Aglow

I met Alicia online. As in an online dating app. But I wasn't looking for a girlfriend, I was checking out the competition.

After countless profiles of women my age in v-neck dresses looking lovingly toward the camera with alluring smiles and dreams of Mr. Right holding hands on the beach at sunset, I came upon her profile. I laughed out loud and had to tell her what a great writer she was and to wish her luck, so I did. That led to a meet up which turned into a friendship. Shortly thereafter she met a great guy and eventually I moved across the country.

From Alicia's Eye © Lissa Banks 2019

Now we are Facebook friends. She posts pictures of her remodel. She posts pictures of hummingbirds at her feeder, her brooding plumeria and moonlight over Los Angeles making me a little homesick. I salivate at the chicken mole she memorializes at a local spot. She's still in love with her man and I'm happy for her happiness.

Then one day she posted a photo of some cut citrus and I asked if I could use it for a painting. Being the generous soul that she is, she said yes. And so I painted it.

There are people that come into our lives and move right on through, like ghosts through a wall. Most of the men I met online were that sort. Others stay and have long lasting influence, both good and bad. And then there are the Alicias whose bright light shines like a beacon now and then, as bright and tart and sweet and aglow as the fruit in her photo, and now, hopefully in my painting. 

Thank you Alicia first for your turn of a phrase and now for your eye for something extraordinary. Please keep sharing that moonlight.

I invite you to visit my website where you can sign up to receive now and again emails that will keep you up to date with where I’m showing, when I post these musings, and when I am offering special sales and promotions! My site is secure and I PROMISE never to sell your information.

  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original. You can purchase prints for sale at  FineArtAmerica.com.

Tulip Field Fantasy

Before all things went to hell in a hand basket there was this moment when I managed to get one of the boys to stand still long enough for a quick snapshot before he ran off with his brother to wreck destruction on a good number of tulips. I'm certain, given the number of children at the tulip picking field, the farmers factor this into their overhead but their mother wasn't too happy with their behavior.  Being a grandmother I get to shine these kinds of things on somewhat, though I helped with the roundup and parceled out my share of hairy eyeballs to the miscreants.

Tulip Field Fantasy © Lissa Banks 2018

William loves all things nature. He will caress a newfound earthworm friend, gorges on kale straight from my vegetable garden and giggles with delight at kittens and puppies, newborn lambs and strutting chickens. And of course, there was that night we were all eating lobster that created for him his first existential crisis. So although he hardly stood still long enough to have noticed a single monarch that day, I imagined him surrounded by them in that moment of innocence...before the downfall.

I invite you to visit my website where you can sign up to receive now and again emails that will keep you up to date with where I’m showing, when I post these musings, and when I am offering special sales and promotions! My site is secure and I PROMISE never to sell your information.

  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original. You can purchase prints for sale at  FineArtAmerica.com.

The Joys of Grandparenthood

Being a parent is an awesome task. I remember days, and nights, that I thought it might just kill me. And others when I knew my children saved my life, and sanity.

Surviving my children's childhoods, teenage years, putting them through college and the mute witnessing of their coming into adulthood was both painful and a privilege. A privilege I wouldn't trade for all the riches in the world. We parents are masochists like that.

But the single best perk of having made it through thus far has been being a grandmother.

Joy © Lissa Banks 2018

Experiencing the growing up of little persons without midnight feedings, crushing exhaustion, bee stings, cranky teachers, sullen teenagers and broken hearts lends one a perspective on their development I seem to have forgotten, or maybe I was too busy trying to juggle it all to notice, when my children were little.

I've seen my grandchildren take tentative not quite first steps, try to figure out where to put their tongues in their mouths to say "hello" and I've been the grateful recipient of countless hugs, snuggles and sloppy kisses. Pure joy. And to watch those little ones laugh themselves silly over absolutely nothing brings me to my knees. I adore these little varmints with every inch of my being. They are worth every ding in my baseboards, every broken glass, every lost moment I spend with them. Even without the laughter, they are pure joy.

I invite you to visit my website where you can sign up to receive now and again emails that will keep you up to date with where I’m showing, when I post these musings, and when I am offering special sales and promotions! My site is secure and I PROMISE never to sell your information.

