Several people have emailed me to ask where they can buy those Nitrile gloves I wrote about. (See Sept 16, 2008).

Although I hesitate to endorse products as a rule, these truly are the best disposable work gloves out there. Not only do I use mine in the studio, but I also keep a box at home for housework, gardening and small fix-up projects.  I initially found a source in the US, but just found a distributor in Canada too. I have average size hands and use size Small which are perfect.

IN CANADA: go to ULINE 1-800-295-5510      Item # S-12490  (S,M,L,XL)

IN USA:  go to Sara Glove 1-203-263-8933   Item # 85-6185SM (other sizes available)

Today is the first official day of fall. Where did the summer go ???

We’ve been blessed with absolutely gorgeous weather this month - sunny and 74°F almost every day. But summer always comes to an end, just as surely as Solo Art Exhibitions come to an end…………… Pretty good lead-in, huh?

My show ended on Saturday and I drove the 250 miles to Toronto yesterday to pick up some of the unsold paintings. Thankfully, several did sell and quite a few people are still trying to decide. Leonardo Gallery is keeping 9 of the larger pieces and will be including those paintings still available in a Group Exhibition in December.

My drive home today was a visual feast. Looking at the colors of the landscape was so inspiring it was all I could do to keep my eyes on the road. The leaves are just beginning to turn red and the sun created shimmering ripples of gold in the trees. On either side of the highway the fields were breathtaking combinations of the most beautiful deep purples, rusts, mustards and olive greens you could imagine. Can’t wait to get back to the studio tomorrow !

There was a fascinating report in the newspaper this morning which I just had to share.

Research carried out at the University of Bari in Italy at the Neurophysiopathology Pain Unit has proven that looking at beautiful art measurably decreases the sensation of physical pain or discomfort. The report published in New Scientist this week also stated that beautiful fine art plays a strong role in aiding the healing process during illness.

The study further demonstrated how beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder (not the critics).

Research subjects, who were not art experts, were asked to select 20 paintings out of 300  which they found most beautiful and most ugly. Several paintings by Picasso, for example, were in some of the subjects’ “Beautiful List” and other subjects’ “Ugly List”.

Subjects were hooked up to measure brain waves and asked to contemplate the paintings they considered beautiful while being zapped with a laser. The same process was repeated with the ugly paintings. Curiously, a painting considered beautiful by one person and ugly by another produced results based on that individual’s personal taste. If THEY considered it beautiful, their sensitivity to pain dropped. Yet if THEY considered it ugly, the same painting increased their sensitivity to pain.

The art world has long looked down their noses on “beautiful” art as meaningless. Instead many critics have elevated the importance of “difficult” art which leave many of us feeling “sick”. There is enough pain in the world. Why encourage artists to make it worse by intensifying it ?

To me, the purpose of art has always been to lift our spirits and ease our pain. Hopefully this study may help restore that ideal.

Painting is a messy process. Paint and mediums get under your nails and the constant washing of brushes and hands is brutal on the skin. I’ve tried just about every barrier cream on the market, but nothing really protects the way they say.

The absorption of paint chemicals into my skin concerns me also. Manufacturers claim acrylic paint is non-toxic, but high-grade pigments in the acrylic binder is not. Having my hands in it every day is not a good idea.

Finding the right gloves to work in has been a career-long process. I’ve tried everything under the sun………. Rubber gloves, Latex gloves, Rubber-coated cotton gloves, Silicone gloves. You name it, I tried it. Every one of them come with a major drawback. Either……

• They make my hands sweat which causes rashes on the backs of my hands  ….. or
• They’re too thick and cumbersome

FINALLY ! About a month ago I discovered the best gloves in the world. Persistence does pay.

NITRILE GLOVES are non-latex, protein free, disposable gloves. Amazingly, they breathe and I can comfortably wear a pair all day without sweating. They’re both ultra-strong and thin enough to even write.

I found them online and had 5 boxes of 100 each shipped from the US. They run about USD $10 per 100. If you do any crafts or just want gloves to protect your hands for housework and such, you’ll be really pleased with these gloves. Nitrile gloves are also available for food handlers and medical grade use.

Several people have asked me about my website. Like most websites, it’s evolved over the past 5 years. Wow, have I learned a lot in that time !

The biggest and costliest mistake I made initially was to have a “state of the art” FLASH site built. For those of you who don’t know, Flash makes it possible to slide images around in very sophisticated ways. The reason is that Flash is actually a movie instead of the usual collection of individual HTML files. Pretty cool looking, but there are major drawbacks.

