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.

See you in the streets. Stay cool.
love, Gator Girl

It’s wonderful Sent from my iPhone-Mary Helen