Yep, I have a digital hoarding problem

I’ve been writing my monthly newsletters for almost 14 years now. You can find most of them if you’re so inclined under the PROJECTS tab on my website. A thank you here to Pat Marlin of Business Technology Solutions. I write the copy, choose the photos, and she -with great patience and my dancing close to deadlines-makes the technical magic happen. I admit, I find the digital tasks daunting and I make things difficult because I have way too many pictures, and they are filed in a most abominably illogical pattern, most of which I try to keep organized in my head.

So, it’s time to write February’s newsletter, and though I’ve been busy, there’s no one interesting project to share. There’s been a great deal of sketching, sample making, and frankly, some just plain boring work.

What to write about?

I decided to start cleaning through this huge file called “ mystuff” (can’t make this up) and found pictures of a really early project that predated my newsletters.

Just the thing to share with you. It’s important to me for a number of reasons. Here’s the first. Check out my hands.

What you might notice is that my right thumb is definitely shorter. That thumb is also fused, meaning it has very limited range of motion. What you don’t see is any limit to my work, thanks to, well let’s continue the thank you pattern here , the extraordinary surgical skills of my hand surgeon, Dr. Henry Backe (Fairfield, CT).

The project I’m going to show you was the first up on my schedule after this surgery to strengthen my damaged thumb. I admit, it was a huge one to tackle, but I trust the process. Surgery, healing, rehab and no jokes about keeping fingers crossed.

The second reason was the sheer size of the barrel. It was huge. The first barrel I would every paint. The home is on the shore of Newtown’s Lake Lillinonah. So water, trees and some imaginary grandeur in architecture. Here’s the chosen layout, first in pencil, then a painted maquette for color. 

And lastly, it’s a ceiling, meaning, oh my poor aching neck and shoulders. I estimated it taking 6 weeks to paint, and it took all of that.

And here are the photos I found of the completed ceiling. 

I’m a tough critic of my own work. It gets a little cringy to look at work from over 15 years ago. (I think that’s a word). My clouds are more refined now, I paint trees a little less stiff than these, but I think it’s lovely work. Here’s a picture of a more recent barrel. 

Digging out of the archives, I found this picture of a Victorian coffered ceiling. There was a major learning lesson here. I measure only one of the coffers to make my patterns. Never factored in that all the other rectangles might not match in this 100 year old residence. A little daunting to start with patterns of a tight design that were off over a full inch in different directions. Nothing like a little challenge to start a job.

Here it is.