Back In New Mexico

I woke up this morning and realized... Hey! It's been six months! Time for a new blog post! Yeah.

So we spent almost a year in California between Carmel and our time in the little coastal town of Mendocino. It was really a great experience for me as a painter to have access to some of the most beautiful coastline in the world every single day. However all good things (usually) must come to an end and a few months ago we hitched up the trailer and headed south back to New Mexico leaving California and all it's fresh food and beautiful scenery behind for awhile.

We really love Santa Fe and New Mexico in general. It's a great place to work as a painter... the landscape and light are unlike any other place on Earth. The culture here is unique and the FOOD! Oh, it's the best. So we are happy to be back here for awhile. We have put the Airstream in storage and we rented a little apartment right on Canyon Rd. Bethany is working in town as a chocolatier (making handmade fine gourmet chocolates) and I am of course painting every day as always.

This next weekend is the Art Expo at the new convention center and I am really looking forward to checking it out and loading up on supplies at wholesale prices. Oddly enough there are going to be live auditions for a PBS art program that has the same name as my blog (Brush With Life)... and is about traveling plein air painters. Hmmmm..... ? I guess I may as well audition since, well... for obvious reasons.

I'll let you know if I hit it big on PBS. ;)

California Coast

Well.... at least I am consistent in my non posting, right? A post every six months or so is my max.

Anyway... we are in California on the North Coast in Mendocino currently. The photo above is a shot of the village of Mendocino as seen from The Headlands State Park. We spent 5 months or so down in Carmel and then went up to a friends ranch near Napa for a few months. We will be here in Mendo for the next six months. I am really looking forward to painting here. The possibilities are seemingly endless what with all the coastal views, windswept trees and the quaint old sea side villages.

My big news is that I was recently accepted into the Carmel Plein Air Artists Festival in May of this coming Spring. It is a competition involving 60 juried in artists. We will travel down with the Airstream for about a week for me to compete in the festival. There are some really great artists in the competition. It should be a really intense experience. I am very much looking forward to it. Mendocino will be a great place for me to get out and set up painting en plein air in the meanwhile to get myself primed for the festival.

I will post my newest works here in the days and weeks to come. I also plan to set up some really informal paintout workshop type days for local painters who are interested. I will post details here for those dates as well.