I'm about to take off for a working weekend in the mountains. I'm excited about a trade I'm doing. I'm taking my family to a beautiful cabin, with terrific views, for a long weekend. I'll be busy gathering new resource material for my paintings. I'll be hiking, driving, etc. and photographing whatever catches my eye. I'll also be doing some plein air studies, gathering visual information to take back to the studio with me. In exchange, the folks who own said cabin will get first pick of the paintings that come out of this body of work. It makes me happy, and hopefully it'll make them happy when all is said and done. This trip comes at a perfect time, as I've been gathering momentum in my work and looking for things to paint.

The idea of trading artwork for a place to stay is not new. When I was an undergrad in art school, one of my professors had started a nice little gig for herself where she would stay in these fabulous places and make paintings, all in trade. She's been doing this now for a good many years, and you can see what has come out of it here:
http://www.conniehayes.com/borrowedviews.html
I love this woman's work. I was lucky to have her as a professor for 2 years, and also am lucky enough to have one of her paintings. It was a wedding gift from my best friends.

So, I'm off to make art. This is a photo of my garage last weekend. I was priming and sanding maple panels, preparing them for painting:

And this is a work in progress.