But I quickly realized that it was a perfect time to design the house, and that it would not get done if I wasn't forced to by being ill. A year later, we were living in 2 trailers on the property we had bought, and it was time to draw the plans. I'd never drawn "real" plans before- done plenty of sketches of gardens and a few rooms- but I'd seen both my mom and dad do it many times, and I had with me the plans my dad drew for the second storey we built onto the Hudson St. house in Oakland. I happened to have in the trailer with us a roll of tracing paper from some other project, a clear 1/8th inch marked ruler, and pencil stubs of Olivia's. I knew pretty much how a post and beam house was built, but even though I'd been reading a lot about them, I knew I'd need a lot of help with how to build a straw bale house. A guy Bill had worked with in Oakland told him, "You're going to build straw bale? You need to talk to Catfish Jack at emerald earth!" We had no idea what an "emerald earth" was, or how to get in touch with this Catfish. We had our trailer on the property of an old friend's place in Mendocino for a few months while our land was in escrow, and one day she showed me a newsletter she had from a place called Emerald earth. this must be it! It had a very fine article in it about peace and ending war and such- certainly something close to OUR hearts! And it was written by a guy from Emerald earth called Jim Stoops. I had known a Jim Stoops many years before, in Oakland, and he had moved north. His was an unuaual name- maybe this was him. We called the number and found that Catfish Jack no longer lived there, and that, yes, they did deal with straw bale houses, but they were all booked up for the year, and yes, JimStoops did live there, but he was away now, call back in a month.
I called back several times, the Jim Stoops person was elusive, and I still did not know if he was the guy I had known. But I prevailed, and finally he had come back, and he was indeed my old friend. We arranged to go to Emerald earth and see Jim. There a few minutes, told Jim what we were doing, a guy walks by and Jim says, "This is the guy you need to talk to!" It was Daryl, and he had just had something fall through, and he was available to help us with our project! So, with Daryl's technical knowledge of straw bale building, I was able to draw up the plans, working at night by lantern light on the table that made up the trunk of our car and the 3 pieces of "equipment" mentioned above! Somehow I managed to draw up plans that passed the building dept, including a full basement. (Charlie Hochberg gave me a drawing of the basement foundation cross section from his house, and I borrowed the basement plans from another neighbor, Kevin, and I was able to extrapolate them into our needs...)
We hope you will come up and see what we have done!

Well, I have to admit it, I can't keep up the "daily painter" pace. I was doing 4 to 5 paintings a week, but it's too much. I can do it once in awhile, but not continuously. So you won't see me in the Daily Painter .com website. I want to keep working on my big paintings, as well as smaller ones. But what I've been doing a lot lately is working on our house and garden- we've got the Open Studio Tour coming up in just a month. The last weekend in May. There is so much to do to make the place presentable. Right now I'm sort of feeling frantic- like not only will we not be ready for the show, but we'll never get all the things that need doing, done. Like a fence around the top part of the property to keep the deer out so I can have flowers...we have a fence around the vegetable garden and the orchard, but I'd like to landscape around the house and the driveway...and we don't even have a pump house yet! Everything is just covered with silly silver tarps. Not good. I also really need a garden shed, and we've got to put a real roof on the "Chipmonk Chateau", or it will rot. It will make a great guest cottage if we ever get it done. It's a 20 x8' wood office trailer, what we lived in for 2 years while we were building our big house. I can't believe we lived in that for 2 years! We did have the little RV with the mini kitchen and toilet and table, but I was really going crazy having to cook in that. What a huge relief to move into the real house. Even though the kitchen is still in the basement, and we don't have a bedroom yet, (we sleep in the living room) it's fabulous.

I hope you can visit us during the tour!

