Theresa · Mather

I've been meaning to repaint an older black and white piece titled Rail Fan in color for some time but never got around to it. Rustycon's steampunk theme gave me an excuse to finally get it done. I selected an older train than in the first version since it looks more steam-punky, and is more colorful. I'm artist guest of honor at Rustycon, so this image will appear on the cover of the program book and on the T-shirts which are being printed by Offworld Designs. The original black and white version was painted for Chattacon a few years ago, and there were no prints. The color version will have prints made from it, and probably eventually a companion piece. Acrylic on masonite, approximately 7x10 inches.

Still more new stuff in my online shop!


There's a new cactus dragonfly print, "Bonker Hedgehog Cactus Dragonfly!" Yes, that is the name of an actual type of cactus. Did I choose it because of the funky name? Partly! But mainly I liked the purple color of the flowers.

Also in the shop are a couple of unusual larger paintings on stone. I don't do a whole lot this size, and they both have fancy mats to set them off.
The Challenge and Sunbow.

The original of Bonker Hedgehog Cactus Dragonfly is also available but not currently listed in the shop.

There are a few new additions to my online shop.

Out of the Night is double matted to 8x10 inches, from an acrylic original. Signed and numbered limited edition of 125.


I also have a new pair of griffin mini prints:




They are double matted to 5x7 inches, signed and numbered in an edition of 250 each. The originals were painted in acrylic.

There is also a painted feather featuring a purple and black dragon in the originals section.

I'll be in Las Vegas this weekend at a brand new convention called Xanadu. It's at the Plaza Hotel and Casino in the downtown area, right next to Fremont Street. I'll be in the Artists' Alley. The general public is allowed into the Dealer's Room/ Artist's Alley area, so even if you don't have time for a whole convention, you can stop by and say hello. My friend sculptress extraordinaire Michele Gault will be there too.


We finally got around to adding new dragon prints to my shop. While they're not all brand spanking new art pieces, they're new to the shop.
No Consensus and Summer Read are lighthearted pieces reflecting the varied activities of dragons, both matted to 11x14 and made from colored pencil originals. Queen of Night Dragon Fly is a piece in my cactus dragon fly series from last year that somehow never made it into the shop. Fire Dragon, Sea Dragon, Earth Dragon and Sky Dragon are a reinterpretation of a series I did in a larger round format in the late 90's. These are new paintings presented as mini prints. For me, it was fun to see the change in my style and skill level between the two series.
I have some other new prints to list but don't have enough matted and in stock yet, so they'll have to wait for now.
I'm looking forward to spending a few days in Las Vegas and seeing some friends. I don't know how good my internet access will be so maybe I'll post, and maybe not.
For now, back to work!

Edit, 2:15 p.m.: Have added the 12 original paintings for the Chinese Zodiac series to the Originals page in my shop. They are 4 by 6 inches, acrylic on stretched canvas and $125 each including shipping, choice of frame.

We have you covered!
New to my online store are limited edition mini prints of my Chinese Zodiac images, available individually or discounted as a set of 12 with matched numbers. They measure 5x7 inches including the double mat, and they're matted identically. Also new to the store is "Moon Ship", a new sailing ship print which measures 8x10 double matted. And the Midnight Blue dragon which I featured awhile back in my blog is now available as well.

For your western Zodiac needs, my irrepressible webmaster Xonrad and his faithful minion Treenie Ravenchylde now offer personalized "Xodiac" readings at his Horrorscope site. He has even created this exciting animated commercial in order to pimp his wares!


I have received my reading for 2009 and the patented Xonic formula for happiness. Have you?

Earlier this month I completed a set of small paintings of the Chinese Zodiac. They have been licensed for use as cell phone wallpapers, along with a number of other images of mine. I'm not certain which phone companies are carrying them at this point.

The 12 paintings were painted in acrylic on 4x6 inch canvas, and I'll be making prints of them soon.
( Click here to see the other 11 paintings. )

I just finished this painting.



