A few nights ago, our toddler started talking about a mermaid chicken. We had no idea what he was talking about or where he could have seen something like a mermaid chicken. He was VERY insistent about the mermaid chicken. These interactions became one of the times that I am grateful to be an artist and illustrator. We put him to bed, still talking about the mermaid chicken (he even woke up in the middle of the night to talk about his fishy bird). In the morning, I showed him a custom illustration that he immediately identified with excitement - a MERMAID CHICKEN! 

Designing Coral Cluck and bringing her to life brought me so much joy. I hope that you love her the way that our family does, too! 

I had my artwork at a gallery outside of Terlingua, Texas. The gallery has closed, so my artwork is more readily available in the San Angelo area. I've had a few pieces on display at the Zero One Taproom. Recently, I sold a donkey painting that had been part of a nativity set I painted in 2020. I filled that spot with this digital work that I printed on metal. 

I've been working on some digital pieces and I've printed all of them on metal. They look great! If you're in the area, I hope you check it out. I can't wait for this camouflaged jackrabbit to find its home! 

Meta has been using images uploaded to its site to train its AI - and you can now generate your own images via Meta AI using these stolen images. Just because it is legal ( if you're a user, you did agree to the terms and conditions), doesn't mean it's ethical. Meta is certainly not ethical. 

It is possible to resist AI - even if the resistance is small. Do not use it. Do not allow your art to train it. Turn off features in apps and on websites that automatically give the site permission to use your information to train its AI (and if you can't opt out, leave the platform). It is important, coming into an age of unregulated tech growth and AI expansion, that we do what we can and we do that when we can. So, I am doing what I can right now. In the new year, I will be focusing on a more intentional use of social media. This looks like no longer sharing new pieces of art to Facebook or Instagram. I will be sharing art here, to my website, and occasionally to BlueSky (for now). I am no longer on Twitter. I did have a blog and newsletter through Substack, but they also have a Nazi problem and I do not want to continue supporting that platform (Jonathan Katz wrote an article about this for The Atlantic in 2023 and it has not improved). 

Why is this so important? Not only is art my form of self-expression and self-connection, art is also a form of resistance. Engaging art and considering the message of the artists causes the viewer to pause for a moment and take in a different kind of message. Consider the work of Francisco Goya and his Third of May 1808 painting about the Spanish resistance to Napoleon - the artwork moves away from traditionally religious themes found in art during the early 1800s and instead focuses on the horrors of war. Pablo Picasso's Guernica is a powerful anti-war piece of art, depicting the suffering and chaos of the Spanish Civil War. The work Soldiers and Students by Jacob Lawrence captures moments of fear during desegregation in the United States. Art, always valuable, makes important cultural statements. 

Moving my artwork off of Meta platforms and away from X will give me the space to talk more about the intentionality behind my work. I am bringing my blog back. I will post links to my blog posts on Meta, but I will not share new artwork to its platforms. I hope to see you here. 

How did I not write a blog post at all during the month of January? I guess it was good to take a break. We had a lot going on during the month of December. My family and I were anticipating celebrating our son's second Christmas with our family and a new cousin. Then, we caught COVID and our household was sick for twenty-five days (that's how long it took to have three negative tests). Obviously, art did not happen during that period of time. Rest and recovery was the priority. This also meant Christmas was small and only with the three of us and four fur babies. It wasn't really what we had planned. We welcomed in the new year in isolation - and with a miscarriage. It was devastating. So, I've been taking a little bit of a break. And that's ok. So, no art and no blogs for January. 

I had decided that I needed to talk to a career coach to figure out what I wanted to do, exactly, with my skillset. And in the week that I was supposed to meet with one I had someone ask for a print to be sent to Virginia, had someone buy a children's book, had someone tell me they regretted not buying an original I had for sale a few years ago, and had a gallery space ask for more art. So, I don't think that my issue is my art - my issue is marketing. The career coach agreed. 

I left Etsy last year because of the fee structure. I don't think that it's a good idea for my art to stay there. A lot of work (time and money, too) went into building my Etsy shop and their fee structure made it very difficult to feel like that was a productive use of my time. In searching for different sales platforms I've finally landed on my shop here - I'd even looked at moving to a different hosting site. 

This month I am continuing to focus on changing my marketing strategy. That looks like more art-focused Twitter posts (because I do a lot of shit posting on that site, don't we all?), focused TikTok's, focused Reels, and focused posting on Facebook and Instagram. It's been really hard to shift away from Etsy - I just had to pay money and enter keywords and a lot of the marketing was taken care of for me. So, I'm trying to figure out. marketing over here. Thanks, as always, for coming along on this journey. It's been a lot of change in four years and I can't wait to see where 2024 takes us! 

We came home from running errands this weekend and saw a neighborhood dog carrying something in its mouth. At first, we thought that it was a mother moving a puppy. No, not the mother. This was the big male. The body it carried did not struggle and it did not move. It hung limp. A cat. He dropped the cat on the grass in his yard and nosed it. It was dead.

We were shocked. We've had issues with this neighbor and this big dog before. And now, a cat was dead. The loose dog was reported to animal control. The cat was taken away. All I could think of was the final moments of the poor, black cat - full of fear. That's not something a being that is 95% tiger should ever feel. A tiny predator. 

I hope cat heaven is better than life in this neighborhood. 

​Remembering Neighborhood Cat, Name Unknown. 

I have quite a few projects to finish before the end of the year, and I find myself struggling with prioritization and overwhelm. I have 8 weeks until the end of the year and 52 days until Christmas. I have home renovations starting again (a small phase that should be easily completed) next week. All of these tiny little things - cleaning rooms out, working on commissions, finishing a wedding gift, planning for Thanksgiving, checking things off of the Christmas list - seem like they're floating around, hard to manage and organize. 

I saw a really great idea of writing down one to three things that have to be accomplished TODAY. It helps with prioritization. Ok, sealing a gift and getting it ready to mail is definitely a greater priority than wrapping a Christmas present (even though the Christmas present feels more pressing in my brain). Yes, working on a commission is important, but it's deadline is a little further out than this weekend, so I need to clear off my dining room table and prep it to move into a different room for the renovation that starts on Monday. 

So here are my top three priorities for today: 

-Pilates (so I'm moving my body and getting out of my head)
-Charging my iPad for some concept sketch work (not working on the concept sketches yet, just charging my iPad - which I have been forgetting to do for days)
-Transferring a design to a canvas (not painting it yet, just getting started). 

​Doable.