Supporting the arts one artist at a time

I went to the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge's Art Show and Sale on Saturday afternoon. I generally find wildlife art very generic. It's usually your standard wolf or bird (or what's worse, deer) and it has all the creativity of a butter knife. I'm more of a Georgia O'Keefe florals girl. Or a Pre-Raphaelite girl. There were three artists there whom I thought were very good. One had the most beautiful watercolor landscapes. Another had vibrant colors through out his paintings. But I ended up spending the most time at the booth of an artist named Michael McNelly. His art was very appealing to me. His was the first booth I came across where I actually stopped to look closely at the pieces.
My favorites:
"Snowy Shelter"
"Crow Tracks"
"Crisp and Still"
"Summer Pond"
"The Old One"

I think his composition is fantastic. Every picture is balanced and eye-pleasing. I prefer his nature pics to the Native American ones.

I sat in front of his booth for 10 minutes trying to decide which of two art pieces to buy and in the end I chose "Aerial Acrobat" for the colors and composition. It was already beautifully framed for me, so he bagged it up and we started to leave. On the way out, we ran into a friend of my parents who spoke at great length about how she really liked the other picture I had thought about buying. So I immediately turned around and went to buy it too! I couldn't even make it out of the building before going back to buy another! And while I was in the process of buying "Forest Spirit", a man came along bemoaning the fact that I got to it before he did. Haha! I beat the old man to the punch! (New slogan... Allisonlives.com: Stealing the Elderly Man's Thunder!)

I am an art connoiseur. And I had a paycheck of three month's back-pay burning a hole in my pocket. I support the arts!