Together ... Looking for Blessings!
Dear Friend,
WOW! ... and then life was different. Wes has been dealing with the potential impact of the virus since February as part of his work as Executive Director with the Society of Animal Artists (SAA). It was weeks of conversations and agonizing decisions that ultimately led to the SAA leadership choosing to cancel the major 60th Annual Exhibition and all opening weekend events. This had proceeded weeks beforehand by the decision to cancel the April Board meeting. It's been a lot of work for Wes mostly with hundreds of email communications daily but it is nice being able to interact with so many around the world.
Personally, all of our shows and exhibitions for 2020 have been impacted. Some are now online only, others pending or canceled and at this time, we doubt we'll be attending anything until next year. Rachelle's still been painting and aside from the SAA, Wes has been framing works. We regret that our "secret" paintings for upcoming juries may now be hidden for another year. Spring is finally here in the Smokies and we have enjoyed a couple of trips to the lake before the virus closed everything down. Now, we're enjoying working in the yard and garden as we isolate ourselves. If you are by yourself ... or even not ... feel free to reach out to us via email, Facebook or the blog. Those interactions do give us a sense of normalcy and deepen our appreciation of the blessings we have in each of you!
Rachelle has been spending a few hours each week on this painting as well as working on a couple of others that we'll share soon. Below is the progress as of last month. These are low-resolution images but you should be able to see all the subtle work she's done enhancing the colors and stippling in likely a thousand more dots in the duckweed.
Wes fishing for trout at one of our favorite kayaking destinations |
