June 2025 – Gator Girl Art

Hi all y’all!

I have been working on Medusa for a few weeks. It has been cathartic to paint Medusa with the repealing of women’s rights in the US right now. As usual, when I paint something I know little about, I Google it. I also watch YouTube clips and read what’s written about it. Not a huge deep dive because I have a shortish attention span. While I was looking up Medusa, I saw what other people had painted and didn’t see my idea. That’s a win. I also found a poem by Nikita Gill that I love.

I am calling this painting, But Your Story was Always Written by Men. I was going to put on this redacted piece that I made on Canva, but I wanted something more positive.

I chose to write this part of her poem. I don’t like my hand writing. So, I found a “print to cursive” free site. I printed it and traced it. Then, I wrote over the tracing with a white ink pen.

I have 2 of these frames. My mother got them at an estate sale or garage sale, maybe 40 years ago. I finally decided I could use them. Blick Art Materials had the perfect size board. I thought that would be best to use because it is hard wood, smooth and not cut crooked. Painting on wood is different than canvas. One of the pros of using wood is that I can write with a regular ink pen. One of the cons for me was that I wasn’t used to painting on wood. When I figured out to just lay the paint on instead of scrubbing several layers on, it worked like a dream. Kind of like a dream. It took quite a long time and I don’t think her face is exactly like I pictured. Her expression is for sure what I had in mind. She looks to me like she knows so much about life and just deals with it. Skeptical for good reason.

I am pretty happy about her. I am also happy about having an idea that I wanted to follow through on.

In rage and resistance,

Gator Girl

Hi all y’all!

I hope you are doing well. Life can be tricky to navigate. My strategy has been to act locally. I try to make something better in my community when I can. It saves me from feeling like I should help the world. It is out of my abilities to save the world, so it mostly saddens me. Someone told me recently that my paintings made them happy. It got me thinking about painting again.

I started this painting last summer. I got bogged down in the minutia of painting so many windows. So it sat. I didn’t start another painting, because I always like to finish what I start first. And probably, I have been a little depressed since November. I started watching a free journaling video and the woman was making a messy collage of a city street. https://courses.karenstampercollage.com/collage-the-street I finished the painting in 3 days and I had fun.

Last summer, I started painting this with no thought as to why. The person turned out to look a little British, a little like my first husband, and maybe non-binary. The city in the background reminds me of New York or London with the old buildings and little parks throughout. I think the tightrope person is addressing my fear of heights. Everything that I wanted to collage was in one Somerset magazine, except for the old photos that I used for people in the windows.

Before this gets too long, if I’m not too late for that…

Now for some closeups.

I found these photos in an album that someone gave my mother. She had no living relatives and had nobody to pass the album to. I think it is kind of fun that they ended up here.

These are my favorite people. The woman has some cocky attitude and the man in the elevator because he is in an elevator.

I lost the head of this woman. I looked everywhere. I can only assume that she didn’t want to be in the painting. I know she wasn’t happy with her dress.