Sonja
3 May 2012
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 [...]
20 April 2012
6″x8″ acryic on cardboard, 2012. Here’s a symbolic portrait of our family, each of us represented by a vintage Fisher-Price Little Person. My husband’s incredibly sentimental response to the piece was, of course, “Where’s my hair?” If you’d like a Little People portrait of your own family, please be in touch! [...]
2 April 2012
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 March 2012
8×10 acrylic on cardboard, 2012. These two are long-time V.I.P. toys in our house, and this is my fourth portait of them! The first two versions were puchased off the walls of exhibits, and the third was commissioned by someone who had seen the second but didn’t get to it before it [...]
8 March 2012
8″x10″ acrylic, 2012. We bought three of these little guys in different colors from the gift shop at the wonderful Saratoga Children’s Museum. Sonja barely had to point at them and I was already gathering them up, saying, “of course we’re getting these!” I actually don’t often encounter toys that I’m [...]
7 March 2012
8″x10″ acrylic, 2012. Rather than languish in my post-holiday slow season, I’ve embarked on a series of portraits of classic toys. Here’s a jaunty stuffed Curious George… he’s trying to get the attention of my daughter, to no avail. Like most little kids, she does not value toys for their classic-ness, [...]
1 March 2012
8″x10″ acrylic, 2012. This vintage 1970’s Knickerbocker Raggedy Ann is identical to the one I had when I was little. Mine is long gone, as her face was irreparably loved right off! I bought this one (along with an Andy) off of Etsy for Sonja’s recent fourth birthday. So far, [...]
4 February 2012
8″x10″ acrylic, 2012. In the delicious (but always a bit worrisome) lull which follows my anual holiday portrait blitz, I’m just painting what I like between my smattering of commissions. And I do like this duck! He’s one of a zillion that Sonja has managed to collect over the course of [...]
29 December 2011
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 [...]
26 July 2011
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. [...]
15 March 2011
11″x14″ acrylic, 2009. Here’s an older sketch of two of Sonja’s little favorites. They are each about the size of an adult hand, and she has an assortment of animals about that size lined up along the top of her head board. I will admit that most of them were collected by [...]
8 October 2009
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 [...]