I've wanted to paint a new larger series of birthstone dragons in action poses for awhile, but as I worked on the first painting I've changed the idea behind this new series. Instead I'm going to explore the aspects of various colors and try some new types of lighting and backgrounds. This started as "Sapphire" but I just didn't want to be confined by the idea and qualities of the gems as I was in the last series.
The moonlit background for Midnight Blue is inspired by recent nights with the bright full moon. The play of moonlight on snow is something I wasn't really familiar with before moving here- it's a strange glowing quality that renders the whole landscape silver-blue. Aside from the fact that it makes my cat think it's morning and time to wake me up with the application of one claw at a time against my skin at ungodly hours, I really like the effect. The view out my front window is of snow covered cliffs and mountains at this time of year, and out the back is of snow covered trees so I couldn't help but be influenced. Special thanks to Miss Kitty for making sure I was awake for some pretty spectacular views I would otherwise have slept through.
The painting is 7 by 10 inches, acrylic on masonite.

It's been over five years at least since I made any hand painted pendants, but since I'm ahead I've started making them again and have placed 6 in my online shop in the Originals section. The painted area on these is about 1.5 inches high, and they are set in silver or gold plated brass stampings and come with a silver or gold plated chain. The ones I have posted are all dragons, and each carries a genuine precious stone depending on the color of dragon.
This is Emerald Dragon, and he is carrying (drumroll, please)...an emerald!


This is Ruby Dragon, and he has managed to find, surprise-surprise, a ruby to match his glistening scales.

Also in the shop is Amethyst, Tanzanite, Peridot and Sapphire. They come in a cotton filled box and are $100 each including shipping. I haven't painted this small in awhile, so it was fun to get back to painting these tiny dragons.

I have also placed four more rock and feather paintings in my online shop.


Bad Fairy Cat is acrylic on naturally molted peacock wing feather. This menacing little fellow sits imperiously on a wall- he's bad and he knows it and he doesn't care. He has a tiny ruby in his necklace, and is framed in a wooden frame, the inner measurement of which is 4x6 inches. He is $125 including shipping, ready to hang.


Next up is a proud kitty of a different sort- a snow leopard. He is painted on a piece of petrified wood and carries silver and white moonstones on his necklace. The color of the stone made me want to paint him..it seemed just right for a regal snow leopard showing off his fur to best effect. the frame is wood and measures 5x7 inches on the inside measurement. He is $125 including shipping, ready to hang.


Moving along with the "snow" theme (I have been self-indulgently randomly painting whatever comes to mind and what leads from one piece to the next is sometimes a slender thread) is the regal "Snow Queen", who presides over a crystalline filled piece of agate with her companion white wolf. She stands about four and a half inches tall, and carries a glowy piece of dichroic glass and wears two white sapphires. Of course her wolf must be well dressed to be a fitting companion for a queen, so he has a moonstone around his neck. I seldom paint people, and almost never paint them this small. But the piece of stone really inspired me, and here she is. Being a queen, nothing less than a very fancy silver leafed frame would do. It measures 5x7 inches on the inner edge. The Snow Queen is $150, including shipping.



Finally, I have posted a larger piece:
Amber Keeper is a golden dragon. I have painted several variations on this theme, each with different details and a different pose but mostly on similar pieces of stone cut from what is apparently the same boulder of jasper. The icon for this post shows another variation on this theme on a different type of stone, and another on a slice of the same stone as the piece I am offering can be found Offworld Designs on a t-shirt. Each dragon has his own personality and his own treasure. The stones suggested "cave" to me. I am pretty much out of this stone now, unfortunately. The inside of the frame measures 8x10 inches. It comes ready to hang, and is $300 including shipping.

I have not even had Xonrad mention in my newsletter that there are rock and feather originals in my shop yet, but I wanted to post these in time for Christmas. Of course I also have bookmarks and prints available, as always. I do not think I'll be able to keep the shop stocked with rocks, feathers or pendants at my busiest times of year, but I'll do my best too keep a few pieces in there, so keep checking back!

