Oil on Linen / 48 × 30 in / Available in January at Cutter & Cutter Fine Art
This painting is an hommage to the artist Criss Canning of Australia, whom I enormously admire. We had a great conversation on the podcast “An Artful Life,” which you can find on that tab of this website.
My friend Nandini said to me while looking at Criss’s paintings, “You should do a monochoromatic theme painting like she does.” And I thought that was a wonderful idea.
I strayed a bit from the rose theme, but nonetheless there are many, many shades of rose. Coral. Salmon. Etc.
The silk velvet was an investment I made in Venice, from the Bevilaqua family of weavers. They’ve been making textiles for palaces since the 1400s, and the beauty of their materials is a source of inspiration to me. Yes, you can make magnificent art using rags and remnants of inexpensive fabric. But I love to incorporate the most sophisticated and glorious fabric I can find. That makes me happy.
Oil on linen / 20 × 24 in / Available at Cutter & Cutter Fine Art in January 2026
I spent an autumn in Palermo, to collect my thoughts and recover after a challenging year. It was a good choice. I took with me some of my most treasured fabrics, including this saffron silk from Tetouan, Morocco. The dazzling lushness of it always lifts my spirits. The other treasures were suggested by the Sicilian adventure. I do favor having an avatar in a still life, a tiny adventurer. So when I met the snails, I was delighted.
Oil on Linen / 20 × 16 in / Available in Jan at Cutter & Cutter
Lately I’ve been particularly conscious of making altars. Sometimes they are more like little uplifted stages. Think puppet theaters. And the uglier and crazier the world gets, the more I yearn to make the stages beautiful. My newest avatar is the snail. We bought her in a Persian rug store, where they also had ceramics. She seemed optimistic, kind, and prone to benevolence.
Oil on Linen / 20 × 27 in / Available at Cutter & Cutter Fine Art in January
Maybe because my mother was a fine seamstress and quilter, I am so drawn to good fabric. Textiles. If they are handmade, all the better. I believe that the hours put into creating the fabrics bring added goodness to a painting that I also make by hand. The pomegranate seemed perfect to languish within Moroccan rose and gold silk, and Venetian lions.
Oil on Linen / 60 × 40 in / Available May at Cutter & Cutter, FL
Changes are the current reality in mine and my husband’s life…dwellings, countries, parents…everything is changing. The “Begin Anew” series reflects that. All these paintings are about moving from one life stage to another. Many pieces have mothers and daughters (in animal version) to reflect the death of my mom, Inelda, this Spring. The lushness of the textures reflects my optimism that beauty awaits ahead.
Oil on Linen / 25 × 21 in / Available at Cutter & Cutter Fine Art
Arriving in the gallery in February, 2025. My love of lemons borders on the compulsive. It’s a good thing we have a tree… While I am a lifelong realist artist, I do love the abstraction of it, too. Here the color combinations resonated with my search for joy. I realized the amazing skill of the Dutch Golden Age of painting while working on the lilac silk fabric.
Oil on Linen / 24 x 30 / 202 / Available at Reinert Fine Art
I composed this still life intuitively, hungering for the luxurious textures and saturated color. When I was finished, the silk ribbons draped around the vase reminded me of a man in evening wear, who has loosened his bow tie and is relaxing. The saffron silk came from Rabat, Morocco, in the mid-1800's. I am becoming deeply interested in historical textiles. Things still made by hand...
Juried into Oil Painters of America National Convention and Exhibition, 2024, Wichita Kansas.
Oil on linen / 40 x 30 in / Available from the Cutter & Cutter Fine Art
After several compositions which were highly ornamental, I wanted to set this one with lots of quiet space. While I’m still deeply engaged with the tail feathers, their role is more supporting in this piece. I was remembering Richard Diebenkorn as I placed interest at the edges. When I hung the brass harness ornament at lower right, I knew the title. It felt like hanging a medal.
Oil on Linen / 20 x 24 inches / Available from the artist
Many of you know that rabbits are my avatars in the little worlds I create in my still life tableaux. I stole this one from my sister, the architect Heidi Hefferlin, and I imagine I’ll have to return it someday. I found the tiny wheels so optimisitc. The saturated nature of the lux textiles was comforting to me.
Oil on Linen / 30x30 in / at Cutter & Cutter Fine Art in 2024
One of my perpetual puzzles is how to compose a frontal still life which is not staid. The explosion of tail feathers, my current love, begins the effort. The samovar, so much like a pecking chicken with it’s extended spout, continues the theme. Can you find the Caryatid?
Oil on Linen / 34x38 in / Cutter & Cutter Fine Art in 2024
As a young reader I loved stories about alchemical efforts. This tableau is my assembly of semi-magical objects from which I hoped to create a result more magical than the sum of the parts. It all began when a friend gave me a bouquet of tail feathers.
Oil on Linen / 30x24 in / at Cutter & Cutter Fine Art in 2024
My son, artist Timur Akhriev, often composes using powerful color fields, but I had not often done so. When my sister gave me this sheet of royal blue cotton, my opportunity sprung to life. The current historic Vermeer show is often on my mind. I think of this still life as a portrait of the samovar, in the spirit of Hans Holbein’s “Sir Thomas More” at the Frick Museum.