Mineral King Cabins

I believe that cabin communities are a true treasure of Tulare County, here in Central California. I love to draw cabins. Don’t believe me? My business has been called “Cabin Art” since 1987.

As a studio artist, I work from photos. There is no way to get the level of detail I like while sitting outside. Besides, I’m oldish now, and need a giant magnifying light, along with cheater magnifier glasses.

So, here are a few photos of Mineral King cabins for you to enjoy. Sometimes the light is just right, so I take the same scenes over and over and over.

Mineral King cabins

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Exciting Times While Painting in Three Rivers

Sometimes, while painting in Three Rivers, in Tulare County in Central California (not LA, not San Francisco – NOTHING like the stereotypical California), I am just minding my own business, painting along, staying calm and focused, and then stuff happens.

Smoke? I smell smoke. Hmmm, there are ashes. . . that’s worrisome. I don’t hear sirens, so I keep painting.

Just painting some fruit here. After all, California is the land of fruit and nuts, and Central California is where most of it originates. No big deal – just oil paint on canvas. I’m fine. I’m calm.

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Painted a raven too. I’ll tell you more about that in another post. Just painting along,

HEY! BOBCAT SIGHTING!

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Um, Perkins, my Sweet Sixteen year old cat, it would be good for you to lie low on the front porch right now.

Whoa. Good thing I keep my camera with me in the painting workshop building, door open for smelling smoke (no sirens, no worries?) and sighting cannibalistic wild felines.

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Allllrighty then, if all is calm, focused and just fine, explain why that raven is upside down.

Shut up.

Cabin Communities Matter

“Cabin Communities Matter” is the name of my presentation about, umm, cabin communities (duh) using my drawings and what I learned while making my book, The Cabins of Wilsonia.

It was an hour drive to Tulare, where I gave the talk. I chose to drive through the country, which means orange groves, fields of cotton, vineyards and walnut orchards. Boring? Nah, don’t insult farmers, especially not when you are wearing fiber and eating food.

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The talk was at the Tulare Public Library for the Tulare-Kings Genealogical Society. I wasn’t sure my presentation was relevant, and figured I wouldn’t know anyone with the exception of my drawing student who invited me to speak.

The library is beautiful, five years old, spacious and multi-functional for the city of Tulare. (For my far away readers, that word is pronounced “Too-LAR-ry” – not “Lar” as in Lars, but “Lerr” as in “Larry.” I live in Tulare County, but the county seat is Visalia. Never mind how that one is pronounced for today.)

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In spite of being only 5 years old, there were difficulties with the technology. I went a day in advance to make sure I knew how to run things. Good thing, because of the troubles, we met in the City Council Chambers – very very nice – and my main contact also had to learn how to run things. I made Very Specific Notes.

5 Wilsonia friends came, along with other people I know and a handful I didn’t know. There were lots and lots of questions, which I found very fun to answer at the end. Questions are fun for a speaker because it says the listeners are interested in the topic and it gives me a chance to get to know them a little.

Giving talks is an important part of marketing or “self-promotion”  as it is called in the art world. It’s fun, and I’m willing to do one for your group.

Use the contact button that drops down when you hover your mouse over “About The Artist” and send me an email if you’d like to hear why Cabin Communities Matter to our county.

Discovering More in Mineral King

There is more to my life than selling oil paintings of Tulare County scenery.

I spend a lot of time in Mineral King in the summer. It is a great source of inspiration, because it is the most beautiful place in Tulare County. (Go ahead and argue with me – present your case! I’m ALWAYS on the lookout for beautiful places in Tulare County!)

The last time I went to Mineral King, I photographed the official name of my favorite bridge. The sign is wrong, I just KNOW it. It is THE OAK GROVE BRIDGE, because that’s what Trail Guy told me about 30 years ago. So there.

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Sometimes being in Mineral King is about hanging out with neighbors on their very inviting front porches.

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Sometimes it is about discovering favorite flowers in new locations. Your nose often leads you to this leopard lily before you spot it.

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Here’s a weird puffy mushroom or toadstool. Whatever it is, it is large. (And yes, I washed my hands after touching it. Thanks for your concern.)IMG_6195

Trail Guy went off trail to look at the “Three Falls Below The Gate”. Nice photo, Trail Guy!

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We went off trail together to look at more damage from the flood on July 2.

Always more to see, more to discover, more to inspire in Mineral King.