The leaves all fell from the cottonwoods, opening up the view on the North side of the house so I can see out over the valley to the mountains. It's so much lighter in the house when the cottonwoods don't have their leaves. I really don't feel ready for winter- it seems like spring and summer just flew by but that's probably because I was hardly home. I hope to get in a bit more hiking in the higher areas like Bryce and Cedar Breaks before the weather really changes for the year. Taking my grandmother to Bryce and peering over the edge made me want to get down in the canyon at least once more before the snow comes. I usually take the Wall Street/Queen's Garden trail but I might try the Fairyland trail instead. Once the trails are covered with snow, even partially, they're just too slippery to safely navigate (I know, I've slid onto my butt a number of times proving the point).
I've been busy painting. I finished this piece yesterday and I'm quite pleased with it. I'll probably send it to LosCon's art show. I've been on a dragon-and-phoenix kick lately, and the last one I did was mostly silver and white so this time I decided to use silver, black and white.




It's acrylic on stone (black and white jasper). The challenges involved with this painting included posing the beasties around druzy areas in the stone filled with tiny crystals. It came together in fits and starts during stolen moments when I had company last week. It's about 10 inches high.

Today I am working on the last piece for LosCon, and I'm going to make pane bigio crusty Italian bread using my fermented starter, which now smells deliciously like beer. I think the starter's nearing the end of its little yeasty life, so I need to use it up. Next I am planning on venturing into the world of sourdough. That's all for today, time to go make the bread and have some more chai tea before going back out to my studio.

So far the trip has been nice.
On the way to Las Vegas, we stopped to hike at Valley of Fire in Nevada at Mouse's Tank and Petroglyph Canyon. We also took an unmarked trail through the narrow canyon on the other side of the road. The cliff faces were more exposed, so if there ever had been petroglyphs in it, they were long gone. But it was a pretty canyon, and both hikes, though short, were enough considering that it was over 100 degrees out.
Once in Las Vegas, we had dinner at the Border Grill at Mandalay Bay, the restaurant of the Two Hot Tamales. I have one of their cookbooks, so it was fun to eat there. I had Kobe Beef tacos and a Mojito made with vodka infused with cucumbers, which sounds weird but the cucumber taste blended nicely with the crushed mint to make a really interesting drink.
We spent the night at a hotel near the airport that we found on Hotwire. We had to get up at the crack of dawn to get to the airport in time to be fondled and examined by Homeland Security. I was randomly selected to have some sort of sniffer probe poked into my carry-on bag. It apparently decided that my laundry was clean enough for me to proceed.
The flight was smooth, even though they really pack you in to planes these days. The second plane did sounds kind of like a remote controlled aircraft. And the airline did not charge extra for us to have a soda! I perused the Sky Mall catalog and thought of Steven Colbert. And I found that the Spanish language in-flight magazine was much more interesting than the English one, so I read it instead even though I can only make about about 50% of what I was reading. The Spanish language magazine had an article on the touring King Tut exhibit, an interview with Guillermo Del Toro , an article on some fantastic old cemeteries in Paris and Brazil filled with great sculptures and had ads for things I might actually buy, like extra virgin olive oil. The English language magazine was filled with vapid puff pieces to make the reader feel "in the know" and trendy like any good plastic hollow American should feel these days.
The hotel for ConClave is close to the airport. It's quite nice, and so are the folks at the con. So far, everything has been friendly and relaxed.
Today, I was very fortunate to be able to go to The Detroit Art Institute, which has an astounding collection of great art from around the world. I saw many pieces I had only seen in art history books before. Highlights for me included Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare and female Renaissance artist Artemesia Gentileschi's Judith and Maidservant With the Head of Holofernes. I'm a big fan of the Caravaggio school of painting, and there was a whole room full of works from that movement including the Gentileschi and an actual Caravaggio, "Martha and Mary Magdalene." There were wonderful Impressionist works including several Van Goughs, lots of medieval pieces and some really fantastic pre Columbian ceramics and metal pieces. The huge room with frescos painted by Diego Rivera was also a highlight. It was a wonderful experience and I hope to get back to see more of the museum some day.
We hung the art in the art show, and panels will begin shortly, so I'm going to cut this post short.
Bye for now!

