Here's a new block I've almost got done this week. It's a scene from Country Workshops, a grove of trees I've painted several times over the years. I intend this print for my fall show at Dixon Gallery and Gardens.

This is the first color proof, but it's close to what I want. I'll do a little clean up carving, and I think I'll hand paint a blue sky, just to see what that would look like. I'm really trying to keep a lot of these prints to just two blocks, though. It's a huge addition of labor each time you have to mix ink, hand roll each one, line it up, and print it on the proof press. Two times is way better than three, but the blue sky in the original sketch is pretty integral, so I'm going to try it.

Here's the underneath block. I roll the green and yellow at the same time, using one block there instead of separate printings.

Here are the two blocks together along with the original sketch.

Two things I love about Paris are the art and the sense of full life and carnival right out on the sidewalk. In America, I'm a lonely pedestrian when I walk. Most of us are invariably sealed individually in our separate cars. In Europe, everyone walks, and life happens out in the street. Just this weekend, I've walked through markets, street markets, an art fair, multiple musical concerts, and past one steam punk performance art tricycle with whirligigs and dragons.

There was also a circus tent set up in Abbesses for a puppet show. The ticket was crazy expensive, or I'd have seen the show too, out of curiosity from my teenage puppeteer past, but I settled for painting the tent as a perfect metaphor for the street fair carnival.

I walked on up and over the hill of Montmartre with Sacred Coeur, and back home for an eclair.

Art being the other thing I really love here (I also should add food as a third in that triumvirate, after that eclair sketch), I was delighted that the timing worked for me to be here in time for the Hokusai retrospective at the Grand Palais. Having hit Matisse just right in London over the summer, I'm feeling remarkably lucky lately.

I fell in love with an exhibition of Japanese mid 20th Century prints at the Art Institue a couple of years ago. These prints are called Shin Hanga, and they are still my favorites, though they are much less well known than the 18th Century floating world era of Hiroshige and Hokusai. But the Hokusai show was breath taking. Lots of it was pen and ink as well as his well known prints of Mount Fuji. I loved seeing his work in hand drawn books, since I'm having such fun with a sketchbook this trip. It was nice to see books as a major art category.

I sketched in line outside waiting to get in, and then I did small sketches and took notes in the exhibition itself. The rooms were quite dark, to protect the delicate works on paper, and there was a huge crowd, so it was challenging to work. The notes are less legible than would be ideal, but these pages give you an idea of what I typically do in museums. I can't reproduce paintings, but looking at something long enough to draw it helps me remember it better and also deconstruct the composition or other elements I'm drawn to. It's a great learning tool.

Tower Grove Park, one of my most favorite parks (and places) had an anniversary picnic on Sunday, and the board of directors put on an art show to go with the food trucks and concerts. What a beautiful idea. I really wanted to go, since I love making art in that park, and it was fun to get to show it right there. Thanks to the park board for letting this Memphis girl crash the St. Louis party.

My friend and fellow artist Bonnie Hopkins was kind enough to ride up with me for the night, help tote stuff, and just keep me company. I was so glad to have her along. And I was also really grateful for seven of my dance friends who made the effort to come out on a Sunday night and support me.

In between visits, I did a small sketch of one of the original composers' busts that circled the 1870's band stand in the park. It's now inside the Piper Palm House, where the exhibition was.

Below are two sketches that were in the show of the Palm House. It was originally a Victorian greenhouse to supply plants for the park, complete with stained glass at the top of the arched windows. Amazing. They have a Sunday brunch inside it each week, and otherwise it can be rented for weddings to support the upkeep of the park. A perfect venue.

More of my Tower Grove watercolors are here, along with a bunch from the Missouri Botanical Gardens as well, both of which were founded in the 1870's by Henry Shaw, one of my heroes.

Karen Jackson and Dan Klarmann were two of the friends who stopped by, and Dan took this of Karen and me talking. I love how it captures the afternoon light and the way the stained glass paints the floor in the afternoons.

At the end of the show, Bonnie and I visited the food trucks and sat outside in a gorgeous evening to hear the last few songs of the jazz band. Perfect. I took a food truck self portrait.

Then we took advantage of the late light and perfect temperature to walk a circle of the park, especially since Bonnie had never been there. Here's a catalpa tree we stopped to visit with as we walked. It's one of my favorites.

The new moon was rising over the bandstand as we circled back to our car.

Finally we joined the rest of St. Louis in treating ourselves to Ted Drewes frozen custard. They talk about it every single night on the baseball radio broadcast, and I always go when I'm in St. Louis. Amazing stuff.

Tower Grove Park is one of those places that immediately grabbed me as a landscape painter the minute I set foot in it. Very occasionally a place will reach out and say, "You belong to me." This happened to me as a college student on the North Yorkshire moors, it happened around that same time in Pleasant Hill Shaker Village in Kentucky, and it happened more recently in Bergama, Turkey and Tower Grove Park. It's been some months since I've had a chance to paint in Tower Grove, and it was lovely to be back after the winter. I passed through on my way to and from Chicago and did four watercolors last week.

I started with the griffin I've always admired. There's a pair of them at the Grand Avenue gates.

I often find myself painting the same tree or structure repeatedly. The Old Playground Pavilion (below) and the bandstand (top picture) are both favorites of mine that I keep revisiting.

There are several groves of red buds I love, and they were in full bloom this time. I took advantage of the perfect timing to paint this one.