  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original. You can purchase prints for sale at  FineArtAmerica.com.

A Ridiculously Long Time

People often ask how long it takes me to complete a painting. Not having a ready answer I decided to do a little digging and find that I'm astounded at the range. Depending on the size and complexity of the work I've completed paintings in as little as less than three hours to what amounts to as long as 16 eight-hour days of work. Since I average about two and a half hours per sitting, that would mean nearly two months soup to nuts!

All this calculating confirms what I already know, I'm slow.

I just finished a seemingly simple, albeit large (24" x 48"), painting that has taken me now more than three years to finish! I worked on it back in 2015 for a little over a month. I liked it, didn't love it. It just didn't sing, and so it sat propped up on a table in my studio, a nagging reminder of the zing of inspiration and the fizzle of stagnation. 

Clark © Lissa Banks 2018

Twenty-five paintings have intervened. Last week I had enough of looking at my failure and dug back in with abandon. Not sure it was the skills honed from those past few paintings and the increasingly ease I've found in a looser style but I set upon the painting with a devil may care attitude.

The result (after a few short hours of work) is definitely a departure from my recent paintings but I love the freshness. That's what I loved about the image to begin with and I think I've achieved it here.

I invite you to visit my website where you can sign up to receive now and again emails that will keep you up to date with where I’m showing, when I post these musings, and when I am offering special sales and promotions! My site is secure and I PROMISE never to sell your information.

  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original. You can purchase prints for sale at  FineArtAmerica.com.

SaveSave

What I Wanted

Looking back over the past few years worth of work it makes total sense why I was feeling a bit burned out. Flowers followed by fruit, followed by flowers, flowers and more flowers and then some fruit. I tend to be a creature of habit so I've learned to mix things up now and then...take a new way home, cook some fiddlehead ferns for dinner, move across the country. You know, easy stuff.

All He Wants © Lissa Banks 2018

We were sitting in his living room enjoying a cocktail. The light was just right and he was framed by those huge windows and beautiful woodwork. I snapped the shot then quipped that it would make a good painting, because, it would! At this point I had zero interest in attempting portraiture again but he started nudging me to do it. I resisted and resisted until I didn't.

I thought I was going to transition to landscape for a while but I'd accumulated a whole slew of photos of people, mostly of the young variety, what being a grandmother armed with an iPhone and all. But still, I felt a bit tentative since it'd been a while since I took on someone's likeness. I find children's faces somewhat daunting so I decided to plunge ahead with an adult face, this one of the noodge in chief.

It went well from the start and I found myself in a state of greater freedom to experiment. In this case I kept the figure fairly tight but loosed up on the background elements. It was exhilarating and inspiring.

Maybe it's because the face did go so smoothly and the likeness really was quite good that I am now emboldened to move on to more people and maybe more people and maybe some people and flowers or people in landscape or people and flowers in landscape or just people in flowers. Voila! I have dug myself out of my rut and I'm excited about a new project. Some more people.

I invite you to visit my website where you can sign up to receive now and again emails that will keep you up to date with where I’m showing, when I post these musings, and when I am offering special sales and promotions! My site is secure and I PROMISE never to sell your information.

  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original. You can purchase prints for sale at  FineArtAmerica.com.

A Tulip By Any Other Name...

I've embarked on a journey. An experiment to see if I will ever tire of painting tulips, sort of. I just might because despite having spent now more than 30 hours facing this lady's backside I find that I'm at a loss as to what to name her. I really don't like the convention that some artists use of simply naming them nothing but I'm coming up empty. Help!

Unnamed © 2017 Lissa Banks

It all started innocently late spring of last year. My daughter-in-law and I took the grandkids to a tulip farm in Rhode Island. Our excitement and awe of the row upon row of tulips gradually succumbed to frustration as the 5 and 3-year-old ran up and down the aisles, tromped blossoms, decapitating quite a few. Realizing the excursion might be over before it began, I took as many photos as I could and grabbed as many samples of my favorites as possible before we all piled back into the car for an angry mommy return trip.

