I Sold My First Painting!

Having given away more than 300 paintings for free or as donations to nonprofits, I unexpectedly accepted a commission. This project not only inspired me to work on a 12-foot composition based on a Claude Monet masterpiece, but it also helped to establish a valuation range for people who already have my paintings. Let me tell you about what happened…

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Virtual Exhibit & Give Away Announcement

You are invited to my virtual exhibit, “Painting Venice in a Pandemic,” which features 20 pictures from 2020 and a seven-foot wide, six-canvas composition of the Doge’s Palace Flooded. This video presentation (7:57) includes my previously untold Venice love story, home movies, the entire process for the large piece, and an in-house soundtrack. I really…

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New Venice Pandemic Paintings

Early on in the pandemic, Italy was severely hit; and now they have the highest death rate for the coronavirus in Europe. But, in the springtime, Venice was locked down and cases dropped. Without masses of people outside, this already picturesque city took on a more poignant beauty, which I tried to capture. on canvas.

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Painting in a Pandemic

Venice Series 1-10

First, I’ll preface this article by saying that I didn’t expect to be blogging so soon about my new series and hope that my readers will appreciate a positive diversion and perhaps even some inspiration in this piece. Early on, while hordes of people were hoarding toilet paper, I was ordering more canvases. Like most…

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My Year of Monet #6: Lasting Impressions

Featuring 5 of Leigh’s New Canvases “My Year of Monet” (MYOM) has ended, but what a year! It not only opened my eyes to his life and works, but also helped me to see my own artistic pursuits in a new light. As I learned about his techniques and applied some of them, I took…

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My Year of Monet #4: His Earlier Paintings Influenced Mine

Featuring 4 of Leigh’s 2019 Paintings After completing the “Paint Like Monet” project (see my last blog article), I painted four more water lilies. For these, I switched up colors and felt looser and freer than I had while concentrating so hard on Monet’s techniques. I returned to the Balboa Park lily pond for a…

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My Year of Monet #5: Wives & Families

Featuring 2 of Leigh’s 2019 Paintings In this post, I’m going to talk about Monet’s love life. As an aside, I hope you received my announcement about available paintings being offered until December 9, 2019. So far, I’ve received far more requests than paintings being offered, which has been exciting but disconcerting, because not everyone…

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My Year of Monet #3: Monet & Me – Reinventing Ourselves

Featuring 6 of Leigh’s 2019 Paintings A Monet-Like Painting Project I recently attended “Monet: The Late Years” at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, an exhibit of works from the last two decades of Claude Monet’s life. I took the selfie below at that show, which opened with a short 1915 film by Sacha…

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My Year of Monet #2: Painting with Monet’s Techniques

Featuring 2 of Leigh’s 2019 Paintings Monet Painting Sells for WHAT?! Before I describe my use of his techniques, I’m going to react to last month’s $110.7 million sale of Claude Monet’s “Meules” (Haystacks). It broke the record for an Impressionist work of art, but I think Monet would have been disappointed that the price…

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