Wildlife Habitat

It is known that bats tend to migrate south for the winter and return to their roosts during the spring season. My wife and I are so excited to know that more than half of our colony of bats decided to stay in their bat house for the winter this year. They are officially in hibernation mode. I took a sneak peek early one morning, around 6 am with a flash light. This is something I would not recommend due to possibly disturbing them during their nap, however I just had to know if they migrated or not. It's going to be a good year for bats next spring. Now if only I could get those purple martins to occupy their houses this spring. My wife and I would have fulfilled our backyard wildlife habitat goal. :-)

Our bat houses where approx. 200 bats roosted last summer.

Vacancy!

Belleview Art Festival

The Belleview Art Club held a Belleview Art Festival on Nov. 13th around Lake Lillian Park. Sorry for the late post. It was a beautiful cool, sunny Saturday. The festival had local artist from around Marion County, food vendors, music played by an orchestra and raffle tickets for art items were sold during the event. I set up my small tent with my portable display easels and I had a browse box with small matted prints and note cards on sale. It was good to have people stop by my tent to see my plein air paintings and to discuss the process of painting. I was also very happy to have taken 1st place for one of my paintings during this event. Now that the winter is here I am indoors working on another wall mural. I will post the mural project once I have painted the last brush stroke. Happy Holidays!

Art in the Garden

There is a new piece of art that has been added to the Rodriguez garden that might have others cringe or find kind of odd. Unlike the other statues in our garden that are of the classical Italian decor, this particular piece of art has a special purpose for its significance to our backyard. You see this piece of art has a couple of jobs to attend to while standing at his post. Besides his usual duties of scaring off any evil and harmful spirits that may enter our domain, he is also the gatekeeper to our hundreds of bats that come out to play at night from our nearby bat houses. I know, I know that cringe thing again. My wife and I enjoy our new addition and we love sharing him with our friends and family. There is a side of me that embraces the gothic world and I enjoy painting it from time to time. I'm just glad that my wife Terry can see the good in it also. Now Let's Paint!

Painting at Sholom Park

I had a wonderful morning painting with my friends of the Ocala Plein Air Painters this past Saturday. The weather could not have been any better. I arrived a little later than I usually get at a painting location. Our group had planned to get together for lunch at a nearby restaurant after our paint out so I had to get moving with my subject. I wanted to keep my painting simple due to the time factor. A lone tree in a field of green caught my eye. I immediately set up my gear and started flinging acrylic paint. I finished around 11:45 ready to have some good conversation with my friends. I hope I can get to our next paint out location on time so as to not start out in a rush on a beautiful morning. Take you time and enjoy our beautiful surroundings. Soak up the autumn morning sun, the birds singing and the cool breeze touching your face. I hope to show up early next month when our group meets to paint in downtown Historic Micanopy. Now Let's Paint!

16"x20" Acrylics on Canvas

Ocala Plein Air Painters