For my first Christmas of retirement I went to DC with a friend and spent it with her family. It was a lot of fun! We’ve never gone home (Michigan) for Christmas since Michael and I were married in 1989.
Fortunately we only saw a few snowflakes but the temperature was in the teens, something we are not used to. In fact it was very cold for them as well.
We rode the Metro and the Circulator so it was very easy to get around even though there were thousands of tourists.
Our first designation was the National Gallery. This is a shot straight up on the corner of one of their buildings.
I’ve been struggling to get a cleaner style in my oil paintings, in fact I really have no style at all there. I do in my clay, watercolors and ink drawings but with every oil painting I start it’s like I’ve never done one before. I could be that I did them so seldom when I had Carolina Creations it was just a matter of not practicing.
Our favorite areas of the museum were the Impressionists and the contemporary art. I really haven’t studied art history or early painters since college, I just developed my own style. Now I see I should go back and study their oil painting techniques. I never paid attention to the fact that Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, and many others used so much line in their work.
It’s something that I’m going to study and see if I can incorporate into my work, it suits me just fine since I use line in all the other mediums I work in.
Sometimes it takes a long time to notice something like this that is so obvious.
Went to the Vietnam Memorial to honor Michaels and other people we know that served our country.
So glad this is all the snow we saw!
We took a freezing cold but fun trip to Mount Vernon.
Of course the house is the same as I’d seen before but the rest has changed A LOT! There is a beautiful and informative museum that taught us all a lot we didn’t know about him and his life.
And they had an amazing gift shop.
There was very little in it that didn’t have a direct connection to the site. I’m always disappointed when I go to a gift shop of an historic site and see things that have nothing to do with it and you can get in any run of the mill gift shop.
I always think – if this was my shop there are so many things I could produce or have produced for it! While I no longer have a shop I am still creating work for Carolina Creations and others.
A chill visit to Ellicott City was short and sweet.
Next trip – a cruise, coming soon.
