Art By Tali Landsman

I am enjoying the routine of getting back to the studio daily for extended periods of time. I am simply having a blast with these toy robots. I first fell in love with them when we visited a toy museum while we were in China. At the end of the visit, we bought three of the tin robots and I display them like sculptures on my shelves. Now I am having so much fun painting them. I will start coating some with shiny clear resin maybe by mid next week. It is helpful that the stock market stopped dropping like a stone and Jules and I spend less time strategizing and encouraging one another. This week I also sold and shipped a painting to a new NZ collector. It always cheer me up to have positive steps towards greater success in my art career. I am fully committed to investing more time in promoting my art and increasing my income.

Today was a cloudy but dry day. I spent about six hours in the studio working on my cube paintings. They are progressing well. I actually find that I enjoy them much more than I thought I would. Each toy robot is fun to make and I try to explore my fascination with them. Meantime the paintings provide a restful place for my overactive mind and a quiet place from which to reflect on the uncertain future.

I am getting closer to finishing the painting that I am working on. I still do not have a name for it, but often a name pops up as I am putting on the finishing touches. I have made a new resolution to go to the studio every day. I have been letting the emotional wrenching of the global financial crisis (that effected us greatly), to get to me. I have been neglecting my studio time, but no more! Today I immersed myself in my art and only emerged out of the studio when it was time for dinner.

Here I am adding a photo of how the small cube paintings can add color and visual interest to areas of the house that are too narrow for a regular painting. I will have three themes of these cube paintings: a landscape theme (mostly a singular tree in the changing seasons), an ocean theme (mostly a singular swimmer or diver with dolphins, sharks or turtles) and the third theme will be innocent toy robots, As I mentioned, I will offer them in a pack of three for $210 including shipping. Look for them soon on my website. They will be posted under “Gift Ideas” (will be coming soon).

This morning we woke up to a bright day. The birds were singing and at last, the sun was shinning. After lazying in bed with books and teas, I spent two hours of weed whacking on our property. I am amazed how much I am enjoying the hard work in the garden. After a long shower, I spent some time in the studio preparing to paint smaller paintings that could be purchased as gifts for the holidays. I have the idea of doing cube paintings that are colorful and shiny (covered in resin) that hangs in a series of three. They can be hang vertically or horizontally and add some color and visual interest to areas that are too small to hang a full painting. I have done this in my kitchen and it looks great.

Looking outside my window, it looks like a giant hand is shaking the trees violently. It is not only windy but also raining and cool. I spend the day on the sofa reading a book about art marketing- my biggest challenge. After years of working in the studio, I am at the point that creating art is mostly a fluid activity filled with self exploration. But marketing art is still an enigma for me. I haven't done any art shows across America for over three years (maybe four) and I had no chances of showing my new style to the public outside the few shows in NZ. I am a bit itchy to see how people will respond to my new art, to hear the people on the street talking. I decided to apply to some art shows this coming year. Even if I will do only a few in the summer. On one hand I am excited about showing my new art, on the other hand, I realize that I am going back to the art shows at the point in time in which America is at its lowest economical state since the depression. Will I be able to

It hasn't stopped raining for three days. Rainy days provide a great studio time. Instead of roaming the land, I go to the studio. I have been adding circles of color to a painting that I wanted to rework. I am also making good progress on the painting with the sitting lady. Jules and I are spending a lot of mental energy talking about the financial setback we are experiencing and what to do to cut back and save.

This morning I packed and shipped a painting to a client. This is my second art sale this week and I am so grateful for them. It has been slow entering the New Zealand art market, but now I am enjoying a steady and growing circle of collectors. It rained all day but I did get into the studio and worked on my painting for awhile. I am combining some styles by adding circles of thick paint to my artist's sketchbook painting. Over breakfast at the local cafe', Jules and I spoke about how well it paid to fix the property in NZ. After all the years, all the work and all the funds, we ended up with a lovely place in which to live and work. It is so quite and so peaceful here. A respite away from a turbulent world. We spoke about the fact that even having money in the bank does no longer offer a measure of security, as was demonstrated by the last month of financial crisis around the world. Big financial institutions - fall like a deck of cards and how we cannot search for security in

To cut down on expenses, Jules and I are taking care of our garden maintenance. It is not an easy garden nor it is a small one. While in Colorado, we are the guardians of 36 acres of pure wilderness, here in New Zealand we care for gardens that are man planted with fruit trees, grass and many seasonal plants. In the past, we had a gardener to mowed the hilly lawns but now we do it ourselves. It is a hard physical work but it is so rewarding. I went into the studio yesterday after two hours of lawn mowing and to my surprise I noticed how fluent the painting was. There are days when I am mentally tired. on these days I do not paint well. But yesterday I was physically tired and as a result, my mind was quite and cooperative.

We spent Sunday climbing up a steep wooded path that runs along a creek, up the mountain. The hiking felt pleasantly strenuous and it was good getting out of our minds and worries and into our bodies again. At the top of the hill we had a choice of continuing down the path back to town or taking a shorter trail that meets the gondola that operates from Queenstown. We choice to have a coffee and then go down with the gondola. We felt elated (as shown in the photos) not to have taken the gondola UP the mountain but climb the elevation (2600 feet in about an hour.)

After the rocky week that we had on Walls Street, we were left a bit shaken. We already booked this long weekend trip to Queenstown NZ, months before and we did not see a reason to cancel. We spent the weekend reassessing our financial situation, spotting places to cut back and devised new strategies f how to build back our wealth.

It is hard to ignore the difficult financial times that have descended on the USA recently. Financial weakness is also shaking the Asian and European markets. Long standing financial institutions are falling down like deck of cards, while stock exchanges globally are plummeting daily. It seems hard to invest money in anything safe. Stocks with healthy fundamentals are dropping along with everything else. Just like in a healthy and jolly environment we have the aphorism: "a rising tide lifts all boats", so it is in a stormy market: “A horrendous hurricane sinks most boats in the open sea”. Which of course shakes the way people feel about spending money. Wealthy people invest their money in a way that generate income for their chosen life styles. When markets are weak, people tends to spend less. And then there are those people who are losing their houses, failing on their mortgages and losing their lives savings. We read sad stories on the news daily. America had always had a

I designed and posted a messenger bag that you can see on: www.bagstab.net You can vote on the designs that you like. Today was a stormy and rainy day. We drove to Kerikeri and finished our visa applications to India. It is the kind of day that makes me wants to curl up in bed with a good movie or on the sofa with a good book.

I had a good day in the studio yesterday. I continued working on the image of the woman and this time everything was flowing very nicely. I was able to shape her legs in a pleasing manner (to me). It felt good to be in the studio again, creating, thinking and playing. I think it has been more than three weeks since I last spent an extended time in front of the easel. I hope that this is the beginning of a good stretch of time spent in the studio.

Today I organized the studio. I photographed all the art and posted new pieces on my website. You can see it here: http://www.talilandsman.com/art18.html I also organized the storage room in which I keep my blank canvases and caught up on my emails. Up in the studio I started a new piece. It was slow going after weeks of creating no art. I started a drawing of a reclining woman but I did not get the proportions of the left leg correctly and after many tries, called it a day. I will try again this weekend.