Whew!!! Im Glad for a Breather!

This month has been a real whirlwind! We had to move out of Fox Den Antiques and into The Country Shoppes of Culpeper. The Economy has been a real challenge.

Thankfully, I have a grant for some of what I am doing or I never would have survived this long. I do see that I need another grant and/or some very large commissions to take me trough the rest of this year and next year. Nothing is certain in this world and especially in this economy. Nothing expect the knowledge that God is faithful.

Several Months ago when faced with the challenges and uncertainty of moving from Warrenton to Remington I remember crying out to God for Mercy because at times the stress was unbearable. There were so many people pulling at me, so many people making decisions about my life and I had no control. And God comforted me with his Spirit. He said in his still small voice speaking to my intuition, "I will remove every obstacle in your path so that it will be as though the obstacle was never there".

I stood on that promise each time Some disaster struck to prevent me from moving forward with the process. I am still standing on that promise. God Challenged me again this month with :" Watch how I will provide for you!" Each wonderful promise he gives me I cling to like a spiritual adornment spoken like his words of love for me. I look forward to the day when I can paint those worship paintings, too.

But for this month I've lost track of how many paintings I had to accomplish. An 8 foot by 6 foot mural which I hope to finish tomorrow morning and provide pictures here. The lighting isn't very good for photography there. Hopefully later this week I will have posted the pictures of the mural.

The lion painting is waiting for approval and hopefully will also be shipped by the end of the week. We had a lot of delays trying to complete it because I had to move three times in the last three months ( my home, my studio, and my public gallery venue) and because its an oil painting it took each layer twice as long to dry because of the humidity. We had a tremendous number of rainy days and storms up until last week.

Its one of the reasons I try to allow 6 to nine months for oils. I don't like to use all those fancy driers or new fangled water base oil paints simply because no one knows how long they last or if the drying will be uneven and cause the entire painting to separate from the canvas. Some people have no problems with them. I've seen some real nightmares too ,when work by other artists was totally destroyed several months after the painting was delivered. I painted him the old fashioned and slower way.

If you would like to see the Lion : go to www.llmartin.com and scroll down to the works in progress link under the international counter. All of the stages from the approved drawing to the nearly finish product are there.