I'm trying to generate a new set of paintings and to have the groundwork in place by next week so that they can dry while I'm at AWP16. I've spent a lot of time lately working on freelancing and writing, and just being too tired at the end of the day to make art. (I don't like to paint before dinnertime, because I often make dinner, and my hands get icky with oil paint residue and lye soap).

​No more excuses!

I wrote last week about a work in progress for a friend that's modeled after her painting, Memoria. I finished this painting this week and titled it 'Sunlit Depths.' Whereas I saw Memoria as an abstract depiction of a melding between light and dark, or the point at which memory fades into nothingness, I see this piece as an abstraction of the way that the sun touches plants, or the way that some things lie below sunlight.

The acrylic details I added differ slightly from Memoria's as well. Memoria has a silver sheen that enhances the action of the dark meeting the light paint. This painting used acrylics to round out and brighten the 'bubbles' that are in the left-hand top corner, mimic the pink streaks on the right-hand side, and add depth to the dark paint at the bottom left. The acrylics wrap around to the sides, as does the oil paint. They're very hard to capture on camera, but in physical view, they catch the light and draw the eye to the correct places.

I'm quite happy with this one, so I'm thinking about painting an even larger piece in a similar style.

My piece, Flashlight, earned a quick and positive response from several markets, which was a sure sign that it was a winner. This week, I got the acceptance I was looking for.

Flashlight is a flash fiction about a girl in a bad but somewhat ambiguous situation, told in less than three hundred words. I'll update my blog when it's published.

Meanwhile, I'm working on some other stories--a story about retirees whose idyllic life goes by too quickly, a story about a woman with a terminal illness and the demon that tempts her, and a story about a man's bond with art. Once I'm finished thinking about and revising those, it's on to novel time before AWP in late March.
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