Tower Grove Park is having a one day art show on June 1st that I will take part in. It's fun to get to do a little more painting ahead of that anniversary event. I'm delighted to get to show my work in a park I love so much.

Our Memphis npr station WKNO fm has a wonderful twice daily interview show called Checking on the Arts. I listen to npr wherever I travel, and some of the stations occasionally have live bands in the studio or something, but I have never encountered such a frequent and broadly arts supportive show as we have here. I'm so grateful to Darel Snodgrass and Kacky Walton for their dedication to it, the research they do, the kindness to all of us trying to make a living at the arts, and the great questions they invariably ask.

I love listening and hearing friends, artists, musicians, theater directors, and a whole host of other people each day talking about the things that make Memphis so wonderful to live in.

Darel kindly had Elizabeth Alley and me on the first of this week to talk about our show of travel paintings at Memphis Botanic Garden (up till January 2). I was in Cape May at the time (we had prerecorded it) and completely forgot it was airing, so Darel was also kind enough to share the file with me.

Making art is a solitary and non-verbal process much of the time, and I find that I really learn things about what I do and why I'm doing it every time I go in and sit with Darel and have to think about the probing questions he asks. I also just love the whole crew down at WKNO, so it's fun to have an excuse to drop in the office and hug everyone. Anyway, we had a blast, and here it is if you'd like to hear about our travel paintings and what that process is like for each of us.

Here's an old sketch of Justin Willingham, the afternoon WKNO host, in their studios.

I'm setting up today for tomorrow's Open Studio Sale from 12-5. It's only one day this year because of the marathon tying things up on Saturday, though it turns out that the race was cancelled after all due to ice and cold.

I'll be here no matter what the weather. I've got hot cider, and later this afternoon I'll be baking the cookies I mixed up yesterday. So come on over if you're out and about, or if you've got a little cabin fever built up. Hopefully we're through the ice, but I'll be open regardless.

April in Paris and Lessons in Spanish is UP! It's my joint travel paintings show with Elizabeth Alley at Memphis Botanic Garden. The opening is tonight from 5:30-7:30 -- free and open to everyone. Bring your friends and have a glass of wine on us!

It was a long hanging day yesterday. I'm grateful to be working in a smaller format these days. Instead of hauling huge canvases (or, even worse, huge pastels under glass), I could carry my entire show into the building in one trip. Here it is:

The downside is the long layout process for that many pieces. I ran out of time at the end and didn't get a final count, but I think I hung almost 100 watercolors and prints.

I lay them down on the floor first, take a snapshot of the layout on my smart phone (a marvelous tip I got from Elizabeth last time we hung a show together), and stick them on the walls with poster tape. Marvelous stuff.

There were tons of nail holes in the walls, so my arrangements changed a bit as I moved to the wall, trying to hide as many of them as possible.

I worked so late it was pretty dark to get a decent photograph, and the lights weren't adjusted for my show yet (hopefully MBG can make that happen before the opening tonight), but here's how the first wall looks. Overall I'm pleased.

I've just started my sixth black and white print from Paris. This is the Rue Damrémont that the apartment I house sat was on. It's a bit up the hill from "my" place, near the grocery where I bought my Greek yoghurt. I sat on the sidewalk to do this, and a kind old lady stopped with her companion to see what I was doing and excitedly pointed to her window where she lived, right at the top of this building.

I love these buildings that extend right into the funky-shaped corners of streets coming together. And if they have domes as well, even better.

(And, yes, if you have sharp eyes and are wondering, some professional artists do still use the Paddington's Special Rulers from their childhoods. )

In other news I typeset the invitation for my Open Studio Sale on December 8th. I managed to sprain my ankle this week, so I'm waiting a few more days to print it, since the treadle operation is likely to be a little hard on it. But it's good to have the invite ready to go.

I needed a break after the last print, which was architectural and complex, so I decided on a garden one next.

I've always loved the geometry and mass of formal gardens and had been hoping to find more of them in France than I managed to. Most of the topiary I found was a disappointing knee high, but I did find a few gardens I wanted to paint.

Chateau de la Chatonniere was a few miles out of Azay le Rideau, where I spent several happy nights at the beginning of my trip. I didn't have a car, so one day I packed a lunch and my painting gear and just hiked out to see the chateau gardens. That was the day I discovered that while the French are scrupulous about crosswalks, they are less likely to give quarter to pedestrians on the side of a country road. But it was a lovely day, and I had fun painting in the gardens.

The carving on this one went much more quickly, which was a welcome break after the Opera print. I was able to pull a proof on just the second day of work and see what it was looking like.

I did a bit more refining, especially in the chateau itself, before pulling the second proof. It's almost finished now, and I'm trying to figure out which watercolor I want to work from next.

I'm working on my fourth Paris print, a view of L'Opera from the roof of the department store behind it. It's been an incredibly intricate scene to draw and carve both, but I'm getting close to finished. Below are the block in a half carved state and the first proof I pulled.

Here's the second proof. I've continued to fix minor details, but it's quite close here. I'll probably proof it again later tonight and see how it is.

In the meantime, I took a break and drew out a new print. It's not quite Paris -- I dipped down into the Loire valley and visited a few chateaux as well. This is Chateau de la Chatonniere and its gardens. I love the structure of formal gardens.

In other news, I got my calendar proof back from the printers, and the calendar itself ought to be ready next week. I'm excited about this one.