January 14, 2022

Oh my! I can’t believe we’re already completing the second week of the new year. So grateful to you all for bearing with my long absence from the blog. I think everyone can relate to the craziness of the last few weeks. That being said, I hope all is well with all my readers and that you thoroughly enjoyed your holiday breaks.✨😁 January is a hard month for me in my painting. It’s the time of year when winter is really setting in, and there don’t seem to be a lot of interesting subjects for my artwork. It encourages me to look more closely at the world around me. The sunsets, for example, have a beauty of their own in winter. The trees are loosing the last of their leaves and it gives a clearer view of the horizon. There’s more contrast between the grass and the cedar trees along the edge of our property now that everything is dying as well. I want to capture some of these beautiful winter scenes into the next half of January, and I hope to share at least one landscape with you before the months is out. Until then, here is a floral painting I worked on this week.

It was an attempt at portraying dried flowers and it made me think of the verse in Isaiah that reminds us of the shortness of our earthly existence. Here in Texas, we tend to have a long “ summer” season. It usually lasts well through October. Things stay green for a long time. But once we get a good frost, it’s only a matter of a couple days before everything changes. It’s a good spiritual reminder. No matter how much of life you have ahead of you, everything will eventually fade. It helps me remember to set my expectations and hopes on things above.✨

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Matthew 6:19-21