At home I found myself with a rather rag-tag looking bouquet so decided to attempt to shoot a series of portraits of each individual. There might be as many as nine in all in the end hence my flip remark about getting sick of painting them. Yesterday I thought that might be true, until I started sketches for my next tulip portrait!

So, my dear readers, I wasn't kidding. I need your help naming this painting. What does it evoke for you? Let me know in the comment section or drop me an email or visit my Facebook page. I'm desperate!

  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original, a print or to commission a painting...or find me on Pinterest. Or you can find this and other this and other prints for sale at FineArtAmerica.com.

Tetraptych

Summer came in with a whimper -- cold, damp and generally uninspiring. I decided to spend time on an ambitious project, four paintings, each a quadrant of a whole. A tetraptych.

I suppose I believed that summer would continue as it started so I thought the whole thing would be done pretty quickly. The past three days have been in the 90s. Did I mention I don't have air conditioning? The paint was literally drying on the brush before I could get it to the canvas! I'll have to wait for cool weather to move on. Until then, it's an unfinished project.

Unfinished tetraptych - panel one

It comes as a surprise to me sometimes, the meaning I find in my paintings. I don't start out intending to paint an interpretation of the annunciation, or an homage to my grandmother's garden. Those connections come out of the painting itself. And many times I don't recognize them until I sit down and try to express what a painting means to me as I type these words here, in this blog.

I'm unaware of the thought process that brought me to this place. These four paintings. They are each a piece of a whole. Unique but connected. They are familial but each, hopefully, will stand on its own. 

I realize now they are my sisters and me. We are four. 

None of us are dead ringers for the other. We are separated by the states in which we live, by our own family nuclei. But we are all a piece of a whole. We laugh at the same things. We share a love of food and silliness and each other. We were created separately and brought together and raised as one before splitting off to our lives. 

Weddings and family reunions have slowed down. There just aren't that many occasions to get together. But when we do we see ourselves both as who we were growing up and who we are now, growing older. 

The fierce urgency of youth is slowed by nature. The paint dries on the brush. I'll take my time finishing these four. I'll savor the memories of our lives as I do.

Weiser Idaho

My grandparents' home sits in state on Pioneer Road in Weiser, Idaho. Aptly named as my grandfather was a true western pioneer who arrived in this country at age 16 at the tail end of the Civil War and eventually became one of Weiser's founding fathers. He built that place for his bride and there they raised their seven daughters, five of whom survived childhood. My mother was the youngest.

Zinnia © Lissa Banks 2017
acrylic on canvas 36" x 24"

I can still remember the smell of hay drifting over the meadows behind the house and the slap of the wooden screen door as I scampered out the kitchen to the garden, barefoot and armed with a salt shaker to gorge on warm, red tomatoes, fresh off the vine. Adjacent to the rows of tomatoes and cucumbers and green beans destined for the cellar shelves to live on as pickles and relish, were beds the length of the house filled with zinnias taller than me, which wasn't that difficult to do, but impressive nonetheless. I'm sure there were other flowers there as well but the zinnias have remained in my soul to this day. I can still feel the sun on my nose as I squinted up at their majesty.

Only now have I had a home where they thrive. They signify so much to me. They are brash and strong and outlast all others that wither to mush in a heavy downpour. They are beautiful chameleons that can't quite decide if they want to be coral or pink so they decide to be both and then fade to a dignified mauve in old age. They endure beyond summer. Beyond autumn into the winter they give up their last seeds to hungry birds that rely on their generosity. I admire their altruism, their strength, their dignity. Last summer they were under assault by ravenous rabbits. Even then they outwitted their enemies and feigned defeat only to reemerge stronger than ever.

It must have taken gumption to come to this country and make one's own way. I can only imagine my grandmother's first impression of the wild west her husband brought her to from her sleepy shire in Scotland. Looking at my sisters and all our children I can see the Fisher strength and determination living on, I hope a little of that trickled down into me. At the very least they gave me a great gift, a deep appreciation for this glorious flower that endures against it all.


    For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original, a print or to commission a painting...or find me on Pinterest. Or you can find this and other this and other prints for sale at FineArtAmerica.com.

