6″x8″ acrylic on cardboard, 2012. This painting, the second of two portrait gifts for Kathleen from Paul, features their three-year-old son Asa. I have experienced Asa’s ardor for trucks and trains first-hand, as Asa and Sonja sometimes get to play together. He imbues them with vigorous, joyful personalities, and expresses his [...]
5″x7″ acrylic on cardboard, 2012. Took a break from the toys to paint my favorite little face… Sonja is four, and I think I’m going to try to make yearly portraits of her from now on. Is it evident that I love the Andrew Wyeth Helga paintings? Sonja’s braids definitely conjured [...]
9″x12″ acylic, 2012. What a lovely change of scenery! It’s novel and thrilling for me to have the opportunity to paint a beloved pet, and wonderful to see such intelligence and personality gazing back at me. This portrait of Hiyu, who passed two years ago, was commissioned by Heidi as a [...]
9″x12″ acrylic, 2012. When he was very small, ten-year-old Oscar fell in love with fishing at his Uncle Howie’s own well-stocked pond. Oscar’s mother Katya tells me that the fish were so plentiful that they practically jumped on the hook, and that thrilling experience guaranteed that Oscar was hooked as well! [...]
It is an exciting and rare occasion in our house when my husband breaks out a mechanical pencil and starts to draw. He has always made tiny, meticulous renderings of long parades of vehicles, in recent years usually under the guise of an explanation or description of something for our daughter. I’ve [...]
I love Babar, but somehow I had never come across this incredibly bizarre Christmas book until this week! Let me just skip to the best part, in which we see a cross-section of Father Christmas’ UNDERGROUND LAIR. Did you know that he lives in a cave in Bohemia?
And that [...]
8″x10″ acrylic, 2011. When I learned that my friends Matthew and Erin were getting married, I began this painting of their dog Jack as a wedding gift. They married in March, and seven months later I’ve finally gotten around to finishing it! Jack, who poses on a braided rug that I [...]
5″x7″ acrylic, 2011. I’ve painted both of Colleen’s childrens’ loveys, and I’m so happy that she also asked me to paint her dear, departed pet, Zoe. It’s a wonderful change for me to get to paint actual animals from time to time! Zoe was a beloved lap-cat who would even [...]
Forget Goodnight Moon. I’m here to tell you that the most hypnotic, soothing book ever written is Maurice Sendak’s Chicken Soup With Rice: A Book of Months. There is no eating of chicken soup going on in our mostly-vegetarian household, but nearly every night I knock my daughter out with this [...]
My husband LOOOOVES things that are oddly tiny. Not regular miniature things, but things that mess with your sense of scale, like baby zucchini. One of the most exciting periods of his life was a few years ago when someone kept mysteriously leaving tiny chairs made of sticks around his workplace. [...]
It’s back! I’ve updated Anthropomorphie with new favorites and more stories. Here are a few sample pages:
Once again, the quality of the reproductions in this Shutterfly photobook are pretty incredible! If you’d like to order a copy of this book, click here!
Here are some more books that have entranced my family over the years!
Andrew Henry’s Meadow is one of the most treasured books from my own childhood. Doris Burn’s incredibly detailed and thoroughly imagined drawings seem matter-of-factly possible and yet completely extraordinary.
Andrew Henry annoys his family with his Rube-Goldberg-esque contraptions and inventions, and [...]
Did you know that if you or your child has lost a beloved toy, there are websites devoted to your search for a replacement? One such wonderful site which I recently stumbled upon is Plush Memories. This free service posts your photo and description and invites comments from anyone with helpful information. [...]
Children’s book illustrators have such a profound responsibility! Their work can shape a child’s emotional response to the world, and affect our sense of beauty forever. Here are few of the most formative images from my own childhood.
From Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses” illustrated by Gyo Fujikawa, this [...]
It’s here! You may have noticed that I’ve re-branded a bit, and to celebrate I put together this collection of paintings in a really lovely 20 page photobook. I have to give it up to Shutterfly — the reproductions in this book look somehow better than the original paintings! There are [...]
Can you really “tour” one little room? Well, here’s a glimpse of my studio, which I obviously share with my 2 year old and her own art gear. Check out the awesome easel that my husband Greg built for her! The easel that I use was my mother’s when she was in [...]
11″x14″ acrylic, 2010. This painting of Max and his cat is not a toy portrait of course, but is a follow-up to my painting of Max’s sister Lilly and her toy frog. Max’s mother Wendy says that Max does not have a particular favorite toy, but he is very attached to Jack [...]
What a treat to recieve a photo of a Toy Portrait at home with its toy and person! Here is Henry and his stuffed clown/blanket Ned all cozied up in their reading chair. Hanging right above them is the Ned’s portrait, completed in Sept. ‘09. Thank you to Henry’s mom [...]
8″x10″ acrylic, 2009. This painting of my daughter Sonja sort of qualifies as a toy portrait, in that she has a toy car in her hand. I’ve been known to depict the occasional human, so bring on any combination of toy, person, animal, and/or object you like and I’d be delighted to [...]
The toy portraits are on display in Albany until September 18th! The venue is the new Emack and Bolio’s ice cream shop and cafe at 1704 Western Avenue. So far I have tried the Raspberry Sorbet and the Low Fat Malted Cookie Dough Frozen Yogurt. Thumbs up! Everything is all natural [...]
29″x40″, oil on canvas 1996. I did lots of self-portraits in college and grad school because I was always available to model! Here’s one from 1996, and obviously even then I could not resist painting my stuffed animals. This picture features Tigger and a lion called Hubert — he was a give-away [...]
I recently had the pleasure of meeting and being interviewed by the folks at the popular Capital Region blog All Over Albany. They tend to spend a lot of their time blogging with thier laptops set up back to back at a table at Uncommon Grounds on Western Avenue, where I currently have a [...]
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