2006

2006 has been a successful year for me as far as my artwork has gone. It's the first year in a long time I've sold so many paintings and got so many paintings finished. There are two major reasons this has happened. My desire to do it, and my spouses desire to have me do it! Robert's very supportive in three major areas. He doesn't expect me to work anywhere but on my art. He encourages, critiques, and physically helps me when I need it. He and I both like to work alone, so when I'm in the studio, he's happy to be working on his own projects, he doesn't need me to babysit him while I work and vice versa.

This year hasn't been easy as far as personal problems go. Robert has had his left shoulder replaced, his neck fused and his back fused. He has scars upon scars from all these surgeries. So you can guess a lot of our time was spent in the hospital, going to therapy and recuperating from being in the hospital. My grandmother passed away, my dad had his shoulder operated on. We went camping for several days with our kids. We got married. We bought a 14X70 trailer house for a new studio and got it hauled in here.

There have been many things going on to keep me from painting but at the same time, I've done nearly 200 paintings and sold most of them!

I tried painting en plein aire for the first time this year. I did some unique landscapes, some crazy experiments and bought some new mediums. Painted some animals other than horses, which is hard to believe. All in all, this was a great year!
Donna