Hibernation

I do things a little differently. I hibernate come spring and emerge again in the fall. To my studio, that is. I suppose I just can't resist the urge to create on earth's canvas while the sun shines and the birds sing. It's about this time of the year that I succumb to a different itch, to dig into my boxes full of tubes of paint and rummage around a year's worth of stashed photos of warmer days seeking inspiration.

Hibernation © Lissa Banks 2016

Motivated by guilt that I've long neglected this room, I rearrange the shelves and scrub the floor while mulling the next project.

I can't really say I've been completely useless the past few months. I've pursued my interest in tulips with, I believe, good result. Regardless, I am marked by the lack of new canvases to offer up to show. It's a bit humiliating. Where did the summer go? Did I sleep through it?

As always, I resolve to do better. To paint more quickly, to seek the muse over distraction. I lack discipline, I tell myself. I will do better, turning to self-affirmations to move me forward.

I do have an ambitious project in mind. It will be large and very pink. It will take me back to the summer spent in my garden. The light of the sun will shine through the canvas and warm me as the days grow cold and dark, drawing me out of my summer hibernation.



  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original, a print or to commission a painting...or find me on Pinterest. Or you can find this and other this and other prints for sale at FineArtAmerica.com.

Iconography

In college I loved to decipher, or attempt to at least, the symbolism in the paintings we studied. The musical instrument, a cabbage, a recently extinguished candle, the little dog underfoot, a unicorn in the distance, a map of the world, all spoke volumes about the main characters and the drama unfolding in tableau.

We studied paintings depicting the Virgin Mary as the archangel Gabriel tells her of God's plans for her future. In most cases she takes the news pretty well.

Lily Mae © Lissa Banks 2015

In these paintings, there's usually a representation of the holy spirit somewhere, a beam of light, a glowing dove. Often an open book, conveniently turned to Isaiah 7:14 ("therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son...") which might be why Mary hasn't fainted dead away...she saw it coming. Sometimes there's a vase or another vessel of some sort symbolizing that Mary will carry the yet-to-be-born savior. But perhaps the most common is the lily, symbol of purity.

I remember the day my drift away from religion really picked up speed. Ironically, it was at a church retreat. Searching, like many of us do, for some sort of spiritual ballast, I was attending classes at a local Episcopal church which brought me to the retreat. A small group of us sat on wooden chairs near the altar of a small chapel. The priest confessed to us that he had a hard time swallowing the virgin birth story. I was astounded! This guy? How could this be? The validation I was searching for dissolved faster than the host on my tongue.

Since that day I've come to describe myself as a "cultural Christian" which basically means that I celebrate the holidays and still find my moral compass in the Judeo-Christian tradition. I'm just not that keen on the whole organized stuff. And I'm highly suspicious of a book written by men who claimed God whispered in their ears. I think God, if there is such a being, has a whole lot more to do than ghost write a book for a few carbon units on one of a gazillion flecks of dust blowing through the universe.  But I digress.

When I see a lily I can't help but think of Easter, or of Mary's world being knocked off its axis. But I also can't help but think about the loving touch of a mother and of the sacrifice and servitude that goes along with that territory. I think about a warm and loving woman named Lily Mae -- long, long since gone -- who made my sometimes lonely childhood days a little less so. I can't help but think about the miracle of healing that happens at the kiss on a skinned knee. Lily Mae kissed quite a few.

People turn to the Virgin for intercession, for compassion, to hear their small woes. I talk to my beautiful sisters and the many women who have made my journey lighter by carrying some of my troubles in their pockets. And so, for Lily Mae, and for all of my miraculous sisters who carry on after receiving unwelcome news, whose kisses heal, who persevere, who laugh and stumble and ache and triumph, I dedicate this painting. I love you all.


  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original, a print or to commission a painting...or find me on Pinterest. Or you can find this and other this and other prints for sale at FineArtAmerica.com.

Mistaken Identity

I thought I knew him

A good friend of mine, a former good friend of mine, someone who I once believed I loved, did something really stupid one day and ended up in federal prison. He told me he took the bribe but it only happened once. He was caught in a trap. His life was upended.

I stood by him. Helped him out. I was furious at his greed and humbled by the quick turn of fortune. I visited him during his incarceration.

The federal prison he was placed in is a minimum security facility out in the middle of nowhere. There are no fences to keep prisoners in as they walk from building to building but if you are stupid enough to try to escape they don't bring you back there. You go somewhere much worse.

Taft is a hard scrapple place. Not much grows unless someone helps it along, a lot. Oil pumps, giant steel grasshoppers, nod to drivers along the road now and then. Trucks blow past tumbleweeds and stir little else. On my way back from visiting him one February morning this sky presented itself. Inspiration, and something good out of a very bad situation.

Taft © Lissa Banks 2013

Lessons learned

The other day I got an email inquiring about this painting. I'm not sure why, but I didn't do my usual "WHOOP" in response. Instead I went for my morning walk and dealt with it later, with a clear head. Maybe I sensed something was afoot.

The buyer wanted to give it to his wife as an anniversary gift. He wanted to know what inspired me. I demurred, saying that the landscape was striking in its starkness, desolation. After I hit send I thought to my self, "nice sell for a romantic gift!"

Over the next few mornings my buyer peppered me with questions about the purchase, which I readily gave. I also noticed that as days went by, his grammar became odd. His punctuation and syntax uneven. Who forgets to capitalize part of his own name? I became suspicious and began investigating fraud. Then came the kicker...he would pay by check and since he was moving to the Philippines his "shipping agent" would contact me to arrange for delivery. A classic scam. They send you a check, which you deposit and the bank initially clears. Buyer has a change of heart and wants his money back which you oblige. Only later the bank finds it's fraudulent and you're out cash.

I declined the sale and pointed out to the gentleman that he was indeed a scammer. No argument there. Never again heard from the guy.

But it struck me that of all paintings to try to scam me on, he chose this one. The one whose genesis was an equally unsavory act. Could he sense the vulnerability I felt as drove down that road? As I bought the lies told to keep me close at hand? Did it reveal me to be the mark that I had once been?

At least this time I saw the con coming.

  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original, a print or to commission a painting...or find me on Pinterest. Or you can find this and other this and other prints for sale at FineArtAmerica.com.

Wide Open Spaces

The Sky's the Limit

I'm partial to skies. I like looking at them, photographing them, imagining them and painting them. So I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that they show up in my paintings. 

I've just begun a series of skies. This is the first entry.

Tangerini Field © Lissa Banks 2015

Tangerini's is a local CSA share farm. (For you city folks, CSA stands for "community supporting agriculture." You invest in the coming crop then share in the bounty, or lack thereof, as the season unfolds.)

Last summer I was there for the tomatoes at $1.00/pound U-Pick event, loading up as much as I could carry to take home and put up for the winter...I realize I'm beginning to sound like Ma Kettle.

I paused to readjust my load, looked right and saw this special little cloud hovering over the field. Perfection. So were the tomatoes. All 25 pounds of them. 

This year I'm taking my wagon. Seriously.

  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original, a print or to commission a painting...or find me on Pinterest. Or you can find this and other this and other prints for sale at FineArtAmerica.com.

Local Summer

The perennial beds are planted, mulched and are starting to embarrass themselves with effusive blossoms. The deck has been painted and pots planted as well. With the house and grounds set for the season it's time for me to return to the studio after a small domestic hiatus.

What inspires me at this time of year? Those flowers I planted. The horses next door. The flowering dogwoods. The chartreuse lawns and tender sprouts on too long dormant bushes.

Norfolk Spring © Lissa Banks 2014

Last year it was this brilliant lawn and home on North Street in Norfolk. I loved the dense dark wall of evergreens against the pale sky, the light illuminating the house behind them and the rocker beckoning from the porch.

New Roses © Lissa Banks 2014

Later in the season I was smitten by these flame throwing roses hugging a picket fence in my yard. Unfortunately, they did not survive New England's winter of 2015 but at least I have this image as a remembrance. Every time I drive by that house and every time I pass the picket fence I remember those moments that drove my creativity.

Walsh's Greenhouse © Lissa Banks 2014

And though I cannot claim the inspiration for a painting I began last August (it was a commission that got it started), it was certainly the beauty of the location that suggested its success.