• Editing the movie to update the site is outrageously expensive and complicated
• Search engines don’t like Flash and tend to ignore you
• Viewers need special software to see the site

I’d been dreading the thought of starting over to have my site re-built in more web-friendly HTML. Fortunately this past May, through my network of online contacts, I was referred to Patricia Velte of White Wing Design based in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Although Pat and I have never met, she made the re-building of my site a breeze. We did it all via email and she officially re-launched in July. With her ongoing expertise, it will be easy and cost-effective to keep my site up-to-date from now on. Isn’t the online world wonderful ? !!!

If you happen to be looking for a web guru, here’s little commercial for Pat’s web design services. Pat is a real pleasure to work with - always professional, efficient and patient. I was so lucky to find her.

Now that all my traveling has settled down for at least a month, I’m back in the studio and loving every minute. Each morning around 9:30, I grab an extra large take-out coffee  and head out to the warehouse, eager to start painting.

We’ve had some glorious pre-fall weather the past few days with crisp blue skies and 72°F days. It’s been really inspiring to turn off the air conditioner, open the garage door and let the sunshine  in. Since I don’t have a land phone at the studio, I’m able to spend long days working without interruption. Soft music and birds chirping are the only sounds I hear for the next 8 hours. Pure heaven!

I do thrive on the excitement of exhibitions, travel and people. But after the hustle and bustle, it’s always a welcome counterpoint to be in the solitude and quiet of the studio focussed on my work. It’s sort of a ying and yang for me. I hadn’t really thought about it before but, to thrive, an artist really needs to manage the extremes between being an introvert and an extrovert. Luckily, I am happiest when I can managed to balance both in my life.

This past Thursday, Sept 4th, I was back in Toronto to attend the second reception for my Exhibition. That evening the Yorkville Art Walk began their gallery tour at Leonardo Gallery with a talk by “yours truly”.

What an interesting and exciting rush ! At around 6:30 pm the gallery’s stillness was suddenly altered as 60 - 80 people streamed into the gallery all at once. I was introduced, gave about a 7 minute talk, and then inundated with questions and compliments. Everyone milled about, looked at my paintings, quickly downed their glass of wine and inhaled appetizers. Within 20 minutes they were all gone and the gallery was quiet again. It all happened so fast, my head was spinning.

The whole experience would have been rather anti-climactic if some of my Toronto friends hadn’t come to see the show and linger for a visit. One of them was my good friend, artist Janice Mason-Steeves

She and I met in 2005 when we both took a week-long Encaustic Wax workshop in New York. We don’t see each other often, but have become very close email buddies. We were able to catch up over an early dinner before the reception and as usual couldn’t stop talking. How wonderful to see her !

Another artist friend who surprised me was Peter Hendrick .       Peter used to live in Windsor which is how I got to know him and we’ve always enjoyed great conversations together about art and life.

Thursday night happened to be the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival. After everyone left the gallery, he and I decided to go for a glass of wine and do a little “star-gazing”. Yorkville is the hub for everything glamorous in Toronto. The air was electric with paparazzi, red carpets, wall to wall limos, klieg lights and TV crews. This photo was taken in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel where we actually rubbed shoulders with actor, John Malkovitch. Earlier, I’m positive the actor Rob Lowe came into the gallery and looked at my work. Even though everyone else thought it was him too, this person was being very coy about his identity and wouldn’t admit it. So who knows ?

All in all, it was one of those days when it would be fun to go back and live it again in slow motion just to savor every delicious experience and conversation.

August has been a non-stop month of exciting events. But it’s great to be back in the studio painting.

Alan Barnes Fine Art in Dallas has just confirmed my Solo Exhibition starting March 12, 2009 for a month. For this particular show, they’d like to focus on my smaller, more intimate canvases. These are always in great demand and I don’t have very many available. So I need to paint the whole show from scratch.

They’d like at least 30 small canvases ready by the end of December. This means the 2 large canvases I recently started (see Aug 7th) have been put away for the time being.

Over the past 3 days, I’ve textured a series of 8 tiny canvases measuring 8″ x 8″. This size is smaller than I normally work with, but they’re wonderful as a warm up for my usual 12″ x 12″ size.

Here are 2 that I’ve been working on for awhile and actually finished this week. They each measure 8″ x 8″ and are acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas.