Everyone deserves to have at least one pet that stands out from all the rest; maybe it’s that they’re beautiful, maybe they have personality, maybe it’s because they are just a member of your family that you really cherish. Enza is that cat. Born out in our back yard during a very dry spring, we first discovered her as one of a litter of kittens running to escape our neighbor’s lawnmower, as he tardily tended to his tall grass. Weeks later, I finally trapped the whole litter and the mother cat; they were all completely wild. We neutered the mom and let her go, but the kittens we socialized with lots of TLC and patience; it was a rare summer, both my sons were around, and they both contributed to the effort. When the kittens were all tame, I was to give them to the no kill shelter who sponsored them. But giving up all four of them was very traumatic. Enza chose me, and I brought her back home. Enza went from being a completely wild animal to the family manipulator. She invents routines to get our attention, she does tricks while guests giggle, she launches herself between us in the middle of the bed, something she started doing when she was so small we feared for her safety. The feral cat spay and neuter project uses art for a fund raiser. They have a little lobby where the walls are covered with paintings. The more you donate, the nicer a painting you may choose. This painting was made for that purpose. It is fitting that Enza’s largess extends to her extended family of feral kitties all over the Seattle area.
Author Archive
Enza Waits
Thursday, June 24th, 2010Aggie’s boyfriend
Sunday, June 20th, 2010
Aggie is a former feral cat and even though she was neutered at an early age, she has her preferences. She likes this big black boy cat a lot better than any of the cats she lives with. He’s neutered too, I took him to the veterinarian myself. I took him and his twin brother hoping to get a two in one deal, but it was worst than I expected, one of them had an undescended testicle so it cost a lot more than I expected. Aggie clearly only likes one of them, the other stays closer to home, 3 houses down from our house. She’s gotten to the point that she doesn’t like to stay inside at night because the boys are outside playing. It’s either put up with her howling and galloping around the house all night, or let her out and sleep in peace They know we don’t approve of their relationship and what’s so funny you can see it in their faces.
Sorella Contadina – my sister
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
My sister rediscovered the pleasures of gardening this season. With her hardworking husband, they have turned a suburban yard into a thriving little farmette. My sister is brilliant, she has lots of good ideas. In fact, this painting is taken from a reference photo of her augmenting the soil with coffee grinds she got for free from Starbucks. She drove all over town and ended with hundreds of pounds of the stuff.
Megan – the culinarian
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
I’ve been working on painting Megan since I saw her last month. It’s very nice to paint a pretty girl with a flower, but in this case I felt it was really important to show in the painting what her passion is. She’s started on a career in the culinary arts and before I saw her in May, I had never heard of a culinarian. As she described with excitement the cooking contest that she had been a part of, I knew that this young lady was going places. Here, I offer you; Megan
The Spirit of the Gulf Challenge
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
To raise consciousness about the plight of the Gulf of Mexico, Suzanne McDermott issued challenges to some artists to follow the Spirit of the Gulf Challenge. I received the challenge through fellow artist and blogger Sue Pownall at Art of a Nomad, when she challenged every reader of their blogs to participate. Whilst we cannot change the physical damage which has occurred, this challenge may raise awareness. After all we live on one planet and it’s one sea.
THE SPIRIT OF THE GULF CHALLENGE:
Find a photo or other resource depicting some living aspect of the Gulf of Mexico before the oil disaster or
Tap into your spirit and use your imagination
Make a drawing, painting or other piece of creative work with love and gratitude for the beautiful life of whatever you’re depicting.
Post what you make on your website, include a link to the original post: Spirit of the Gulf Challenge (or the facebook group — (Spirit of the Gulf facebook group. ) and put the icon below in your sidebar with a link to the original post (or the facebook group). Send Suzanne a link to your post and she will add the link to bottom of her post.
Words cannot express the anguish I feel about the animals who are perishing because of human folly and arrogance. I wanted to paint little tiny sea creatures but the pelican is more iconic.
First Georgetown – Seattle Farmer’s Market
Monday, June 7th, 2010
After weeks and weeks of dreary grey, Saturday dawned with a brilliant light, and the air was sweet. I had already missed the Columbia City Farmer’s market 3 weeks in a row, because every Wednesday in May was rainy and I just didn’t feel like riding my bike down there to walk around in the rain. So I woke up with a plan. I was going to be one of the first people in Seattle to attend the first farmer’s market ever – in the Georgetown Neighborhood.
I got there a few minutes after 10 in the morning and the new location was full of booths and cars were clogging the streets. Since I was on my bike I didn’t have to deal with the parking lot, with attendants waving flags around at the crowds in an effort at maintaining order.
There were a lot of wonderful happenings there that day, and every single person out there was happily taking in the fresh bright sunlight and fresh air. One particular booth, from Full Circle Farms caught my eye. This lovely young vendor was surrounded by her delicate spring vegetables and I had to paint her.
Renin’s hat
Saturday, June 5th, 2010Renin came to our house one dark stormy night here in Seattle wearing this awesome hat. I knew I had to paint her wearing it. Just think, I could have painted your face, it would have been a perfect father’s day present for someone!
Sunshine Award
Monday, May 31st, 2010
Well this is a First for me! I’ve been nominated for a sunshine award by fellow blogger Alison Schuchs The Sunshine Award is a blogger award for creativity and positively, and its an honor to receive it!
The rules for accepting the award are:
Put the logo on your blog or within your post.
Pass the award onto 12 bloggers.
Link the nominees within your post.
Let the nominees know they received this award.
Link to the person from whom you received this award.
Here is my list of favorite blogs (in no particular order)
Donald Boothby – my husband philosophizes
Kent Peterson – the heart of cycling in Seattle
Michelle Fabio – Someone who is really walking her talk
Catherine Smith – lover of life
Amber Campbell – Best News Source for my neighborhood
Seanna Jordan – painter of bright happy pet portraits
Srishti Wilhelm – a very talented young painter
Ellen Hill -Spirituality and Much creativity
Jacquie Phelan – Bike riding role model for all women
Susan Faye – happy cat paintings
Susan Bell – philosopher
Cheryl Gebhart – artist
Donna Cunningham’s astrology Blog
Lucia revisited
Sunday, May 30th, 2010
It seems that by using wet on wet, Lucia looks more like the Lucy we all knew. She still looks a little too old, but the face is finally hers, at least seems like it to me. I tried to use colors that looked ancient, after all, this is from a 90 year old photograph of a young girl just a few years after she had moved to the USA.
Megan unposed
Friday, May 28th, 2010
I painted Megan again. This time I used a new technique, placing wet paint on wet paper. I wanted to preserve the softness of her skin and to show how she glows. It looks like I’m getting a little closer.