What will this summer bring? Not sure quite yet. Maybe your house. Maybe my own. But it's likely to be local.


  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original, a print or to commission a painting...or find me on Pinterest (I'm new there so watch me as I grow!)

Out of Darkness

Sunbathing Clementine © 2014 Lissa Banks

I had been feeling a lack in the inspiration department. My drawings looked flat. My paintings seemed dull. None of my inspiration photos were inspiring. And the garden had been singing its siren song.

I wondered when my muse would return. Could I drag it back by force? What was this place I inhabited these days? Was this my bardo, the transition between death and rebirth,  or as Sogyal Rinpoche writes "the oscillation between clarity and confusion, bewilderment and insight"?

I was floundering and desperately looking for some insight.

Then last Wednesday I delivered a painting I'd submitted to a juried show. A painting that had once kicked off a flurry of inspiration (my clementine series) to a show I really didn't know much about when I'd sent in my entries. I realize I do this a lot. Enter first, ask questions last.

When I drove up to the Danforth I realized this wasn't a little suburban gallery, this was a MUSEUM! With a permanent collection and donors and everything! I signed their papers and handed my painting off to a woman wearing white cotton gloves. My painting was going to hang in a museum exhibit! It was amazing.

Something changed after that. My work took on a new life. I took on a new life. I'd been reborn into my studio. I want all of my work to be worthy of a place like the Danforth Museum. What a powerful motivator such a simple act of walking up some steps and walking through a door has proved itself to be.

The garden will still beckon and I'll continue to stumble through bardo after bardo but I've tasted this moment and I like it. I'll have another, please.


  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original, a print or to commission a painting...or find me on Pinterest. Or you can find this and other this and other prints for sale at FineArtAmerica.com.

Unfinished Business

I’ve spent the better part of the past couple of weeks or so out in my garden. There were raised boxes to fill and flower beds to turn, and amend and turn again. I dug up turf, lovingly relocating clumps of it to bare spots and divots in my lawn. And since there were more bare spots than there were bits of sod, there was seed to sow.

I scratched at that soil and harvested a barrel’s worth of stones then laid little kernels of hope into slim rows. I stood in the breezy April chill as the spray from the hose drifted back onto my face and watered more than the soil and its promise.

Nothing has sprung to life just yet. 

Eventually comes the point when I’m pretty sure nothing will come of my efforts. I’ve wasted time I could have spent in the studio, or writing to a friend, baking cookies or laughing with a sister. And even if something does live, it will surely be devoured by insects, or chipmunks or the deer that linger at the edges of my lawn.

Before I began on this horticultural tear I had begun yet one more clementine portrait. I’d come upon an image I’d forgotten and I did so love that series. I got just to the point where there is form but little substance. There is promise but also the promise of failure, of disappointment.

It wasn’t hard to turn away and to turn towards the earth.

With the hard evidence of the intractable soil under my fingernails, I recall the pleasure I get from plunging my hands into the dirt. Of prying out a big old rock that’s in my way. Of the smell of the earth. Of the wriggly worms. Of my knees bending on the damp soil. Of the act of hope that the marvel of creation can happen once again and that I could have some small part in it.

So while I wait for that moment to come, for that little miracle, I will return to that clementine that came to sit on my table and look so luscious that I just had to open it up and find it beautiful and want to paint it. And with paint on and in my hands I will once again hope for another kind of miracle and a different kind of creation.

A Different Kind of Portrait

Hungry

Come December, despite the sensory overload of holiday lights, music, food and good will to all mankind, something like a lowly piece of fruit sitting alone on the table can reach deeply into one's psyche. The simplicity, the brilliance of a clementine reached mine.

It started innocently enough. I was hungry. I grabbed a piece of fruit, got half way through peeling it when something distracted me. I came back to see this lovely thing begging to be acknowledged. Vulnerable, half exposed, cradled by its shell. A photo snapped before it was devoured. The result:

Sunbathing Clementine © Lissa Banks 2014

The first gave me a taste for more. And the more I worked with the subject the more I found myself imbuing them with human traits. They were alternatively straightforward and welcoming...

Miss Clementine © Lissa Banks 2014

...generous and kind...

