This is my newest painting, which I was hurrying to finish to send to Florida for the Cold-Blooded Creations Exhibit this weekend(it opens Friday). It's an Atlantic reef with a baby green sea turtle, a Princess parrotfish, a couple Reef Butterflyfish and a young French Angel swimming amongst various corals and sponges. It's titled "Ziggurat" because of the shape of the coral outcrop. Most of my reef paintings are horizontal, but this composition was a strong vertical and done in acrylic, which works best for all the bright colors.
I added 2 older paintings to the shipping box, making 3 pictures of various subjects. I've sold several pictures in this show in past years, but even if I don't, it's still a prestigious show.
While only a 3 day exhibit, Cold-Blooded Creations is held alongside one of the biggest reptile shows in North America, so it gets a lot of attention. Plus, my work is included with other far more famous artists, such as Carel Brest van Kempen, who is one of the artists I most admire. In fact, he personally invited me to participate in the show back in 2001. You can imagine how thrilled I was, and still am to be a part of an event with one of my idols.

The main reason I've not been online as much in the last month has been due to a couple of art projects. This year I finally got up the courage to enter a new show for me, a juried one by the Westshore Arts Council. Surprisingly, all three of my entries got in the show and when I went to see the exhibit, was thrilled to find I'd won an Honorable Mention ribbon for my goldfinch/dead sunflower pen & ink. You can see the ribbon in the photo above next to the 2nd picture from left.
The show is at a local library & this year had a lot of high quality works in many mediums. There was some especially gorgeous photographs included. I was really pleased to be in the show and to win a ribbon too.