2015 Calendar Reminder

The 2015 calendars titled “Beautiful Tulare County” with my current best paintings that fit the format (can you say “run on sentence”??) are available.

 



 
$15 each, including tax and mailing If you don’t use Paypal, you can mail a check to Cabinart at P.O. Box 311, Three Rivers, CA 93271. US only, with apologies to my foreign friends.
Everyone uses calendars. They used to be freebies, handed out at drug stores and hardware stores and coming unasked for in the mail. The thought of buying one was bizarre, unless you had a friend who was a nut about horses and you happened to find a horsey calendar.

Then, businesses pulled back from freebies. I refused to pay for calendars except for the custom one I made for Trail Guy each year. There were a few years when the only way I had the month on paper was to go online and print one from the internet!

Now, I print 100 a year, and hope maybe there might be just one left over for us. So far, it hasn’t happened. There was that one year that one of the calendars was upside and backwards. I kept that one. It had the days on top and the picture on the bottom.

No worries. All these calendars are done correctly on good solid cover-weight paper with my best oil paintings of beautiful Tulare County!

Ahem. This was going to be a short post. No more caffeine for you, Young Lady!

The 2015 Calendar is HERE!

The new calendar for 2015 has arrived!

 

These are my best oil paintings. Sort of. My best oil paintings that fit the calendar format and fit the months. Sort of. The best blend of my best oil paintings that sort of fit the calendar format and sort of fit the months.

It is called “Beautiful Tulare County”. (Stop laughing – there is lots of beauty in this rural place in Central California and it is my job to find it and paint or draw it!)

$15, includes tax and mailing to you!

Want one? There are several ways to get one.




1. Use this Paypal button and your Paypal account.

2. Mail a check for $15, made out to Cabinart at P.O. Box 311, Three Rivers, CA 93271

3. Come to the Senior League Bazaar on Saturday, November 15 at the Three Rivers Memorial Building from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and get yours there.

4. Call me with a better idea – maybe we see each other on a regular basis and I can just bring it to you.

THERE ARE ONLY 100 AND WHEN THEY ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE.

Ahem. Excuse me for shouting. Sometimes I get excited when I see all my best work together in one place and then think you all might like it too.

2015 Calendar Coming!

Two years ago I published a calendar of oil paintings.

Last year it was a calendar of photography. (I was too busy drawing The Cabins of Wilsonia to paint.)

This year it will be a calendar of oil paintings.

It will be called Beautiful Tulare County. If that sounds like a joke, stop being cynical! There are beautiful places and times of year around here. It is my business to find those places and times, and then to share them with you.

The calendar’s pages will not be precisely seasonally correct. They will be close, but summer is a dominant season around here, so those types of paintings will be dominant in the calendar.

Waiting for the price from the printer (NOT the book printer!!) and the estimated time of arrival before making them available for purchase. I’ll make it an easy price, a round number that includes tax and mailing costs.

A Well-Organized Show in Visalia

The organizers provided pop-up tent-tops, lunch and handled all the filthy lucre.

I began the day with high expectations and much optimism.

The pop-up tent was 10’x10′ in theory. In reality, it tapered inward, so instead of fitting all 6 of my display screens, only 5 would fit. So, quite a few paintings didn’t make it. Still, I have a TON of paintings.

There were 3 or 4 blocks of these tents with umbrellas in the middle of the street, because it was hot and shade was very welcome.

After setting up, I went exploring down the street. (or was that up the street? I walked North on Garden, so I think it would be “up”) This is GORGEOUS work by my amazing friend Nikki.

This was a simple booth with 3 different books for sale. (Hi Carole and Irene!) I thought the display was EXCELLENT. I wonder who won the best booth prize??

An hour before the show was advertised as open to the public, there were VIP guests. Except there weren’t. It was a nice idea, but just meant we had an easy first hour.

Then the public began to arrive. I saw many old friends, former and current drawing students, met new people, and had my sister with me for about 2 hours.

People were nice, and many of the comments and conversations were either puzzling or funny.

“I have 2 lemon trees in my back yard.” 

“Oh?” (What is an appropriate response? “Great! Want to buy a painting of a lemon?”)

Or, “Oh my gosh, I thought those were pictures!!” (usually pronounced “pitchers”)

Couldn’t really say what I thought, which was, “They are pictures. Did you mean photographs?”

“Oh my gosh, that’s $50??!”

