Window to a New Year - Daytime

New Years Eve Symphony • 16" x 20" • oil on canvas

This abstract that I painted on the last day of 2009 really sums up the way my days have felt this winter. Exciting and full yet I've been much calmer than the usual me. The colors seem to represent the weather we've been experiencing; cool and blue with a pop of sun. This painting feels like a window to a happy time. My friends that have seen it stood in front of it seeing things that really made me see them too. It is amazing how an abstract can just flow from you onto the canvas and different people can see different things. I love to watch the viewers and listen to them discuss my abstracts. The other wonderful thing about abstracts is that you can hang them in any direction and find a new interpretation of the same painting. When I turn this painting horizontal I see a landscape. As a vertical it seems to create a window. Although I used a limited color palette, there are many other things to be seen in this painting if you stop and stare.

Today I went to a perfect yoga class and left the gym feeling like I was floating. I played with my dogs and then went horseback riding. I saw the forecast for rain tonight so I worked on dressage in the outdoor arena while it was dry.

Brrr! Happy Polar Bear

Happy Polar Bear • 4" x 4" x 2" • oil on canvas

It was a cold morning so I went to Yoga where I could enjoy the music, stretch and strengthen. When I emerged from the gym the sun was shining so I took the dogs for a walk down to a field and soaked up the warm rays while they ran and played.

Ballet - Yoga without music - Boy Runs to Ocean

Boy Running to the Water • 18" x 24" • oil on canvas

Boy Running to the Water • 18" x 24" • oil on canvas

While I was finishing this painting of a boy running on the beach to the ocean, my dogs disappeared and I couldn't stop painting!

These photographs were both taken in my studio on different walls. The top image is on the wall where I painted it with a light on. The bottom image is on the opposite wall with only the skylight.

After Yoga Monday I took my first ballet class. It is much harder than I thought. Listening for the beat of the music, keeping your legs straight, lunges, balancing, movement, grace etc... Ballet really was more difficult than yoga in many ways.

Tuesday morning I took the dogs running on a mountain that I avoided all summer due to ticks. They had a blast. After that I went to a figure drawing group with some fabulous local artists. It was wonderful and I really immersed myself back into it. We did a lot of quick sketches.

This morning my yoga teacher forgot the music and I had a much more intense workout. I think it really had us all focused. Ran with the dogs in Sausalito this afternoon where I pulled out my iphone to take more heron photos in the water along the houseboats. Quite colorful with some amazingly clear reflections, then brought the dogs to my studio and tied the big one to a chair he dragged the chair into the hallway and all the way to the front door of the building while I was emersed in a painting. I of course took photos.

Lori California Margulies

It was meant to be that my name in every imaginable creative form was taken on gmail; yet I managed to get the email address loricalifornia. Quite the perfect name considering my favorite thing to do is explore California, by foot, boat, horseback, photography and painting.

Here is my latest painting of a San Francisco street. The building on the left looks like my old flat on the corner of – you guessed it – California Street!file:///Users/Lori/Desktop/photo.jpg