Organization

Well...so far this empty nest adventure has sparked no organizational skills, but...it has been raining so instead, I have been redoing my set of 12 days of Christmas cards.

The Birdies have flown....

The mantle over my kitchen fireplace

The day I have been dreading for 22 years has come. Our three girls have all left and are in college. Nancy Page is at Vanderbilt, Mary Moore is at Davidson, but left yesterday for Scotland to spend the Fall semester at The Glasgow School of Art and Catherine Clare is at Baylor. So I am committed to blog more, and share the projects I am working on.

My first project (actually I am always in the midst of many projects) is to try to organize. I never know what to do with all my original drawings and paper work etc. I always want everything to look cute and filing papers in my desk drawers is just too mundane so... in my garage I have an old wooden 4 drawer filing cabinet. So my idea is to paint it, make it look like a piece of furniture and maybe just maybe I will use it and actually be able to attempt to start a system of filing so I will know where to look for things. I will keep you posted. I am going to try to put it in my kitchen next to the stone fireplace.

The Nursery made it !!! Welcome Happy Morning!

I am sooo excited!! The nursery that was created for little Evie made it to an online venue called Project Nursery! Check it out!

http://projectnursery.com/2009/07/real-room-home-is-where-

God Bless America

I guess our country was on my mind yesterday. My husband and i went with some friends to see the US Army Field Orchestra and Soldiers Chorus at our wonderful outdoor theatre venue called The Pavillion. The music was fabulous. No matter how hot the day, The Pavillion always has a breeze. It made us all proud of the men and women who serve and are proud of the USA!

I painted the platter which reads...God bless America.

HopePointe Church-The Woodlands, Texas-children

This is the fun room with a stage that I get to hang out in with a bunch of kids every Sunday morning. Lately we have been making music videos and posting them on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Tricia+Lowenfield&search_type=&aq=f

Appreciation

My youngest daughter Catherine decided this spring that more than anything she wanted as a gift for her graduation from high school was to go on a mission trip with a local church to Kenya. More specifically, they went to a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. Kibera is said to be one of the poorest and largest slums in all of Africa. She raised the money to go and on June 6th, two days after she graduated she left for ten days of the most glorious work she has ever done.

She has come home changed and she is changing me. Through her eyes and heart, I have seen that the troubling things of my world can seem trivial when you think about the children of Kibera. They do not beg and she said they ALWAYS have a smile on their face. Catherine snuggled up close to these precious ones as you can see from the photos.

They told her that on "school days", they get to eat. Any other day there is no promise of anything.

She has returned with a new found appreciation for education. She wants to make a mark on her generation, to hold out a light in the darkness. And the little ones of Kibera have led her to that yearning. How precious. I will be forever grateful.

Stay tuned for stories from my other daughter Mary Moore who is spending two months this summer in Malawi, Africa working in a crisis nursery.

Nursery

My youngest daughter Catherine graduated from High School last week... It was hard to face the reality of an empty nest. A friend of mine found an empty robin's nest in her yard the other day. Actually it was a couple days after she found a piece of a blue robin's egg. What did the mother robin do?? She probably went on to feather a new nest and lay her next  little blue eggs But what does she do when that isn't in the realm of possibility anymore?  Well, I can tell you what this mother bird did...She feathered a nest for another mama!! And this is it!!

The Shepherd and Easter

I think one of the reasons that Shepherds and sheep are some of my favorite things to draw is how they always remind me of Easter. Easter...the tomb was empty because the Shepherd is alive. 

Easter

Aren't these the sweetest

baby lambs you have ever seen? They are from a website called  www.scottishlamb.typepad.com. They remind me of Easter, new life and the lamb that came to take all our sins away. Blessings to you this Holy  week.

Artist Inspiration

I was thinking about what it takes to be inspired, well...I can only talk from my vantage point.

One of my biggest inspirations came years ago from another artist named Manuel Lepe. He was from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Our family vacationed there for years and one time I went into a local art gallery and spied his work. I was overtaken with the colors and subject matter. He reminded me of myself and the art I felt too embarrassed to show anyone but my mother!

He painted angels in the sky that looked like children. I couldn't believe that was okay. I did the same but figured people would think that was silly or childish. Any way, when I came to know there was actually a genre called naif or naive art... it set me free.

One of Lepe's paintings was owned by Queen Elizabeth II and hung in Windsor Palace! And he had a list of famous celebrities that owned paintings. 

I had a chance to buy one of his fabulous paintings. The price was $1600. I didn't know how to transport it back to the USA and didn't know if that was too expensive. (I was in my early twenties) I passed it up, thinking next year I would have another chance.

The next year when I went to PV I heard the tragic news that Manuel Lepe had died at age 43. I was crushed and the price of the painting was now $16,000.