I saw a painting I liked, it was at a doctor’s office, and while I was in the waiting room I scribbled down some notes of how it was formatted . I didn’t get around to trying to do a painting like it for a couple of years,and the notes I took didn’t make sense, so I went back to see the painting one more time and it was gone!
I had to rely on my own intuition and create what I wanted and made it original. So here is the picture of how I made my own creation of this heart theme. It really surprised me that I came up with what I did and it was fun to have the challenge to try my own way.
As I got started on the painting, I used up some paints that were already on my palette, colors that were left-overs from another painting to get something covered onto the canvas for the background colors.
I have seen a sign that said that artists have photographic minds, but sometimes run out of film! This was the case for this painting, and so being out of ‘film’, I plunged into my own development of “Floating Hearts.” For me, painting is a way to escape the mundane duties around the house and off I go, into the creative moment that I crave so much in my own studio.
In my studio there are things that my granddaughters can play with. One of their favorites is an overnight suitcase that I have had since junior high 
school, and it has my initials on it, DKB.
A lot of my cards with images of Summers Past Farm are for sale in their gift-shop barn, and are very popular. To have other subjects for my cards, I have plans to make a set of cards, 10 to a box, of the houses I have painted through the years. I’ve painted more portraits of houses than I have of people in my career and so I started to put together the collection for this set of cards to be printed. I usually take a digital of all my paintings, and every now and then find that I forget to do one, and just this morning, looking at my gallery corner in my living room, there was one I forgot!!!
in 1958, I know that it was because my high school art teacher gave me a set like this Grumbacher watercolor palette. Of course back then the palette was made out of tin instead of plastic. I loved the colors silver and gold in this set and most of the colors were opaque. I probably sold this set at a garage sale because I advanced to a much larger palette later on. It was so nice to go to an art class in high school where all the supplies were provided for. I believe my teacher gave me this palette because he could see the passion and potential in my ability to paint.
I was cleaning off some shelves the other day and came across this little painting of the view of Mt. Helix in La Mesa, CA. I never did frame it or show it in any exhibits, but decided to use it here for a story.
In May of this year I fell and broke my little finger. After many sessions of therapy and exercises and splints, that little finger just wants to look bent. At least I haven’t lost any basic function from it being this way, but if I want to look English at a tea party, it won’t straighten out and look elegant like the other ladies, the way they hold their tea cup.
I wonder if I have lost any of my talent in painting at the easel. In this pic of Mr. Landry, one of my favorite mentors of watercolor, you can see him holding that little finger just so and we students who observed him just love to comment about that little finger standing out like it did and we wondered if it helped him get the painting just right! Well, probably not, it was just the way he did, and now I can’t do that as I paint, but I don’t believe I have lost any ability to paint any better!! I’m just glad it wasn’t my right hand that got injured, that is, it is okay for the left hand to be a little deformed as shown in this pic of my hand.
Why decorate when I can just paint a Christmas tree that is already decorated!
I am so excited I feel like doing a big stretch like this one of my neice, Kaili! I will soon be publish in a Somerset Studio magazine this coming Spring and today I finished the two articles that I was asked to write about my coffee collages to be used in the publication, 
On Friday, Oct. 7th I went to paint the pumpkin patch at Summers Past Farm and noticed this very large yellow pumpkin in the background of the view I was painting with a scarecrow and bales of hay.
The next day I went to paint again and took some more photos and then noticed that I had another story to write using the title, “Look What Happened!” That large yellow pumpkin got turned over! The proof is in the dirt that is seen on it! That must have been hard to turn over since it was so large.
People enjoy picking their own pumpkins and it is very interesting to see such a wide variety of pumpkins in just one field. God is awesome to be such a creator of so many different shapes, colors and forms and the artist is never bored by looking and observing it all. Variety keeps me from being bored. Like art, the kind people like, it takes all kinds when you see abstracts and realistic art that is just as great, I like the suggestive kind of art that leaves room for imagination!
Lois Brody took this picture of me. When the artist of the garden is found people like to get her picture!
When things look charming, I had better paint it when I see it because it may not be that way later. 
And here it is, later, as of now, the Wells Fargo of Old Town has moved and is in another building in O.T., but the former building has lost its charm as is seen in this painting, compared to the picture I just took this month. The painting was done in the 90′s and is owned by my son. Through the years I have learned the hard way, that if I see something I’d like to paint, then I had better paint it soon or else something may change or happen to it. As I usually say, ‘look what happened to it!”