04-30-16. Masks on display in Natasha Johnson's studio apartment in Brooklyn.

04-29-16. A leather fire bucket at an antiques auction.

04-28-16. Oval Office full of boobies.

04-27-16. Laying out the cutlery in a safari tent.

04-26-16. Lazy Susans on the tables at a press guild town hall meeting.

04-25-16.

04-24-16. A bride wears a veil on a rocky beach in Maui, my favorite vacation spot.

04-23-16. Eating scallion pancakes in St. James Park near Buckingham Palace.

04-22-16. Patrons enjoying Biergarten staples: pretzels and wurst.

04-21-16. A woman carries a Sunday paper near the ruins of the Roman Forum.

04-20-16. An Arabic mezze feast in 1st Class onboard an Emirates A380 jet.

04-19-16. Cinderblock goes over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

04-18-16. The Brahma shrine at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip.

04-17-16. Mary Kababik as Queen Elizabeth I, Ruler of the 2000 Renaissance faire in Bristol, Wisconsin.

04-16-16. A monster on stilts poses in front of the Alamo around Halloween of 2012.

04-15-16. Reading a bedtime story to Benjamin.

04-14-16. Overalls at a pizzeria in Naples.

04-13-16. Tectonic plates beneath and around the Spanish Steps in Rome.

04-12-16. Sturgeon zygotes at the murky bottom of a flooded marble quarry.

04-11-16. A chalkboard beside a koi pond.

04-10-16. A wind chime arrangement in a florist's walk-in cooler.

04-09-16. Demonstrators form the Red Line after the COP21 UN Climate Change Conference on 12/12/15.

04-08-16.

Hotspur (321)

"Hotspur (321)", oil on canvas, 24x24". For sale on Etsy, $350.

"Sometimes he angers me
With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant."

Hotspur complains about his Welsh father-in-law in Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1. The father-in-law is fond of poetry, using flowery language and mythical references whenever he speaks. Hotspur prefers to be blunt and plainspoken. He wants action and violence, not pretty words. 

The moldwarp (mole) and the ant are part of an unnamed Welsh legend. This is one of the very few references that Shakespeare makes to ants. For this painting, I challenged myself to join ants and Shakespeare (my randomly selected topics). All of the elements of this painting are taken from reality. My husband posed as Hotspur, staring in disgust and irritation at an oversized ant sitting on his smartphone. The ant is a toy that we own. The large face in the background is Shakespeare. It is part of a mural printed on a building façade in downtown Indianapolis. 

04-07-16. Maxwell and his beloved wooden train set.

04-06-16. A boy carries a pinwheel through a hedge maze.

04-05-16. A loading crane in the parking lot of NASA's mission control center.

04-04-16. Pirates do a synchronized skydive far above the crow's nest.

04-03-16.

04-02-16. A customer examines a "Karma Police" CD single at a record shop in Luxembourg.

04-01-16. A young man carries a Dutch oven in the "catacombs" of Paris.