Happy Christmas!

We finally have just about everything done except some wrapping. It felt good yesterday to sit in the living room with my sketchbook, Sharpie and watercolors and sketch our Christmas tree.

Here’s hoping you and yours have a loving and peaceful Christmas.

House Portraits

Original house portraits make great gifts. I have just finished three that people are giving for Christmas, including the one below. I have time to paint one or two more house portraits before Christmas, so let me know right away if you’re interested. Details are here.

Raccoons

Tall white pines grow right next to our house. Raccoons nest in these trees, and in the late summer evenings we sometimes see a mother raccoon leading her young ones down the tree trunks to look for food. Here they are waiting for her return.

Advent Blessings to You

As you may know, our daughter Kate’s memoir, Following the Red Bird: First Steps in a Life of Faith, (available here on Amazon) was published earlier this year. The book includes a chapter on Advent, and she quotes from Caryll Houselander who describes Advent as a “season of growth and expectation.” In Kate’s book, the red bird becomes a metaphor for how we can begin to listen for and respond to the ways that God is calling us in our lives. Here is my cardinal painting, with hopes that you have a blessed Advent season.

 

Fall on the Pond

It’s late fall, and most leaves are off the trees and the migrating birds are long gone. The colors are subdued and the days are short. A friend who moved back to New England told me that in southern California he had really missed the seasons. “Putting away your summer clothes, and taking out your winter clothes — you don’t realize how important the rhythm of the seasons is until you live in a climate where the weather is nice, but pretty much the same all year.”

Here’s a fall sketch of a nearby pond.