Day 120: Thursday, August 4 - a mouse named Nosey

Lots of explanations in order to explain today's posting.

There's a San Francisco based artist out there, Chris Beck, who has her own website "I'm Painting As Fast As I Can". 

I've followed her personal work off and on for several years as she has such a sense of humor and such a definitive style of painting that I always smiled when I saw what she had done lately.

Where she got "famous" in my mind was with another blog she started called: Brush, Paper, Water.  Bi-weekly she would find a fabulous watercolor artist and would then fearture this artist on this blog.  We were exposed, as a result, to some really wonderful painters, each with a different style and/or subject.  Flowers, realism, plein air, architectural......just wonderful painters with wonderful styles.

In 2011 she featured the following artists:
Amanda Spencer,  Anders Andersson,  Aud Rye,  Chris Krupinski, Diane Morgan, Gary Bukovnik, Geoffrey McCormack, Ismail Kadir, John Salminen, Jonathan Frank, Phang Chew  and Ron Morrison.

If you go to the bottom of this link, you can see all the other fabulous artists she featured.

Chris called a halt to this blog about 2 months ago as life with her own painting was coming to the front of the pile and she wanted more time to paint for herself.

And then today, out of the blue, comes a blog posting from Chris that just made me smile and smile. 



See that little mouse on the top of the pile of books?  It's named Nosey and it's a bronze mouse made by Steve Worthington.  Over a year ago, Steve, who creates these fabulous bronze mice and lots of other wonderful bronze sculptures, sent 20 artists that he knew, a Nosey mouse, and asked them to create paintings featuring the mice........

and here I'm going to put Chris' words about what Steve asked of the artists: 

Chris said:  I'm pleased to introduce Nosey Mouse. She arrived this afternoon and has been exploring the studio. When she settles down, we're going to work on a challenge painting.
Sculptor Steve Worthington has asked approximately 20 artists to participate in a challenge using their choice of one of five bronze mice he's created. When all the paintings are finished, he's going to gather them into a book which he plans to publish this summer and he'll donate the proceeds from the book sales to animal shelters. I'll post updates here as things progress.

I can't encourage you enough to explore Steve's blog and website -- he has some fabulous sculptures of mice, frogs, and toads, to name a few of his critters. And his short videos are very quirky and fun to watch!!And then the wonderful paintings of the mice started.  Take a look at the 20 paintings here:  http://steveworthingtonart.blogspot.com/p/mouse-project.html

See I told you there were lots of explanations today.  This whole post started because Chris Beck, in today's email said that she got the news earlier this week that Nosey Mouse will be taking a little trip this fall.  Her painting of Nosey Mouse was accepted into the National Watercolor Society's Annual Exhibition in San Pedro, CA and Nosey will be visiting Los Angeles as a result. This painting also qualified as a Finalist in The Artist's Magazine Annual Art Competition for 2011. Award winners will be published in the December issue of the magazine.

Ted Nuttall, watercolor portrait artist, who comes to California every spring for a workshop in Pasadena, will be the main judge at this show.