Oh, one other good thing I want to report: I got a check for a painting that sold for $800. at the store in Berkeley! For me, that's fabulous. I know it's not much for all of you who sell your work for thousands- but I'm happy! So that nearly makes up for the fact that we have been having the most rotten cold spring I've ever had, and last night all my figs got offed by the frost. Today I put plastic over my almond trees. I sure hope it saves the little almonds. They're loaded with nuts right now. I will be really sad if I lose them. It's supposed to SNOW tonight! If not tonight, then tomorrow night! That's global warming- just messing with the weather. The poor native Alaskans are stranded because their land is defrosting to the point the sled dogs can't pull the sleds for falling through the ice, but it's not open enough to boat; and we are losing our food to frost. My friend Lucille told me she's lost all her fruit crops but apples and pears. The buds came out on the peaches and apricots, plums, persimmons, and many other things, and then 3 nights of 20 degrees, and they're all toast...Lucille has a real orchard, with lots of incredible trees and normally tons of fruit, which she graciously shares, as well as selling at Pam's fruit stand. Now she won't be able to. She'll lose out on food and income. I don't know about you, but a lot of us up here are really hurting now, with the price of food and the price of gas.

"The Cat Woman Instantly Recognizes Buddha and Invites Him For Tea"

10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $150.

"The Cat Woman Realizes We Are All One"

10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $150.

"The Cat Woman Instantly recognizes Krishna and Invites Him For Tea"

(Not to be confused with the [hopefully] soon to be seen version in large format acrylic paint)








10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $145.

"Cupcakes" in watercolour

6"x 9" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $30.

'Krishna Cat"

6"x 9" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $45.

Okay, so I've been working on a large acrylic lately (Jenny said, "Acrylic? say it loud, say it proud!"...I'm still not sure. Any comments on the "acrylic" vs "Oil" painting nomenclature?) anyway, I haven't had time to work on any watercolours while getting this new painting really going- like I said earlier, it's really hard for me to shift gears between the 2 mediums... So, look for this "Acrylic" soon- "The Cat Woman Instantly Recognizes Lord Krishna and Invites Him To Tea".

"Cat Woman Listens To The News"

6"x 9" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink SOLD

Shipping Costs as of Sept. 2008

If you are interested in purchasing one of my paintings, please contact me at nancybill@mcn.org.
Shipping is $5.00 for small and $10.00 for large watercolours. If I ship to you in Calif. I also need to charge sales tax of 7.25%

"Waiting Patiently"

This little painting is extrapolated from the large Acrylic I did last year, which is the first painting I put into this blog. In the large painting, she represents all the people in the world who don't really have enough to eat. In that painting she looks sad, as her plate is empty, but hopeful, as she is well aware of all the food around her. In this painting, I couldn't bear to have her plate be empty, so I painted her starting to get some food. I've had a terrible time coming up with a name for this one- very unlike me. As I write this, I still do not have a name, but I will put something on it before I post it.


6"x 9" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $60.

"Ready To Get Started"

10" x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $90. SOLD

"Reason To Share # 5,000,000,000 Of 6 Billion Reasons"

We really are all one family! So of course we want to share with each other. "Take your brother's need as the measure for your action, and solve the problems of the world. There is no other course."

Yes, that is a "Christmas tree" in the background. Odd to be painting Christmas decorations in the spring? Yes, but most of the family photos I've taken are at Christmas time. And I like the decorations. We didn't celebrate Christmas when I was a kid. I found it embarrassing when kids would ask me what I got for Christmas, so I'd tell them what I got for my birthday, as that was in December, also.
When I was 16 I said to my mom, "Who cares if Jesus wasn't born in December? What's wrong with a Pagan holiday? Christmas is fun!" So we got a tree and decorated it. The first time we saw my Grandmother walking up to our house, we grabbed the tree and shoved it into a closet!
We didn't celebrate Christmas as a religious thing. We did it as fun. It included only our immediate family. A wonderful meal, festive decorations, and one simple present each, beautifully and creatively wrapped. My mom was especially into beautiful, original wrapping. Each present was wrapped differently, but they were all of a theme, and looked gorgeous together.

My mother's family had celebrated Christmas until she was 10. Then her father was taken with some fundamentalist version of Christianity in which they did not celebrate Christmas because it was not the real birth time of Jesus. He made them throw away all their decorations. My grandmother wanted to give them to people who would use them, but he refused, saying he did not want to perpetuate that sinful holiday! My dad's family celebrated it, but in deference to her family, he gave it up when they married. Even though my mom rejected her family's religion, she continued not celebrating Christmas until my declaration.

Today we feel spiritual significance to the holiday, though not religious. We still celebrate with only our immediate family and our kids. A wonderful meal, festive decorations, and we still, with a few exceptions, give only one gift each, usually hand made. My gifts to my family over the last 40 years have mostly all been made by me. I love making them, and I am teaching Olivia to do the same. As she grows up, that will be her choice, but for now she enjoys making her presents.

10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouche/Ink $150. + t & s

"Dunvegan on Forestis Haefen"

Here it is, the strawbale house we are building. This picture was taken this past Jan. We had snow for 3 days! We took this at the first of the snow, because we had no idea it would snow for 3 days!

"Dunvegan" is the name of the ancestral home of the MacLeod clan, on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. "Forestis Haefen" is Old English and Latin for "Forest Haven", which this place is- 22 beautiful, wooded acres. I wanted to say it in Gaelic, but it wasn't right sounding. Nor was it interesting in Swedish or Norwegian. So there you have it!

"I hope you enjoy looking! Please leave some comments!

There are several pages. If you have not been here before, be sure to click on "older posts" at the bottom of each page. I started on Feb. 3,2008

"Bliss"

What could be better? Something delicious to eat, yummy to drink, beautiful flowers and a fabulous view...now, there could be company right around the corner- or this could be blissful solitude. What do you think?









6"x9" watercolour/Gouache/Ink SOLD

"Reason # 3,000,000,001 & # 3,000,000,002 of 6Billion Reasons For sharing"

6"x9" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $60. + t & s

"The Red Fox"

Here we have another version of these little kids at the table. I never seem to get tired of table scenes. People sitting together and sharing food, the sustenence of life, is such a basic and wonderful event, played out many times daily, all over the world. If only we can learn to appreciate and accept each other soon. We should be celebrating our differences, not shutting out those who are different. But there is tremendous hope! The following is an excerpt of an article by the Master--, a Master of Wisdom.
"Such is the pressure under which humanity lives today that only the few can perceive the transformations which, daily, are occuring on a global scale. A momentum of change has been established which naught can halt or deviate. Thus it is that the world is undergoing regeneration, purification and pain, preparatory to the creation of an entirely new civilization.

The new civilization will be built upon the foundations of the past, but, neccessarily, much of the old must be swept away, corrupt and useless as it is.

For those with eyes to see, the new indicators are already evident. Wherever men turn their eyes today, a new landscape presents itself, new ideas engage the mind, new structures take tentative shape. A world in flux is transforming itself, the growing pains of change are felt by all." (Read the entire artcle in the March 2008 issue of Share International magazine)


10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $150. + t & s

"Appreciation II" or "Reason #3,000,987,000 out of 6Billion Reasons for Sharing"

6"x 9" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $60. + T & S

"Reason for Sharing #3,987,678,000 of 6Billion Reasons"

6"x 9" watercolour/Gouache/Ink $30. + T & S

"The Cat Woman Succeeds In Being Here Now"

6"x 9" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $45. + tax and $4. shipping

"Cat Amazed at the Offering"

6"x 9" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $60.00 + tax & $4. shipping

"Ready For The World Teacher"

Here is our dining table and chairs again. (Read about them in an older post) I like to put other paintings of my own in, and also some extrapolated from my ex-husband. I loved his paintings and knew I would really miss them when he moved out, so I started to paint my version of some of them into my paintings at the time of our divorce, and I still do it sometimes. (I have an album of photos of his paintings.) His originals are far too gorey and depressing for me, so I take those parts out. He would do a really fabulous painting, then, in my opinion, he would ruin it by putting bullet holes in the head, or ropes and a blindfold or knives and blood. I've put one of my paintings in this one, as well as an extrapolation of one of his. In his painting, I think the figure was meant to be King Louie the 14th. I have made him into The World Teacher. Who we are desperate for. Someone with tremendous compassion and wisdom, who can galvanize us to work together to save our planet, and with it, life on the planet. We have to do the work ourselves, but we are in great need of the ability to work together, and with focused purpose. Time is running out, but we will make it, because we have such wise help in the World Teacher and the Masters of Wisdom.

10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $150. + $9. shipping & tax

"Sharing Is Divine"

...in so many ways! When we see what others need and do what we can to help... this is the way to world peace. Inner peace, world peace. Not shopping for peace, as some would like us to believe...shop for what you need. Be aware of where what you need is made, under what conditions. It's hard for us here in the US to realize that child exploitation is still very much a problem in many of the countries where our goods come from...Child exploitation, but also, human exploitation. If you have thoughts about this, I'd enjoy hearing from you.

6"x 9" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink (sold)

"Resisting Market Forces"

Market forces equal death. See it up there in the left corner? Good dog! Get that nasty thing!









10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $150. + $9. shipping & tax

"Waiting With Great Anticipation"

10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink SOLD

"Girls in Lapland- How's That Snow doing?"

10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/ink $140. (+ tax & $9. shipping)

"Dare She Think of an Amazing Future?...""

10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $150.00 + tax & $9.00 shipping
SOLD

"The Cat Woman Contemplates Possibilities of The Future"

What will the future bring? Will we respond to the love energy, and create a planet of tremendous beauty and joy for everyone? Or will we cling on to the old Piscean belief that "I did it myself, so can everyone else" and keep going in the dire direction we're headed- where the super rich get even richer, enabled by those in power, and trample ruthlessly over the Earth those happy with a simple life, and those simply trying to live... until we either blow ourselves up, pollute ourselves to death or drown in the rising tide...the rising tide of what? The ocean, fed by melting ice caps...or the rising tide of bigotry we're seeing in this country now, the rising number of hate crimes, fed by the anti-immigrant furor/war-on-terror drumbeat...
The choice is ours. Good people, speak out. Be a champion for good.

10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $125. (+ tax & $9. shipping)

Framed watercolour

The framed painting is hanging on one of the walls in our house that I rubbed with a terracotta glaze. You can also see part of an arched door that I've decorated with a painted trim.
Hand made, hand painted wood frame with acrylic "glass"- frame only:$250. With painting:$320.

"The Whole World is One Family"

More of my favorite theme- all kinds of different people sitting around a table with interesting things to eat. You'll notice this green table and chairs in lots of my paintings. It's been our dining table for years, and I really love it. I think it's a kind of funny story about the table's history- let's see if I can explain this... It was given to Bill and me by our friends, Kathy and Bill C., and when they gave it to us, he said, "This really should have been yours! So now it finally will be." I was confused, so this was his explaination: It had originally belonged to Bill C. and his ex-wife, Marianne. Before Bill C. was with Marianne, it had belonged to Marianne's boyfriend, Rob, who later became my first husband. Is that clear?
When we got the table, the finish was a very beat up and blochy natural brown wood, not our favorite look, but I really loved the form, the crazy balls and grooves and all. First I painted the top, in tealy tones, faux "marble". I really liked it, but couldn't think of what to paint the legs and chairs, so I just made them a flat peach colour, the same as our walls. Even though I didn't really love it that way, it stayed that way for quite a few years. Finally, sometime in the 90's, I painted the legs and the chairs a beautiful green, that we still love, even though they are a bit beat up now. I don't even mind that they're a little beat up.
10"x 14" Watercolour/Gouache/Ink $145. (+ Tax & shipping)

"Girls Know The Plan For Saving The Planet"

What will it take to save our planet? Sharing our resources equitably. When we realize that we really are all one family, and we work to make sure everyone is taken care of, we will solve all our problems.
10"x 14" watercolour/gouache/ink $145. (+tax & shipping)

"Folkart Fantasy Furniture"

One of the things I do besides paint watercolours and "oils". Bill makes the cabinets, I do the wood applique and painting. These can be made to your size specifications. I think they are very fun, and they go really well with my paintings.