Behold: the finished 16x20 inch tree city! This acrylic painting was started several years ago.I worked on it in fits and starts now and then when I had time and it was finally finished this week. I'm not sure how many buildings there are, all I know is that there are lots.


Here is a detail of the tiny buildings, larger than life size:


In other news, I'm getting ready for ComicCon, so things are frantic. Adding to the general mayhem, the neighbor's construction crew started removing house sections and putting in new framing on his burned house. When they brought the remains of the multi-story porch down the crew was whooping and wah-hooing. I think they were enjoying the opportunity to engage in a bit of destruction. There are new boards replacing a significant number of the burned wall supports already. At the rate they're working, I bet the house will be back together pretty quickly. I just hope they bring in the heavy machinery a bit later tomorrow morning than they brought it in today. :P

This morning I finished the 16x20 inch traditional media version of Tree Haven, so I should have prints ready for ComicCon and I'm planning on taking the original to Worldcon. I may have pictures to post tomorrow. I have worked on this piece on and off (mostly off)for the last several years and it feels good to FINALLY finish it. It seemed like an impossible task, especially when I was only halfway through. I think this will put my tree city compulsion to rest for awhile...I think I've quenched it, at least for now.

As of today, I built up enough points playing Chicktionary at club.live.com to redeem them for two free cookbooks- "The Barefoot Contessa At Home" and Giada De Laurentiis' "Everyday Pasta". They just added cookbooks to their prize selections, and there are several more that I want, so I have a good excuse to keep playing Chicktionary. Free books are always good. Free cookbooks are even better!
I like to watch cooking shows, but only when I'm full or I want to go start cooking. I like Iron Chef, too. I'm also currently hooked on Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC.

Tonight, to celebrate finishing "Tree Haven" we're taking the evening off and going to see Hellboy 2.

Hopefully the rest of the day will be good too. :)

I've gotten behind in getting new art up on my website, but we've started by adding a couple of images that I painted last year.

One is Choose Your Poison, my homage to bad relationships everywhere. A trio of crowned poison frogs each awaits your kiss, ready to transform into just the sort of toxic prince or princess you'd expect a poison frog to turn into. The red frog at the top is so clearly bad news, if you ignore the red flags and kiss anyway, you're probably getting what you deserve. The blue frog looks pleasingly good humored. How could anything with cute colorful spots like that *really* be poisonous? Maybe it's not as poisonous as people say, and is just misunderstood. But if you kiss this frog, the red frog traits and toxic nature will eventually manifest. The green frog is more tricky- it looks almost like your standard frog prince or princess. Maybe it isn't really a poison frog at all. It looks so normal! But take care, if you kiss it, you'll find that it too is a poison frog. They may be pretty, but kissing a poison frog is never a good idea.

This painting is acrylic on Masonite and measures 7 by 10 inches. There is a print run of 125. We're working on my new online store and I hope to have this and the rest of my available prints up for sale on it in the near future.

I haven't gotten around to putting new artwork on my website in quite some time, so I sent some artwork to my webmaster, Xonrad. He only posted one of the images I sent so that's one I'll post about.

Forest Haven was painted a couple of years ago. I've painted several "tree cities" at this point, but the buildings and walkways are different on each one. I've only painted a few because I start crawling the walls about halfway through painting them. They're so detailed and require so many brush strokes that they make me feel as if I'm going to go nuts. But I like the idea and I like how they look so I keep pursuing the idea. The one in my site is about 8 or 9 inches high and is painted on jade. I've painted variations as small as 3 inches. I have a big 16 by 20 inch version of a tree city underway with hundreds of buildings, but I've been working on it sporadically for over 2 years now. I haven't had blocks of time large enough to complete it...but when I do I want to issue a limited edition print of it. I think that by the time I finish it, for the sake of my sanity the big 16 by 20 inch tree city may be the last one I do for awhile.