a little help from my friends

I usually schedule work for galleries and shows using my computer database but when I have several galleries to rotate at once, it gets confusing. This time, I printed glossy color thumbnails of each painting to help me quickly see how a group going to a gallery will look.

Our grandsons, ages 13 and 11, stayed with us last week and helped me in the studio one afternoon. We hung the pieces for an upcoming show on one wall for a preview. The cool blues and purples of the pieces should be a welcome sight for the August show if today's temperature of 84 degrees continues.

We also rotated work at one of my galleries and I was happy to have the boys with me to carry paintings. Of course, this is the one time I got a parking place right in front of the gallery instead of the usual two-block hike up and down a hill!

When we reorganized my inventory, I identified several paintings for rework. For these paintings, one boy measured the window and the frame and the other one wrote the information in a spiral notebook. We wrote a big R for "rework" on low-tack tape to label the edge of the frame that shows in my storage area.

Now, the boys are gone and I'm ready to get back to work in the studio. I hope to get some early morning plein air work done this week and will begin to take reference photos of the gardens and surrounding landscape for my July workshop here in case it rains.