Busy Times at Wild Ozark

Spring ushers in busy times at Wild Ozark. I’ve got a host of things I’m working on, and Rob does too. Most of mine are real estate, art and garden related, and most of his are solar and homestead tasks.

studio & gallery closed this weekend

This weekend I’ll be at the Bentonville Art Market, so my studio is closed. The gallery will be closed this weekend, as well.

woodland plants emerging

It’s busy times at Wild Ozark in the woods, too. Many of my old plant friends are returning for the season. Some with flowers, some with just interesting leaves. And with a bit of disappointment, I found that some decided not to return this year at all. Yesterday I noticed the first of the Jack in the Pulpit plants up.

garden – rabbits, moles, woodchucks

This year, I had actually gotten some nice lettuce plants growing and a lilac bush planted. But the other night I caught a rabbit in the garden munching on the lettuce. And the woodchuck has a well-worn path straight to the lilac space. The leaves keep disappearing off of it, and I am blaming the woodchuck. Moles are moving around in my beds, too, making tunnels everywhere they go.

The button bushes I’d propagated from cuttings last year are leafing out, too. These are incredible pollinator plants, and I’ll have two in the garden if they manage to survive. I’ve got one in a pot that I’ll bring to the studio on the 27th, if anyone would like to get it. I’ll bring nursery plants as I have them ready out there each weekend.

It seems like busy times at Wild Ozark in my garden, too. And not necessarily in a good way. Rob brought me some plank discards from his sawmill and I’m strategically placing them around the fence-line to close the gaps. Hopefully that’ll work.

art in progress

I’ll be working on my Felkins Creek study once I get this blog post written. Click here to go to the page for the progression, if you’d like to follow along. My goal with this is to figure out how to paint a scene with backlighting. Later on, I’m going to paint a larger version of it on either a 16 x 20″ or 24 x 36″ panel. Here’s where it stands right now:

art just finished

The cooper’s hawk is finished, but needs to have more oil applied in places to even out the sheen throughout the whole painting. It has to dry thoroughly before I can varnish it.

upcoming paintings

To have plenty of originals to show at the Bentonville Art Fair on June 1, I need to paint some more. Smaller ones can offer lower price points and so that’s what I’ll be working on as soon as I’m done with the Felkins creek scene. I have a handful of 4 x 6 panels.

Mill Pond at Boxley

I’ll do both views of my photos of the old Mill Pond at Boxley Valley. From where I stood, this is looking left and looking right.

maybe some plants

On the rest of my 4 x 6 panels, I may do some of the woodland plants, like the jack-in-the-pulpit shown above, some ginseng, bloodroot, and fern or wild ginger. It depends on how many I can get done in time for them to be dry.

events on the horizon

• art market Bentonville, April 20 from 7:30 am – 1 pm
• Bentonville art fair, June 1 – 2 at Orchard Park
• art on the border, July 19-20 in Fort Smith