The Underdogs

“It is said that all you are seeking is also seeking you.  It has been waiting for you for a long time.  Once it is here, don’t move away.  Rest.  See what happens next.”
--Clarissa Pinkola-Estes



The Underdogs
4″ x 6″ Watercolor Postcard
Reference Photo by Chelsi Rae Glein

My niece, Chelsi, has always been a champion for the underdogs.  When I was painting from her photo for this, I was thinking about how she probably saw real beauty in this view of what I am guessing to be the reject pile, at the pumpkin farm.  I enjoyed thinking of what a delightful child she was and what an amazing woman she has become, while I added each little dab of color.

I also see the beauty, Chelsi Rae! 


Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD, is an internationally recognized scholar, award-winning poet, Diplomate senior Jungian psychoanalyst, and cantadora (keeper of the old stories in the Latina tradition.) In addition to her international bestseller Women Who Run With the Wolves, Dr. Estés is Deputy Managing Editor and columnist writing on politics, spirituality and culture at the newsblog TheModerateVoice.com and a columnist at The National Catholic Reporter online.  Connect with her on Facebook.

Father and Son

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
– Kurt Vonnegut



Father and Son
4″ x 6″ Watercolor Postcard

I never said I was a portrait artist.   (I’m not even pretending to be.)  This is actually pretty awful, but in the spirit of fun and family, I decided to post it.

My niece, Chelsi, is an amazing photographer.  She posted some wonderful photographs of her little family’s trip to a Washington pumpkin farm, on her Facebook wall.  I got her permission to paint anything I wanted from those photos.  I hope she’ll forgive me for what I did to her husband and son. 

I promise, Chelsi….. better paintings to come.  he he he

About Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, the acerbic American author, rose to fame with the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, loosely based on his experiences as a prisoner of war during the World War II bombing of Dresden. He was born in 1922 in Indianapolis. His fiction, a blend of science fiction and satire, became hugely successful in the 1960′s. Three of his seven children are his sister’s, adopted after her husband died in a train wreck and she died of cancer a day later. He lived in New York until his death in 2007.