“Uh, yes, it is an original oil painting, Doofus.”

Nope, I didn’t say that either.

In conclusion, I don’t think my work is suitable for a street fair in Visalia, no matter how well organized it is.

Visalia is the largest city in Tulare County, and it would be good to have my work in a place with a greater population than Three Rivers. However, I don’t know what would be the right venue.

More will be revealed in the fullness of time. . .

Painting for a Show in a City

With the first fall show coming on October 11, the pressure is on to get some paintings finished, signed, dried, scanned and varnished. Let’s see what is in the painting workshop.

Yikes. This photo shows me that my Mineral King mural needs to be freshened up. Wouldn’t it be fun to repaint it every 3 months to reflect the actual season? Forget it – I have to finish paintings that can be sold!

I had no trouble finishing these pumpkins. The bridge might be finished. The poppy fields are rough – this is after one pass over the canvas. The orange wants a few more blossoms.

I thought this would be too hard, because it is a challenge to turn 2 rectangular photos into one square scene, and real life is very messy so I’m trying to clean it up here. The rocks and background trees have been really satisfying. I love detail – did you know that?

On the advice of a trusted friend, I added more foliage to the poppies. It probably isn’t enough to suit her, but I like it. Those 4 orange poles will become The Four Guardsmen, 4 sequoias you pass among as you enter Sequoia National Park from Three Rivers. There is Farewell Gap (Mineral King) as it appears in early fall – leaves changing a bit, no snow, and very low water. Getting the water and rocks to look right is stretching my limited abilities. And the bottom scene is the trail to Farewell Gap. The light was wonderful that day! It isn’t finished in this photo.

Upcoming Show: Taste the Arts, Saturday, October 11, 11-5, downtown Visalia on Garden Street from Main to Oak Streets. (no idea where I will be – I’ll just follow directions like a good soldier when the time comes.)

Woohoo, world, I’m going to the big city of Visalia to meet some people and sell some art!

Yeah, I know, I really don’t get out much. Visalia is the county of seat of Tulare County, population around 125,000. “City”? It is to me! Three Rivers is 35 miles east and has about 2500 people, including all the part-timers. Just sayin’ so you can keep things in perspective from where I live.

 

A Question Artists Don’t Like

The question that most artists don’t like is this:

Will you donate a piece of artwork to My Good Cause?

And then it is followed by something like “You can write it off on your taxes” or “It will bring great exposure”.

The answers to the follow-ups are “Only the cost of the materials” and “People die of exposure”.

If a good Cause needs items for raffles and auctions, it would behoove both parties (the Cause and the artist) to buy the items. 

All those causes are good. One year, I donated more than I sold. It didn’t bring me more business; it brought me more requests for more donations.

A Cause can spend some of its resources on an item and then sell the item for more than it paid. It will make a profit. If it doesn’t make a profit, it can write off its expenses.

An artist who gets asked to donate her individually produced items depletes her inventory, can only write off the cost of the materials but not her time or the value of the item, and gets worn out.

An artist who gets worn out begins donating items of lesser quality, items that haven’t sold, items that aren’t her best work. (Honestly, I had an artist friend say to me one time, “Just give them your junky stuff that hasn’t sold – that’s what I do!”)

In a small community like Three Rivers or even anywhere in Tulare County, word gets out that you can either buy a piece of art for full price or you can just wait for the next fund raiser for The Good Cause. Then, Mr. Good Taste who spent money on art, sees that someone got a similar piece for 1/3 of the price, and the artist’s credibility goes down.

So, I don’t give my art away anymore. If your Good Cause would like to buy a piece, call me or email me. Perhaps we can work out some sort of a discount. When you truly value my art, I may be more likely to value your event.

Hint: if you have never bought any art from an artist, how do you have the chutzpah to ask for a gift??

There are a few Causes I choose to donate to, because they are part of my life. One of them is the mural project in Exeter, which was started by me and an awesome group of volunteers in 1996. Someone called me for a piece for their upcoming Garden Party fund raiser (a very nice event on May 5 this year); I explained my point of view because I’m teachy like that, and then I offered a painting.

Because it hasn’t sold in spite of the fact that I really like it (Obviously, my opinion does not causes pieces to sell), I took a hard look at it.

I paint better now.

Before

After (New and Improved!!)

If you don’t think it is improved, just be polite, ‘k?

I wrote about this a few months ago and called the post “Donations Bloviations”.