"Sleighbells Ring...are you listening?"

It really started as a painting of Tucker the Cat and turned into Santa. I like to do a Santa painting at the "hols". This is about 12 hours of work scattered over lots of days - with the big push to get done around Thanksgiving time. I was painting in my open garage at home to get the late afternoon light. The neighbors - the mailman - even the UPS driver would give me their great input. The UPS lady wanted "lights in the tree", and someone mentioned a bow tie for Tucker. The tie went from red to this "Churchill" pattern he made famous. I crackled the varnish for a old-feeling yellow tinted finish. Great fun! next - The Corner Room in State College, PA in winter.

This is a "favorite" snapshot from a pal's New Orleans cancer recovery celebration parade. I love this and I think I can make a fun action portrait from it. Lots of energy, smiles, and music in every stroke. The challenge is that I am really into the production of a neat PBS docu-music TV special right now and all my creative energies are locked into that project until January! But sometimes painting really frees up my creative "juices" and allows me to bring all kinds of new energy to every creative project I am into at that moment. We'll see.