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Hearts, Flowers, Smiley Faces
Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of being the guest at the New Boston Farmers Market (New Hampshire) for the third year. I'm provided with a tent and a table, and I facilitate community painting on the largest supports I can manage. This year I wrapped press boards -- leftover from a building project -- in primed canvas from Blick Art Supplies, so there were four sides for painting. It still was not the perfect set-up, but two of the sides got input from the most people and

Cyndie Katz
Aug 122 min read


Dilley on My Mind
Flowers for Dilley This painting is called "Flowers for Dilley" because while I worked on it, I was listening about the horrible conditions in the Texas, for-profit Dilley Immigration Processing Center where parents and children and others who aren't criminals are being held by the US Government. Sunflowers always cheer me up, and I was wishing I could send some to the mom whose twin girls were having a birthday there after weeks (months?) of imprisonment. Th

Cyndie Katz
Jul 311 min read


Colors Are A Language
I wrote the following in 2008: Colors are a language that some of us are compelled to use, just as others use words or music to express themselves. Ten years ago my husband told me he'd signed us up for two weeks of Spanish language classes in San Miguel de Allende. Without consulting my brain, (I swear I don't remember having this thought before I heard myself speak), I said, "I'd really rather learn to paint." When we arrived in Mexico he found us a hotel connected to

Cyndie Katz
Jul 162 min read


Landscapes -- Mexico and New England
When I first started painting (1998), I was most interested in portraits and figures -- realistic ones. However, I did have fun with some early Mexican landscapes during the early 2000s. I loved these, but I asked the wrong person for feedback and the paintings were poo-pooed. They went to live in a closet. It wasn't until years later that I realized how much that person admired realistic landscapes! I should have trusted myself, because these are some of my favorite painting

Cyndie Katz
Jul 131 min read


12 Paintings, Same Model
I decided to bring my painting in to show them. "What do you think?" I asked. And one answered, "I don't know. I'd have to see some of your previous work." That response threw me.

Cyndie Katz
Jul 12 min read


#tinysketches
In March 2025 I took an online workshop from the London Drawing Group called Secrets of Seeing, Pierre Bonnard. I love Bonnard's paintings, but this was a class about how he made tiny sketches on scraps of paper to use as references later for his paintings. And since that class, I carry around scraps of paper small enough to stick in my back pocket so I too can make quick sketches anytime, anywhere. Drawing tiny forces me to simplify what I'm seeing -- a long time goal of min

Cyndie Katz
Jun 212 min read


Panic Painting
When I switch locations twice a year between New England and Mexico, I put all my art materials away, pack my bag, clean the studio, and realize I still have two days before I'm leaving. That's when I often get a new idea, panic that I may forget it, take my art supplies back out, and, this time, this geometric abstract formed. It's 26x24in on a previously painted board that had thick pieces of collage on it. I had already painted the board black and it was just waiting for

Cyndie Katz
May 201 min read


Would You Like to Draw a Flower?
The months before my 70th birthday, I went on a painting fast. It took discipline because I'm inclined to paint every day. However, I was looking for a new direction for my work, and I thought a fast might help. I also spent time looking at photos of all my past work. Then I gave myself the gift of a show of 96 of my paintings in my house in Mexico, curated by a professional I'd never met before. It was interesting to see my work through someone else's eyes. The show is still

Cyndie Katz
Mar 42 min read


I Switched to Geometric Art Because...
People often tell me that they love my figurative paintings and wish I still painted them. Yesterday a friend remarked, "I think you'd have a gold mine painting cats and dogs." These remarks, though I'm used to them, require my utmost patience. I take their meaning to be: I don't like your geometric art, why are you wasting your time when figurative art is more likeable? Usually the context or the person doesn't permit an explanation, but it is this: I switched to geome

Cyndie Katz
Nov 24, 20252 min read


#MyProject70
Greetings from Matinicus Island, Maine where I'm thinking about my art -- all the art I've created during the last 27 years -- as a whole, for the first time. in 27 years. When I began painting, I thought I would become a portrait painter. I got fairly good at it, but after painting my kids and my husband and my friends and my friend's kids and selling a number of portraits, I found the work not only unprofitable, but very tedious. In Mexico, where we owned a

Cyndie Katz
Jun 8, 20253 min read


Paintings I Made in Mexico, a video
I've been painting in my house in Morelia, Mexico for twenty-five years and have covered my walls. A friend of mine who moved to...

Cyndie Katz
Mar 22, 20251 min read


When In Maine
In May/June and September, I paint on Matinicus Island in Maine. It's 22 miles off the coast and gets a lot of rough weather. Last...

Cyndie Katz
Jun 10, 20241 min read


There Will Never Be Another Pig
I'm 99.9% positive that I will never paint another pig. However, it took me all yesterday to realize that.

Cyndie Katz
Apr 24, 20242 min read


Painted Patchwork You Can Read
What do you think about text in a painting? I used it in this painted patchwork, because I liked how the orderliness of the tiny lines...

Cyndie Katz
Apr 16, 20241 min read


My Painted Patchwork Muse
I met my husband's grandmother long after she was dead. I was cleaning out my in-law's attic, and way in the back was this quilt made by...

Cyndie Katz
Apr 7, 20242 min read


Collaborative Art at Farmers Market
In July, I was given the opportunity to be the featured guest at the New Boston, NH Farmers Market. They gave me a tent and a table in...

Cyndie Katz
Aug 16, 20232 min read


Solo Art Show in Morelia, Mexico
In a March newsletter, I wrote about my "Corona" series which I painted at the beginning of the first Covid lockdown, March 2020. I...

Cyndie Katz
Apr 5, 20232 min read


Paintings Like Women I Know
The last eight days have been devoted to worrying about my friend who's in the hospital. She's one of those people who's always game for...

Cyndie Katz
Feb 20, 20231 min read


What's the Story?
"Uvalde" mixed media on cradled wood panel, 20x20in. (51x51cm) The same year my father said he’d never pay to send me to art school — I...

Cyndie Katz
Jan 30, 20233 min read


REGRETS
Has anyone read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig? It's a novel about regret, something I often experienced while I painted during the...

Cyndie Katz
Jan 25, 20232 min read
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