One Hundred Forty Days – Finally have water!

We re-did our kitchen of 33 years this summer. Did most the work ourselves. Drove my surveyor husband crazy because this house must have been built as an afterthought – no thought to straight, square or level. Ah the joys of owning a home that is well over 100 years old and started as a barn.

Before shot after the walls came down and the insulation removed

One hundred forty days washing dishes in the bathroom sink, cooking outside on the porch.
OK, so I finally can wash dishes again. Yeah! Got a faucet and a sink. We had a Thanksgiving that couldn't be beat.
This project has been a bit pre-occupying to say the least…

But! That does not mean I have not been painting.

Or travelling.

Here is early before shot. A new shot tomorrow.

The 2014 calendar is here too! You can purchase it at my website: DianeLeifheit.com

Let me tell you about the first painting, the January pin-up.
This past summer while my husband was making a wall in the kitchen become plumb, I took off for a pastel workshop in France with Sally Strand. How to travel with pastels and figuring out how small I could make my package to bring with me overseas will come sometime in January.

"Haut Baran" 11x14 January Calendar Pic

The group stayed in this gorgeous place in Southwestern France near Duraval. The property is in a North South oriented valley.  This painting 'Haut Baran' is one of the recently hayed fields. Warm, yes, a good thing to think about on cold January days.

"Haut Baran " is an 11x14 plein air pastel. It is available for purchase at dianeleifheit.com or at my studio in Gabriels NY.

Twelve paintings. Twelve days til Christmas. Tomorrow: the February pinup.

A fragment of underdone potato.

March is almost done and it appears going out like a lamb is not going to be the method. Snow, freezing rain - just lovely. Good News though. Two pieces made it into the Wichita Center for the Arts Pastel 2012 which opens tomorrow. The show was juried by Sally Strand, one of my all time favorite pastel painters.

Getting that particular envelope in the mail was a vindication after receiving so many "Not Exhibited" notices. It does make one wonder why an artist submits work to juried shows at all. My husband the left-sided land surveyor, is always amazed by the process of art. Create, present, hang in the gallery and maybe someone wants to spend the rest of their life with it - or maybe they just need some eye candy.

In juried shows I have learned to rationalize that not getting into a show is sometimes about someone elses good or bad day, whether they ate their Wheaties or - my favorite line from "A Christmas Carol" from Scrooge on the existence of Marley, "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato." Just a burp away from no.

In other words,  a bit of a bad day one day and the next day there would be a whole other perspective and an entirely different show on the wall. 

Then I came across a well written blog by an artist who had just juried a show and I have to say I got where she was coming from. Judging art is an arbitrary process. Everyone has a different idea of what works and the reasons for a jurors choices can be based on so many things there is really just no accounting for the choices. 

So why do it? Good question. It costs money to enter, to ship (yikes!),  to prepare the work for a good presentation, and in all likelihood whether you win anything or not, the piece will come back to you unsold and back on your own studio wall. I can hear my husband now. "Not good business." (Really he does support my work but we approach our businesses differently.)


It is about receiving the recognition. Getting bragging rights. Show off the work as validated. That recognition does come back in other intangible ways. I received an award for a plein air piece in 2010. Right after the announcement I was approached about giving a workshop at a beautiful location. Would I have been approached if I had not received that validation, that recognition? I don't think so.

And I still own that piece. Go figure.

On the plus side one of the works in the Pastel 2012 was sold. The process is all just a bit arbitrary.  

I 'm heading back to the studio.


"On the Cusp" 20x16 Pastel 2011 atf
SOLD