Open Hand © Lissa Banks 2015

...seductive and secretive...

Temptress © Lissa Banks 2015

...and jealous.

Gossip © Lissa Banks 2015

Yes, I was a bit anthropomorphic I admit. But they seemed to have personalities in their little bumps and dimples, blemishes and brightness. They became my companions and when I finished one I rushed to start another. I might keep going as they are imminently enjoyable. That is, if I don't polish off my subject matter before their season ends.

The Best Husband

Christmas in June

When we were finalizing the new front yard landscaping plans he surprised me by asking if I ever did commissions. I said I did. He had an idea.

His wife was extraordinarily proud of the entrance to their nursery and greenhouses, and proud she should be...zinnias, catmint, marigolds, salvia, black-eyed Susans and more burst from the ground in an amazing array. People stop their cars on the side of the road to take pictures. I suspect Mr. Walsh was proud of the display as well. He asked me to capture it in a painting to surprise his wife with for Christmas. I think it was June.

Walsh's Greenhouse ©  Lissa Banks 2014

I have but limited experience with husbands of my own but my impression is that they seldom start shopping for the holidays in the summer!

Now that Christmas 2014 is beginning to fade into our memories (though probably still present around our waists), I'm happy to be able to share Jerry's gift to his wife with you. What a pleasure it was to be able to be a part of his thoughtfulness and devotion.

Madame

a tribute to her royal self

She was a particular kind of feline. Sometimes stately, befitting her name and sometimes ornery, well, just because she could. She was rather large, you see, statuesque. Not quite as big as her scale-bending sibling Otto but big enough to think twice about crossing her. She was definitely a force to be reckoned with.

Madame ©  Lissa Banks 2014

Otto seems to be overlording from the settee in this painting but don't be fooled, it was Madame who ruled the roost, except when she was being freaked out by ceiling fans that is.

We lost Madame this year. My daughter called me, tearfully detailing her demise, congestive heart failure. I hoped the painting, a Christmas gift, would fill that hole beloved pets leave us with when they depart.

Winter's Warmth

Among tattered sticky notes, phone extensions listings, memos, meeting dates and emergency procedures, round little faces of friends, family and colleagues' babies and grand babies colored the bulletin board beside my desk. I didn't put all I received up there, just the ones that made me happy.

Before the Snowball Fight  ©  Lissa Banks 2014

This one was a keeper. I've always loved Violet's expression, adoration and mischievousness rolled into one. And Richard, blissfully unaware of what might be forming in Violet's mitten, the big brother embracing his little sister.

I thank my nephew for allowing me to use his photo to create this painting. The bulletin board stayed with the job but these faces, and sibling love and rivalry, live on.

What Value Art

What is the value of an artist's work? Probably the hardest thing they do is try to put a price on a piece of art. After all, it's not a widget. It springs to our soul from our eyes and through our hands to become something unique.

A nacent painting.

Today, while I worked on the initial layers of my most recent painting, Dennis, my handyman and all around go-to guy these days was painting the two walls in the hall my 5'2" body couldn't quite reach. He put in 6 hours and I paid him $360 for his time.

The paintings I've done this year have taken me anywhere from three to 70 hours to complete depending on the size and the complexity of the design, but I don't charge by the hour. Artists need to price their work more consistently than that. Sometimes a small piece might be more intricate than you'd think.

People generally expect that a larger piece should fetch a higher price. And often they are correct. It usually does take more time to complete and the materials that are required are also more costly. Similarly most folks would find it odd to see two comparably sized paintings priced dramatically differently so like most painters, I price my work basically by the square inch, rounding up or down if need be and taking a hit on the paintings that took longer and recouping some on the ones that took less. It all evens out.

Ah, freshly painted walls.

Which brings me back to my original question, what is the value of my work? If I were Dennis,  and charged his hourly rate my paintings would cost almost twice as much as they do now, and that doesn't include materials. Maybe I should change my trade and paint walls instead! After all, I know many people who will pay a painter a thousand dollars or more to paint a room or two but who consider paying the same for an original piece of art a luxury.

It's what you value, I guess. I'm just happy so many people value art.


  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings.