January 31 Bamboo in a Bowl

The 31st painting and the end of the first month of 2010. It's been a good challenge, so far, and definitely will continue. Even though it was a busy weekend, on the road to take in live theatre and spend time with family, I managed to paint yesterday morning and painted this one after returning home tonight. I didn't have to travel with paints.

11" x 14" $310

January 30 Turkish Coffee

Let's celebrate almost one month of daily paintings and have a little cup of Turkish coffee. Most everyone knows how much I like coffee. I have a variety of coffee "makers" from the daily Proctor Silex to a French press, ceramic tea pot type coffee pot and the Turkish set. It's a collection. I've even roasted green coffee beans and though it was a fun experiment, I generally leave the roasting to the experts.

I work with Mark Turner at the Five Wings Arts Council. Mark likes coffee dark and strong. So do I. He surprised me when he said that one of the best cups of coffee in the area can be had at Burger King. It surprised me because I'd made the same discovery some years ago.

8" x 10" $300

January 29 Lunacy

lunacy \'lu-ne-se\n pl -cies [lunatic] (1541) 1 a:INSANITY b: intermittent insanity once believed to be related to phases of the moon 2: wild foolishness: extravagant folly 3: a foolish act

In honor of the nearly full moon, I painted the negative image of last night's painting, or the positive of the real thing. And in a moment of lunacy, I pressed my index finger tips into the paint in a halo around the moon.

This will be the painting, that when found at a garage sale in 2095, someone will be excited because they knew a Leasman painting existed that had the finger prints of the artist. It was created during that challenge back in twenty-ten, when the artist painted one painting every day of the whole year. Remember? And that painting has been lost for decades and here it's surfaced and is worth a bejillion dollars!

On sale now, for only $290.

8" x 10"

January 28 Grape in the Cosmos

A little about process: two palettes of half dried paint, a small "canvas," a large brush. Sweep a mixture of dark colors in broad strokes around the perimeter of the "canvas." Moving toward the center, switch to lighter colors and convert from strokes to stippling. Repeat again and again, adjusting the colors and layering the textures until I was satisfied with the effect.

The center called for a focal point of some kind. A grape. Where do ideas come from? A grape. Switch brushes and swirl in a mixture of red, blue, white and green. Adjust the colors until it looked right. Think about a grape in the cosmos. Realize that I was influenced by the bright full moon in a dark sky and this is a negative of that: a dark moon in a light sky. Or, a grape in the cosmos.

8" x 10" $280

January 27 Winter Twilight

I was driving home today, just as the sun was setting. It did lovely smoky lavendar and saffron things to the clouds. I had my camera along, but didn't stop to photograph the landscape. I should have, it would only have taken a minute. Instead, I've relied on my memory and created the third winter scene in a row. It's a little larger than some. I hope you like it.

20" x 16" $270

January 26 Bales

This scene is on the land just north of here. It's where the sandhill cranes gather before their autumn migration. The grove of trees didn't lose all of the leaves, nor were the bales picked up before the snow came.

8" x 10" $260

January 25 Winter Tree

It was another very busy day. I'd set today as my deadline to get the photos for the vinegary book to the publisher. It takes longer than you'd think to name, caption and put "a lot" of photos in files and send them via e-mail. Of course there were other items on my work agenda and I think, at 8:30 p.m., I can call it a day.

We've had some nice winter days recently. But today was cold and blustery. With winter dominating my feelings, a relatively simple winter scene was a necessity as time waned and fatigue set in. But, I think it works. I never sign a painting if I'm not satisfied with it.

11" x 14" $250

January 24 Kitty Pearls

This is an example of how the sleeping brain processes what happens in everyday life.

A few months back, my friend Mikko gave me a turkey pearl. I'm still not sure what a turkey pearl is though the story that came with it indicated it was a food grinder, a gastrolith, from a turkey's crop. Mikko, by the way, is an artist who, among other things, paints cats.

Fade out to these nights of trying to keep Jed, our orange cat, out of the bedroom. He reaches under the door and wiggles the door until the latch slips.

Last night, I dreamed that cats emit flattened pearls from their eyes. I could tell when it was going to happen because the cat made a clicking noise before the pearls popped from its eyes. This didn't affect its vision in any way.

Jed has a colllar with a immunization tag on it. It clicks on the floor as do his claws when he's trying to open the door. My sleeping brain mixed Mikko's turkey pearl with Jed's night time antics and came up with kitty pearls.

When I started this painting, my intent was to paint a black mask with detailed eyes. It quickly evolved into more of a cat mask, black as night. The kitty pearls, like fat buttons, surround the mask and the luminous eyes from whence they came.

11" x 14" $240

January 23 Orange Tea Kettle

I was dusting the furniture today and noticed that the orange tea kettle and the silver tray upon which it sat both needed to be washed. After polishing them up, I knew they would be the subject for today's painting.

Ron gave me the tea kettle several years ago for my birthday. I collect tea pots but had wanted a hand bell or a dinner bell. Ron got me a bell shaped tea kettle. But it's orange. Orange is my least favorite color, next to yellow tulips.

Beth gave me a stuffed red squeaky toy chicken for that same birthday. The chicken and tea kettle sat on the silver tray in the coffee nook. The chicken became a mood indicator. I'd position the two artfully. I'd come back and find that Savannah had put the chicken's head in the kettle. I'd reposition them and come back to find the chicken in the kettle. It got to be a joke as to what position the chicken would have in relation to the kettle.

I didn't paint the chicken with the tea kettle because of the time constraints. Perhaps there'll be a series, including the chicken with the tea kettle.

On another note, after painting warped whimsical scenes for nearly a decade, Whimsy Home Designs, I seem to have trouble painting shapes as they should be- at least the tea kettle looks a little warped to me. I did consider going the whimsical route with this. So, once again, it is what it is.

16" x 20" $230

January 22 Green and Red

This may be the most optically interesting painting I've done. I know, it just looks like a big red E and a green....something. Having just read Scientific American's article about stimulating the eye to see greenish red and reddish green, which normally the human eye can't distinguish, I had to experiment. If you stare at this painting with your eyes crossed (it's actually kind of fun, don't cha know)your eyes will perceive other lines, angles and colors than the shapes and colors of the painting. I don't think it will work with this uploaded image because of the light bounce of my camera's flash. Without a flash the colors werent' true. This thing even confuses the camera. Expect to see more along this line. Also, check out the Scientific American article in the February 2010 issue, "'Impossible' Colors, See Hues That Can't Exist."

#22, 16" x 20" $220

January 21 Wine Glass and Cherry

The plan was to paint a wine glass. Simple and sweet with a quick background. And so it progressed. But when the wine glass was finished and that simple shadow was in place, it just called for a little zing of color. I decided a simple cherry tomato would be perfect. After the reds and highlights were in place, it turned into a cherry with a nice one stroke stem. I threw in the cherry's shadow and then opted to put a companion cherry in the glass. Then the glass needed a little liquid. But that was enough. Period.

11" x 14" $210

January 20 Gilding the Lily

Today's painting has a nearly perfect background. I know, that's open to interpretation. I liked it. I considered painting a portrait of someone in front of it but know better than to start something like that after 7 p.m. So, instead, I gilded the lily - painted something unnecessarily pretty on something that was already neat all by itself. And I used a little rubber cement to make it stick.

I can hardly wait to get Jim's ideas on this one. Jim?

11" x 14" $200

January 19 Apple Jack? A.K.A. Message in a Bottle

The cat woke me at 5:00 this morning. He's learned to open the bedroom door. It'd be fine if he came in, curled up and went to sleep. But no, he has to do the merengue and leap from miscellaneous pieces of furniture and generally keep people from sleeping. I put him out twice. Ron did once. But then I couldn't go back to sleep.
So, I made coffee, started the laundry and painted. Today will be a busy day, anyway, so it's good to get the daily painting in while I can.

I was thinking today would be a good day for a landscape. But then I grabbed a liquer bottle and a wine bottle when I headed for the studio. No, I wasn't planning to pop the corks that early. I had coffee. But I thought they might figure into the painting somehow. One did. Is it apple jack? Maybe. What's apple jack? A hint is in the painting.

11" x 14" Day 19, $190

January 18 A Simple Yellow Mug

It's official: I have a series. If you have three of an item it's a collection. Two paintings constitutes at least the beginning of a series. There'll be at least one more of my favorite mugs.

It's been another busy day with proofing the next issue of Central Minnesota Women and editing my vinegary manuscript. The manuscript is off to the publisher. Now I simply need to amass the photos to accompany it.

But, gee, there's nothing simple about a yellow mug. A yellow mug, of course, isn't just yellow when you're doing a painting of it.

This mug came into the house about the time Ron and I went on the Splendid Italy tour with host Lynn Rossetto Kasper. We had a post trip gathering and that's when we got the mug; I think. Anyway, Minnesota Public Radio is a favorite so that makes this mug a favorite. I took the artistic liberty of omitting the crack that's developed and is extending from the rim downward. One of these days, it will just split assunder and I'll be down one favorite mug.

8" x 10" $180

January 17 Sunday Abstraction

What is it about Sundays that brings out the abstractions?

I've been in a bit of a yellow phase. Feeling sunny amidst the foggy days of January. But today I veered toward pink. It's been a female weekend with five daughters and a granddaughter home to celebrate child number seven's 14th birthday. Also, painters are often influenced by the colors of their clothes and I'm wearing a bright pink vest today.

In today's painting I've allowed the luscious colors to flow, starting with a yellow underpainting followed by thick layers of color. I'm sure an art analyst could make a hayday of this but it's just delicious color. Mmhmm.

11" x 14" $170

January 16 Favorite Coffee Mug

My computer screen saver is a photo of my yellow Minnesota Public Radio coffee mug. Steam rises in the morning sunlight streaming through the living room window. If you were to look closely, you can see that Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood, my all time favorite television show, is on the TV in the background. These are a few of my favorite things: coffee (I could be the poster child, er, adult, for coffee drinkers), Minnesota Public Radio and Sunday morning television programming.

Today's painting is another of my favorite coffee mugs. It's one of Beth's hand thrown mugs and I love it. The yellow background is a nod to sunny mornings, the steam rises like in my screen saver photo, and the painting has a poster quality to it.

8" x 10" SOLD

January 15 The Wine Maker

Back in November, we hosted a murder mystery dinner. Ron and I played the part of "extras" and we assigned roles to each of the "kids." Everyone came to dinner in costumes of the 1940s as we played our roles of "The Last Train from Paris" through a multi-course meal. Ron's role was that of Justin Case.

I used a reference photo of Justin Case for this painting and titled it "The Wine Maker." Ron, of course, is the resident wine maker here. And he fairly regularly tastes it for quality control.

16" x 20" $150

January 14 Attacking the Tomato

Maybe I should just quit buying winter tomatoes. If I bought them for beauty and to paint, they'd be perfect. Since I'd really like to savor the flavor, I'm usually disappointed.

This tomato has been sitting on my counter top for about 3 weeks. It's still beautiful. But no matter from which direction you attack it, it has no juice and therefore no flavor. I placed it on a paper towel and stuck the forks in from four directions. Watching from above, not a single drop of juice wet the paper towel. I've painted it from a design perspective, looking down on it from above. The message is simple: bad tomato. Oh, and don't get any strange ideas that I'm punishing it. No, just showing there's no juice. That's all.

11" x 14" $140

January 13 Breakfast of SPAM and Eggs

Apparently I'm not very good at planning paintings much in advance. I knew what I was going to paint today; but I didn't do it. I'm gathering quite a stockpile of ideas, though.

This morning my sister sent a Facebook message. I responded and at the end of the message commented that it was time for breakfast. She said she'd eaten three hours before. I said I had, too. This would be second breakfast. She asked, "So is the breakfast to be painted or eaten?"

Does she know me well, or what?

Ron was making SPAM and eggs and had asked me if I'd wanted some. I'd had a bowl of cereal before working out at Snap, so didn't turn down his offer of a cooked breakfast.

Ron loves SPAM. For Christmas, he'd put a meat slicer on his wish list. Beth got him one and knowing he likes SPAM, she also gave him eight cans. He shares.

Since Christi asked whether I was going to eat or paint the breakfast, I knew I had to paint breakfast, too. So, here it is, Spiced Pork and Meat (if the meat in SPAM is pork, what is the "other" meat?)with a piece of Christmas wrap still taped to the can, along with some of my nice brown chicken eggs and a fork. Pre-cooked---as in, before being cooked.

I'd like to send out a "hey" to Fergus Falls college campus art instructor Kris Gyolai and her students. If you have questions as you view my blog and art, just sign in and leave them in the comments box. Thanks for your interest!

Day 13, 16" x 20" $130

January 12 Pretty Little Winter Scene

On a busy day like today, I was happy to fall back on my window painting experience and paint a quick little greeting card scene. It's based on the picturesque farm half-way between here and Long Prairie.

We had to skip the Snap Fitness workout this morning to get to St. Cloud for a contract negotiation meeting for my book about the vinegary. The publisher is south of St. Cloud and believe it or not, had a goat giving birth in a small shelter outside the company door! I'll save that story for another time.

From that meeting we zipped back into St. Cloud. I met with the publisher and account rep of the magazine I edit: Central Minnesota Women. Ron putzed around town, ate some tacos and took a nap.

Then back home for a ten minute session of daily painting before heading back to Long Prairie for Savannah's first basketball game of the season. Her team didn't come out victorious but they were fun to watch.

Supper was a quick assembly of soup using the chicken stock from those chicken wings on Sunday. Ron was going to make noodles but we were out of flour. Gosh, who's in charge of grocery shopping these days?

Twenty more minutes of painting post-supper, application of my simple signature, a digital moment then quick upload to the blog and next I'll be off to play volleyball at 7:30. Hey, the daily painting got me out of dishes tonight. Art perks.

Twelfth day of daily paintings, 8" x 10" $120   SOLD This one is going to Germany! Hi Ho Hi Ho!

January 11, Garlic and Shallots

This last summer I grew two kinds of garlic and one kind of shallots. I tried the shallots first. They were large juicy....cloves. Weren't shallots supposed to be like onions, with layers? These seemed more like garlic and tasted more like garlic. And then I realized they were garlic. I had forgotten where I had planted what. The white stiff neck garlic was wonderful but I only had about six heads. The shallots were small golden skinned clusters and the purple racambole garlic had a purple tinge to the papery skin. The racambole was mostly small heads because I had neglected to cut the scapes. If you cut off the scapes, the tiny garlic cloves that develop at the tops of the stems, the plants' energy goes into producing the underground heads.

I keep the garlic in a copper pot that one of my sisters-in-law gave me years ago. It was meant to be a little simmering pot for potpourri but it works well for storing garlic. The poor little pot has been banged around a bit. It has dents, the handles are bent and the knob on the lid is crooked. Lots of character.

I ran out of light before this painting was finished. Since I won't be working on it when the light returns, or it wouldn't be a daily painting, it is as it is.

8" x 10" $110

January 10, Painting on a Sunday Afternoon

I had a plan for today's painting. I was going to put some good music on and celebrate the buttery quality of good paint. I was going to see where the rhythm, tone, and paint brushes would take me. Then I was influenced by the happenings of the day.

Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood is my favorite must-see show. A bug artist was profiled this morning. He places colorful bugs from all over the world in interesting patterns. I'll get back to this.

We went to church and had a tag team of priests who are scheduled to do the same in a mission set for several evenings this week. One priest was tall and thin. He had large teeth and no hair. The other was a short chubby Asian man who had a great sense of humor. He said they were twins; as in the movie with Arnold Schwartzenegger and Danny DeVito. He, obviously, was the Devito character. The other was no Schwartzenegger. The DeVito priest reminded me of Budda, only with spikey black hair.
His English was good but heavily accented. When he intoned, "Peace bewitch you," I had to stifle, "And also witch you."

Perhaps that bewitching carried over when we stopped at the grocery store. Savannah wanted chicken alfredo lasagna for lunch. My intent was to buy some frozen chicken breasts but when we got home, I discovered I'd purchased chicken wings. Ron boned them and I sauted the meat along with sliced button mushrooms for the lasagna. I put the skin and bones in a pot to make chicken stock.

Finally, about 2:30 or 3:00, I got around to approaching the daily painting. By then I had a little green jade Budda with spikey black hair stuck in my head. He needed to be in the center of the painting with rays of "Sun"day radiating from his head. The buttery paint theme, sans inspiratory music, spread beneath him. While it may look like some molten hell, it isn't. It's just buttery warm colors.

My mistake with the chicken wings found its way onto the Budda. The interesting pattern of mushrooms came from the bug artist's arrangements.

That's what happens when an artist can be totally free to create whatever transpires within a day.

This painting is 11" x 14" and $100. It was difficult to get the actual colors to reproduce in the photo. The detail of the mushrooms is truer in color than the full image which suffers from light bounce.

SOLD

January 9, Mortar, Pestle and Tomatoes

Saturday. Vacuuming, picking up, putting away. I washed the chains and hanging globes of the lights in the main bathroom. Made a couple of phone calls for a committee I'm serving on. Washed the yellow kitchen rug. Assembled lunch and took special notice of the brass mortar and pestle on the kitchen counter. Also, still thinking about the tomato I had intended to paint yesterday. Ate it for lunch and it could have been a potato. Sometime I might paint three tomatoes and a potato. I would title it, "Tomato, Tomato, Tomato, Potato." Reminds me of a song.

Globes, chains, tomatoes, brass -- round objects and metal. I was up for the challenge of painting metal; and red orbs. So, here it is: brass and red orbs.

11" x 14" - $90

January 8, Long Prairie

The plan was to paint tomatoes today. But then we drove into town before the sun came up. It wasn't all that early. The sun peeks over the distant hills rather late these January mornings. We were driving the hilly terrain on the road to take Savannah to school and for Ron and me to work out at Snap Fitness. The colors of the sky were soft pastels and all of the trees were dark silhouettes. Purply gray vapors rose from the packing plant and drifted off to the south while lights twinkled from Long Praire nestled in the valley.

It was a quick 15 second glimpse at 50 mph. So, this painting, while not an exact image of the scene, is my impression of Long Prairie at 7:45 a.m. on January 8, 2010.

The tomatoes will become lunch and I'll have to buy new ones to paint.

This painting is 16" x 20" and priced at $80.

January 7, The Mustachioed Snowman with Turban

Nearly two weeks after being formed from the Christmas snow, the mustachioed snowman with a turban still watches over the whimsical yellow house. It's bitterly cold today so I dashed out quickly to photograph what remains of the dozen snow people. They're all still standing though a little wind worn. A thaw is forecast for a few days from now. That will be the most decisive of factors as to how long they'll remain.

This painting is 8" x 10" and as per my unique pricing system, $70.

SOLD

January 6, Sex Links

It's no secret that I like chickens. My little flock of 14 is made up of six old hens and 8 new ones, hatched this spring. The new ones are called Sex Links. Look it up if you're curious.

I've done several paintings of chickens over the years. Since I have 359 more paintings to do this year, plan on seeing more.

I had some difficulty photographing this painting. I've lost the natural light for the day (yes, it's going to snow again) so the colors aren't photographing true. The photo of the detail of the painting has better color than the full image. That's how things work sometimes.

SOLD

January 5, The Pensive Chef

Jim's is the creative mind in the family when it comes to dreaming up food events: the chocolate tasting, the Scotch nose training, the mustard pairings, the pickle fest, the Russian / Mongolian multi-course dinner, the Dutch oven camp dinner and the soon to be experienced Jamaican sauce event. He thinks long and hard about each culinary happening and provides the menus and recipes. Salut, Jim!

SOLD

January 4, Snowy evening in purple

Hilary says I lean toward a purple palette. Since I was already leaning in that direction, I pushed it just a little further and painted a snowy evening in purple. Since it's also a wooded scene, totally from my imagination, it also hints at Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," a poem worth committing to memory. The painting harkens, too, of Frost's "easy wind and downy flake" with fantasy swirls of wind and snow.

This painting is 11" x 14" and as per my unique pricing system, $40.

SOLD

January 3, Portrait of a videographer

Pioneer Public Television's "Prairie Yard and Garden" came to tape a show at the vinegary last summer. Roger Boleman has been the show's producer,videographer and editor for the last 23 years. I took photos of him and the rest of the crew as they were taping Ron's segment of the show. I wrote about them for the Senior Perspective and you'll find it in this month's issue. You might also find it at www.srperspective.com. I used a photo of Roger to accompany the article. I like the photo and used it as reference for today's daily painting.

This painting is 11" X 14" and as per my method of pricing, day 3, $30.

SOLD

January 2 Edible art

Yesterday, we watched the movie "Julie and Julia." Ron lamented that, unlike Julie Powell's husband who could eat the results of his wife's challenge to cook her way through Julia Childs' French cookbook, he will have no such pleasure with mine. I dedicate this painting, a combination of his favorite builds-strong-bodies-twelve-ways white bread in the form of a sandwich folded and stuffed in a new pot Chelsea gave me for Christmas, along with an old paint brush, to him. Bon appetit.

16" x 20" $20

The first painting: Snow people

Here it is: the first painting of my challenge.

The pre-Christmas weather forecasters predicted volumes of snow. They were right. We haven't had a Christmas like this in years.

After the kids came home for the holiday, the weather warmed up and the snow was perfect for making snow sculptures. Christmas night. First there was a bonfire to finish the summer job of demolishing the kids' treehouse. As the flames licked up thirty years of memories, the kids (13 to 32) drifted off to revive their skills of snowman making. They wanted to make a huge one; maybe two. The snow was perfect and rolling the balls down the yard's slope quickly added to their girths. They grew too large to allow for proper stacking. They became a snow fort instead.

Michael and Beth stayed out in the dark, creating a whole family of snowmen. When Beth finally decided to come in, twelve snow people stood stonehenge-like in the back yard.

Overnight, the warmth wasn't kind to the snow people. By morning, several had tipped over. Since a cold front moved in the next day, it wasn't possible to repair them properly. Beth stacked chunks of snow, creating a landscape of mini-monoliths, the giant snowmen taking on the attributes of fortress walls.

Now, a week later, the snow people are still there, best viewed by last night's full moon. This painting is my tribute to them. Hilary says, "Mom, you even got the depressed one." So it is.

I'm reluctant to part with this painting. I like it. But, agreeing to let it go is part of the challenge. If you like it too, read the Dec.29 post to find out how to acquire it.

SOLD