I wish my desk (and coffee table and stereo cabinet!) looked like this. These paintings, which are oil and acrylic gouache on canvas, are the most recent work of South Korean artist Hee Joh Lee. There are so many lovely textures, gorgeous little details, and that totally wrong/totally perfect perspective is amazing! You can find more of her lovely paint…

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Ice-cream-colored melting porcelain… that are actually colored pencil drawings on paper mounted on wood panel. What? When I scrolled by these on Instagram late last night, I honestly thought all of this flora (and one fauna!) was ceramic… sculptures dripping in pastel-hued glaze. Nope. These lovely drawings are the work of Canadian artist Pierre Durette…

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So good… but wait, there’s more! Where did the ideas for each piece come from? :

“From 1948 to 1951, Grete Stern contributed photomontages, whi…

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Nope, not a close up, just another painting of a girl and a big fish… and I want more, more, more! These oil tempura paintings are the work of Norwegian artist Lars Elling. His whole portfolio is narrative, strange and mysterious, but what I loved about these two is exactly that. There are two (and probably a whole bunch more we haven’t seen). I have a …

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Another Saturday, another group of fabulous artists whose work stopped me mid-scroll this past week: Darcy Whent (oil on linen) ; Keiko Masumoto (ceramic sculpture); Sherrie Wolf (oil on canvas); Lynda Draper (ceramic, hand-blown glass); and, one more Dolly portrait because how could I resist… Alejandro Javaloyas (colored pencil, soft pastel, airbrushed acrylic ink, and giclée on paper).

Have a lovely weekend ~ Danielle

Today’s artists are: Allison Garcia (watercolor on paper) ; Mary Anne Carter (3’ painting on cut wood) / Erika Lee Sears (oil on panel) / Sophie Vallance Cantor (oil on panel & oil on canvas) / Alice Guittard (cut marble) / *Danielle Krysa (clay cigarettes, broken jewelry, glass lemon juicers, paint).

So, the something else altogether* above… I wanted to share these sculptures I did in 2022 which were part of a series titled “The Size of a Grapefruit”. Like so many women, I’ve spent years dealing with fibroids, cysts, and other uterus related junk. When you finally get diagnosed (after being told to “just try cutting out gluten and diary”), doctors always seem to compare these foreign masses to fruit. I’ve been told, “It’s the size of a plum; it’s the size of a peach; it’s the size of a large grapefruit”, and so on. I always thought of my uterus as a broken place filled with trash (hence the cigarette butts), but in order to save my mental health, I made a conscious effort to see “broken as beautiful”… and of course, I used my art to process this idea. I filled these lemon juicers-turned-ashtrays with broken but beautiful objects: bits of vintage jewelry in need of repair but still so sparkly; chunks of rose quartz that were heavy and sharp but so gorgeous. This is a super power we have as artists… we can always make lemons (and peaches and grapefruits) into art!

Soooo, that was a long way to say things like cigarette butts might not always be literal. They’re definitely part of my visual vocabulary/art toolbox for something else altogether ; )

Happy Friday ~ Danielle

I want to lie on the grass and study mushrooms with a little yeti… I also want to buy a fresh scoop of chocolate chip mint for that guy. This fantastic installation, titled “Those Who Crossed the Mountain”, was shown at Marc Biblioni Gallery in Madrid this past spring. Here is an excerpt from the curatorial text by Victoria Rivers:

“… In “Más allá de la montaña - 산을 넘은 자들 - Those Who Crossed the Mountain”, Miju Lee reimagines the figure of the Yeti not as a mythical creature to be discovered, but as an ancestral presence inhabiting a world of its own. Suspended between the human and the non-human, the familiar and the unknown, these beings exist in a state of continuous transformation. Porous, elusive, and deeply connected to nature, memory, and myth.
Through painting, sculpture, and installation, Lee constructs an immersive environment where viewers no longer observe from a distance, but enter a living territory shaped by dreamlike and spiritual dimensions. Here, the Yeti becomes a figure of transition: a reflection on identity, belonging, and the invisible forces that connect worlds…”

Beautiful. Happy Thursday ~ Danielle

… and this is just the tip of the iceberg! I had to include a couple (of the many) Dolly paintings Ashley Longshore has done over the years; one of my favorite paintings by Martha Rich; and here come the bottle caps… sooooo many vintage bottle caps assembled into large-scale mosaics by Molly B. Right; a lovely collage on found book cover by Tennessee based artist Hollie Chastain; and yes, I put myself in the lineup too. I made the first piece above, titled “WWDD (What Would Dolly Do)”, for a solo show I had at Modfellows Gallery in Nashville in 2020. WWDD… it’s a good question to ask yourself, because the answer will always be something pretty wonderful! ~ Danielle

This is the work of British artist Pauline Boty {1938-1966} whose paintings and collages “often demonstrated a joy in self-assured femininity and female sexuality, as well as criticism (both overt and implicit) of the "man's world" in which she lived. Her rebellious art, combined with her free-spirited lifestyle, has made Boty a herald of 1970s' feminism.” Yeah they did!

