Much excitement around my studio this summer! Record painting sales, important site specific commissions, terrific new creative patrons, and enormous fundraising dollars earned for many local, national and international charities. Through the efforts of my painting, I have contributed to helping many at-risk and in-need children and their families cope and prosper. I am so inspired by the stories I hear and the images I see. My painting is becoming more and more a universal language of emotion, and I am so grateful I can speak from my heart with color on canvas. Please visit www.peaceoneday.org Jeremy Gilley's organization is one of hope, and love, and I am looking forward to helping them with an exhibition of my work entitled "A Beautiful Mess" in Spring 09. His newly released documentary film starring Jude Law, "The Day After Peace" , is an award winning masterwork. Peace One Day proves that we can, together, manifest life saving activities across the world each year. Please visit his website and buy the film, now on DVD.

I am currently working on a coffee table book, a compilation of works on canvas and thoughts on paper, Book One should be on the shelves by October's end. It will be available here and at Amazon, please visit me again later for an update and some interesting excerpts.

September 14, I will host a Studio Patron event, here in my little slice of Heaven in California. A wonderful opportunity to give thanks to my loyal collectors and their families. Invitation only, so if you are not on my list, please send me a notice. Invitations will be in hand by early September. Expect a surprise enclosed.

Please visit my dear, long time friend and mentor, Laylon at www.vaultgallery.com She has been brokering 19th and 20th Century painting and sculpture her entire adult life, and is currently representing many extraordinary, contemporary artists in her gallery within the beautiful, charming village of Cambria, California. If you look closely, you'll see some of my work in the space as well. I am tickled to be working once again with Laylon, she is a force to be reckoned with, and a truly passionate patron of the arts.

On October 9, a solo exhibition with 20 new works on canvas entltled "A Beautiful Mess" will be installed at the OYA Salon on Lighthouse Ave., in Monterey, California. Helping to benefit The American Breast Cancer Foundation, these new images evoke a strong sense of emotion, strength, and restoration. The palette is fresh, soothing, and the symbols and gestures are broad and deliberate. As a cancer survivor myself, I paint to feel better and to get well. However, more often, I paint to feel well and to get better. This new exhibition is a healing experience for me, and I hope it will translate to the viewer, that same sense of ease and rejuvenation.

Look for many new adventures to come Fall of 2008..... Until then, much peace Please remember to give to your community's public school arts programs. Children today need to have the balance. Without painting, sculpture, music and literature, we are not feeding a child's soul. Let's choose funding for the arts, not the arms.