Wrapping up 2022

Now that it’s the very last day of the year, I think it’s safe to say that 2022 was a much better year than 2021 or 2020 for most folks! (Unless you’re heavily-invested in the stock market, or you were a victim of all the layoffs in the tech sector in the second six months.)

It was a busy and productive art year for me:

• Exhibited work in 13 juried exhibitions, from local to international
• Finished 7 new artworks
• Sold 6 originals
• Won 4 awards (two 2nd Place, two Honorable Mention)
• Taught 3 virtual workshops
• Taught 2 local in-person workshops
• Taught 2 workshops at the Colored Pencil Society of America convention
• Gave 4 presentations to local art groups
• Interviewed online by Ann Kullberg and John Middick
• Published a tutorial in Colored Pencil Magazine
• Exhibited 2 weekends in Silicon Valley Open Studios
• Finished my 6th and final year as communications director for the CPSA
• Became president of the CPSA
• Finished “in the black” (art income vs. art expenses)

Non-art-related, but every bit as important:

• Continued to avoid COVID
• Retired in July from my 40-year career as a software engineer to transition from part-time to full-time artist

I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, but I’m looking forward to 2023! Now that I’m a full-time artist, I’m planning to crank out more artworks, and experiment with some additional media (watercolor, acrylic, oil, pastel, airbrush), all of which I gained competency with long ago but haven’t had time to fiddle with in decades. It’ll almost be like starting all over from scratch with them, and I’ll be outside my comfort zone, but it’ll be good to stretch myself without needing to meet anyone’s expectations but my own. You might never see any of my efforts in those other media!

This will be tempered by the amount of time required to be a good president for CPSA–it’s a daily, year-round, volunteer job, more involved than you’d think.

Now that things are getting back to normal in the world as far as gatherings, I’m hoping to teach more workshops, give more presentations, do more travel, and visit more galleries and museums.

Happy New Year!