Amazing! And that was going to be where today’s story ended… but then I discovered Pauline died at the very young age of 28. I wanted to know what cut this unapologetic artist’s life short, so I did some research and was shocked to hear how similar Pauline’s story was to another of my favorite artists, American artist Margaret Kilgallen {1967-2001}. A very well-known Bay Area artist, Margaret was only 33 years old when she passed away in 2001. She was diagnosed with breast cancer early in her pregnancy, and refused treatment in order to protect her baby girl. A few weeks after her daughter was born, Margaret died. Three decades earlier, Pauline had also been diagnosed with cancer during a prenatal exam, and just like Margaret, Pauline refused treatment. Pauline Boty died in July of 1966 when her daughter was just five months old.

Two trail blazing artists. Two fiercely protective mothers. Two inspirational women.

GLASS. UNDER. GLASS! I just love these tiny, delicate, beautifully executed worlds of monochromatic glassy goodness in each little globe. Siiiiigh… I wish I could sit inside each one of them for an afternoon. You can follow Amber on Instagram at @amber.cowan.

Now, before I say ‘Happy Monday’, I really want to drop this thought here for you because it really struck a chord with me, and I hope it does the same for you:

Right?! Sometimes we forget how far we’ve come. Let’s make a conscious decision to remember.

Okay, now I can say it. Happy Monday ~ Danielle

» This entire week I’ll be sending the daily emails to everyone so that the FREE subscribers can see what happens over here Monday through Friday… and then sign up for the PAID subscription because they just love it all so much! ;)

“20,000”

The fire doesn’t knock on doors

it just walks in

and makes shadow puppets

out of our lives

it licks away the notches on walls

that once proved how much the children have grown

it chews on the furniture

the boxes of memories

the keepsakes and heirlooms

it chars the teddy bears

and stuffed animals

like over roasted marshmallows

family photos melt into nothing on its tongue

it leaves behind only what it can’t swallow

a roll of quarters meant for the parking meter

they remain but now are all fused together

like a stack of butterscotch lifesavers

left in the console of a car

on a hot day

a pair of scissors that a mother used

to give her daughter bangs

chimneys now stand like headstones

pointing to a sky still bruised with smoke

it is taking the nests that chirp

with hatchlings too young to fly

the warrens and dens

with offspring too young to flee

homes became ash in a single night

20,000 evacuees

have all been told to leave behind

the treasures there isn’t room for

the ones strangers might deem trivial

but mean everything

the cane a granddaughter

made for her grandad

in woodworking class

after his hip started to give him trouble

the drawings and the A+ tests

pinned to the fridge with pride

the love letters a husband and wife wrote to each other

before email was a thing

and memories were all flammable

but even in the overstuffed luggage

there is still room for hope

it fits into the smallest places

like something we forgot was the first thing we packed

we will find it again in the few who run toward the danger

while 20,000 have been told to go in the opposite direction

we see it

in the community that takes us in

without even knowing our names

in the hands that reach through the falling ash

to offer all of what little they have

it reminds us

that the roots of true community

are fireproof

and that though much of what we are losing will stay lost

our future will grow back.

~ Shane Koyczan

Beautiful.

My family is so grateful that we had a house to come home to after the eleven day evacuation, but a lot of people in our town can’t say the same. We will rally around them though, because like Shane said, “the roots of true community are fireproof.”

Thank you for reading. Have a lovely day ~ Danielle

Bio photo by @kaareiverson

Ah, Diet Coke and delusion… I hear that’s a recipe for success! Today’s featured artists obviously have a sweet spot for soda pop, if only as subject matter ;) The artists above are : Alicja Kozlowska (embroidered felt sculpture) / Robert C. Jackson …

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Her candy-filled teacups stopped me mid-scroll last Saturday, so I just had to write a full post with all of the gorgeous details! These exquisite, large-scale oil paintings are the work of New York based artist Alexandra Averbach:

“… I am continually inspired by the beauty of nature, particularly flowers and fruit, whose forms are both sensual and stru…

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Any artwork that incorporates ‘Garfield’ is a-okay in my book! I just saw the mixed media work of LA based artist Brian Robertson and, obviously, I had to show you immediately. Acrylic, yarn, string on panel. LOVE! Now, what I might LOVE even more is how different his work used to be. I wrote about Brian in 2021 when he was painting black and white, hyp…

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Yes! Monday Motivation has arrived in the form of:

No.1 : tiny, happy coffee cups full of plants and disco magic… because who doesn’t want to start a week with tiny, happy coffee cups full of plants and disco magic!? These brand new oil paintings by Australian artist Chelsea Gustafsson are a lovely combination of ordinary and extraordinary! You can find …

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See? How could I possibly scroll past any of these!? The featured artists are: Stephanie H. Shih (ceramic) / Alexandra Averbach (oil on canvas) / Ariana Heinzman (ceramic) / Quentin James McCaffrey (oil on canvas) / Adam Parker Smith (polished stainless steel, walnut frame with integrated lighting… whoa!?).

Have a lovely weekend ~ Danielle

Obviously I had to wrap t…

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I didn’t pack any art supplies in…

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Beads on found photo, embroidery on found photo, found photo in vase. So simple, so lovely. British artist Julie Cockburn is really fun to follow because, well, as you can see she’s so creative! I also find these three images very calming, which I really need at the moment. If you follow me on Instagram, you probably know that our entire town (12,000 pe…

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