Happy 22nd anniversary to us! Here’s a pix of Val and me making a toast at our wedding reception, November 27 1985. It was a beautiful day. We hope — wherever you are — you can raise a glass to love and life with us this weekend as we celebrate.

The days are so short now, you can turn on your holiday lights at 5 p.m.! It’s Solstice time, the year is long in the tooth, the new year is coming. Hooray. Here is our beautiful and big Solstice wreath — made from our own vine! What a warm reminder that the days will grow […]

It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and weehoo, let the All Holiday Gaming Marathon begin! The Holiday Game arrived! This year’s selection: The Simpsons Game. I chose it because it would run on the PS2 and it was touted as funny and fun. I hoped it would the provide hours of lazy, laughing gaming that’s […]

The oil sketch for The Blue Watering Can, 15 X 30″

Last month, Laurie made these delicious crab cakes, a variation on a recipe from her friend and co-worker, Mary. They were great! Mom has asked for the recipe, so here it is:

Mary’s Crab Cakes Laurie-style
1 lb cleaned crab meat
1 egg
2 tsp. Worcestershire Sauce
2 tbs. mayonnaise
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 tbs. Creole/brown mustard OR 1 tbs […]

I put Box 150 back on the easel today. It was good that — after not looking at it for a couple of months — I felt optimistic about it again. You might recall that after working on it for a while in August I was not satisfied with the mid ground and I was […]

Wow! Janice, we of the Laurie’s Birthday Champagne Toast Party salute you. We love that tart! It is obvious that lemons and you really do get along. It was a great way to use our precious lemons because, by using thin slices of the fruit with peel on, all of the complex flavors of the […]

… I don’t have a lot of time to post. I’ve got duties to attend to like making Janice’s Lemon Tart and accompanying the Birthday Girl to Royal Health Spa for a scrub. And I don’t mean to put Mark off about what I think of my shiny new Leopard operating system, but the truth […]

It was 1965 and my mother needed a diversion. She was 25, an artist living in a low-rent Baton Rouge apartment with a four-year-old, an 18-month-old and an asshole. My father was a graduate student at LSU who spent most of his days at the lab, but somehow he still found time in his […]

… because it is damn hard to paint flat out and have the energy left at the end of a session to write about it. Hmm. Anyway, not as promised, but as can be done — a weekend of work on the Val at Work portrait — first glazing the whole painting in transparent yellow […]

There is a treasure in editordom: that great editor — not just the useful guy who saves you from making a fool of yourself with inherent misspellings or your unremorseful use of the word unprecedented — that editor with real news judgement and an instinct for the main channel of The Story that makes the […]

All that’s left is the signature. More about this painting tomorrow.