Corner Store

"Corner Store"
5"x7" Oil on Panel
$45 Unframed
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This was a fun little street corner in NYC from my visit there last spring. I still have so many fantastic reference photos from that trip. And as I keep on working and improving and seeing things with a new eye, I'll see another photo that catches my eye that I ignored before, or seemed to difficult. I really loved the shadows and light on the awning.

In other news (drumroll please)... WE GOT A DISHWASHER! Well, let's just say it has finally been installed. Dishwashers are a huge luxury over here. You almost never see them. But they aren't the unicorns of Singapore quite like automatic ice machines and garbage disposals. Those just don't exist. So yes, in typical Singapore fashion, our dishwasher has been installed and hooked up to the closest water line. Alas, the power cord does not even get close reaching an outlet. Why am I not surprised?  

Reflected Glow

"Reflected Glow"
7"x5" Oil on Gessoboard
$45 Unframed
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This painting is of one of the first nights I got into New York. I was wandering around the Times Square area, and I saw the sun setting behind the buildings. The sky was neat - it always is at sunset, right? But more so than the sky, I was really intrigued by the way the sky was kind of reflecting off of the cars and the street. It was just glowing, more so than the bright lights of the theaters on Broadway. Kind of crazy, isn't it?

Also, I thought I would end the week with another crazy Asia story. So I'm painting this morning, and I go into the kitchen to make my lunch. The kitchen is flooded, and there's water dripping out of the ceiling. Well, that's a bad sign. I was thinking broken pipe and worried about damage to the apartment.

So I call the owner's handyman. He is like, "No, no. You must call the aircon people, it is not my problem." This is a pretty typical scenario here. You ask anyone to take responsibility and solve a problem and their first response is "No, cannot lahhh." But to be fair, the last time I checked, you rarely get water pouring out of the ceiling because of the airconditioner. That usually means plumbing.

In any case, I'm telling him there is no way this is the aircon. It is on the other side of the house from the aircon. He doesn't believe me. Tells me to call the aircon people again. Back and forth, back and forth. Finally, I convince him that I'm not just some nervous nelly and complaining about the doorknob not working (that's another story - the day the doorknob quit working and fell off, thereby trapping me inside the apartment until my husband came home. Oh, by the way, this is when I didn't have a cell phone either.) Anyways, so he comes over, takes one look in the kitchen, and is like "Ohhh, that is a leak. Very bad. I look."

Sigh. Long story short, hopefully we will have a new hot water heater soon. :)

Arches in Blue

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"Arches in Blue"
5"x7" Oil on Panel
$45 Unframed
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This painting is another one from my too-short time in NYC. This was during the day that I got to visit the New York Public Library - what a splendid building. The architecture was so neat, and the people watching was spectacular. I really enjoyed spending time there. This was during one of the days that was very overcast, so I tried to go to place that were inside to find good lighting.

And to continue my discussion from yesterday about exotic food that we had at the wedding, take for example, shark fin soup. (Here is my obligatory link to something about banning shark finning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_finning.) They did serve shark fin soup, which Singapore has finally banned from restaurants. I did try it because 1) the soup had already been made and 2) I didn't want to offend the people that had invited us by staging a moral protest. The soup was okay - basically the part I thought was an onion-y mushroom wound up being the bits of fin. It basically tasted like some mushrooms and onions in a chicken based broth. Not bad, but not exactly something I'd want to spend $100 per bowl on (and yes, that is the price in restaurants for a bowl of shark fin soup!). If we are going to eat something expensive and exotic, Bird's Nest Soup (explanation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird%27s_nest_soup) is much tastier. And yes, the bird's nest basically consists of bird spit and twigs.

Reflections on Neon

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"Reflections"
7"x5" Oil on Panel
$45 Unframed
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This painting is the beginning of a small series I'm starting of scenes from New York City. I went to NYC last year for Karin's workshop, and during my week there I took tons of reference photos. I'm only just now getting to paint them, almost a year later! This scene itself is from when I first got there. The weekend was beautiful, but then the first day I really got to explore the skies just opened up and poured all day long. But because it happened in a city with lots of lights and pavement, the effect was really beautiful.

In crazy Asia news, we went to a Chinese wedding in Malaysia this past weekend. I'm not the biggest fan of Southern Chinese cuisine (most of it seems to be kind of fatty and oily and consist of a lot of arbitrarily hacked up animal bits) but what they had at the wedding was very tasty. I tried all kinds of new things, like abalone. What, might you ask, is abalone? It's a mollusk, and I've always seen $100 cans that look like the one below around Chinese New Year, but I've never had it before. I mean, if you didn't know how to cook it, would you just buy a $100 canned item and try it? To be fair, a lot of the delicacies around here can be, um, exotic.