Today I want to share with you a special story about one of my paintings, a story that I’ve never told publicly before. One that’s been pretty much a secret until now. I feel compelled to tell this story because this week we lost my father-in-law, and he is one of the central characters in it. In 1992, I had finally finished my “Pittsburgh Remembered” series.  For years, I had been getting calls to purchase prints of my first painting in the series, “Meet Me Under Kaufmann’s Clock,” though it had long been sold out. I remember going to see Jesse Hager, a master…

Life certainly is full of surprises, isn’t it? The Friday before last, we were told the Pittsburgh Home and Garden Show would be shutting down two days ahead of schedule.  Just a couple days earlier, there were no plans to close early, but no one anticipated how quickly things would change as the COVID-19 virus spread and social distancing became our new reality. As we now are taking care to limit our time outside our homes, going out only for necessities, it’s more important than ever to use other ways to connect with each other. With no shows or events…

A couple weeks ago I was shopping at Aldi, and I saw the cutest little vase with a little bulb, white roots stretching down through the clear water and a few fresh green leaves popping out of it. It was a hyacinth, my favorite springtime flower. So of course, I had to give this precious little bulb a good home, and I placed in on my kitchen windowsill. Over the last two weeks, I’ve been giving it fresh water and turning it each day so that it would grow straight as the sun – growing stronger every day – showered its…

I have exciting news! After many long hours in the studio, my new painting, “Pittsburgh’s Tunnel Vision,” is finished!  With the Big Unveiling coming up in just one week, there was no time to sit back and relax.  The very next morning after finishing the painting, I headed off to my printer’s studio to make the prints.  Alex and I worked together all through the day, making sure we got the night sky and all of the reflective colors just right.  But that wasn’t all that had to be done on a tight schedule.  There were so many moving parts that had…