Drawing in Nature Workshop

On Saturday September, 12th 2009, I will teach a half day introduction to Drawing in Nature.

This is your chance to take the pressure off of creating a finished piece of artwork, and return to really seeing the natural world. We will approach drawing from the perspective of artist, explorer, student, botanist, traveler, gardener. This is a class for all skill levels that focuses on documentary-style drawing with just a pencil and sketchbook. The point is not how accurate it is, the point is: Are you really looking? Exercise your visual muscles by going from tiny leaf to big tree to entire landscape.

Click here for more info and to sign up!

Thanks, Rebecca

Camp Rules

A Small Orchard

Johnson Family Tree, 48" x 72", 2009, mixed media on hand-stretched canvas

I met the Johnsons in their living room over iced coffee on an early summer day to talk to them about their painting. After a few hours, I had so much more than a list of favorite colors or hobbies. I learned about their summers in Point Clear, about unfinished peach jam made by grandma, about dirt floor corner store memories and the rise and fall and rise again of a couple cultivating real love. I returned to my studio with my notes, and what followed became a journey for me too. I sat in the neighborhood pool, at my kitchen table, in the park, at the coffeeshop and tried to sketch the tree that might come to respresent this family. What resulted was a study of tree roots, white-blooming flowers, roots music, blues, country, swamp, funk, the changing light after a storm, care-instructions in soil, and the long stretching branches of a sturdy trunk tree at the center of it all. I photographed the painting on my porch before delivering it to the Johnson Family, where it now lives. I think about my experience with the Johnsons this summer and can't help but wonder, who's next?

To talk with me about a tree painting for you or your family, please write or call me at 504-669-8667.

Below is a small orchard of other tree paintings I have made.

Lemon Tree, 48" x 72", 2009, mixed media on hand-stretched canvas, SOLD

Sunday Tree, 48" x 72", 2009, mixed media on hand-stretched canvas, SOLD

Bayou Tree, 48" x 72", 2008, mixed media on hand-stretched canvas, SOLD


Couvillon Family Tree, 48" x 72", 2009, mixed media on hand-stretched canvas

True Blood

True Blood Opening Credits, by Digital Kitchen

Bits of Summer

A poem in which i will allow the words "loss", "yearning" and "pain", but just this once.

After Love

by Jack Gilbert July 7, 2008

He is watching the music with his eyes closed.

Hearing the piano like a man moving

through the woods thinking by feeling.

The orchestra up in the trees, the heart below,

step by step. The music hurrying sometimes,

but always returning to quiet, like the man

remembering and hoping. It is a thing in us,

mostly unnoticed. There is somehow a pleasure

in the loss. In the yearning. The pain

going this way and that. Never again.

Never bodied again. Again the never.

Slowly. No undergrowth. Almost leaving.

A humming beauty in the silence.

The having been. Having had. And the man

knowing all of him will come to the end.

We attended the Verge

Pictures from the Opening of Women on the Verge at Galerie Gigi.


Fellow Artist Marin Dearie and myself in the courtyard at the gallery.

Olivia Hill's beautiful piece. So dreamy and lovely.
Me and my tiny little stitched piece all lonely on the gallery wall.


Some random girls who rocked matching shirts. allright.

Thanks to Galerie Gigi who hosted the fete in style with complimentary wine and limonatas, finger sandwiches and snack cookies. Show is up through August 29, 2009.

The Art Melted

My piece is visible behind one of my favorites from the show: Jessica Danby's "Old School" knitted school desk.
A Very well-attended event.

Another favorite piece from the show: "London Bridge" by Erin Barker of Lake Charles.

New Orleans' Drum Cart Street Performance