Palms in the wind! Palms with icicles!
Here is the corner of my studio dedicated to the idea of palms … great colors and very sharp spines up and down the stem.
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- Mary P Williams “Palms”
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- “Palms” Detail
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- “Palms” Zoom Detail
Gingerly is the way to handle the fronds. In the wind they spiral down to clonk you on the head … when they are covered with ice they fall from 30 feet up and impale flowers, dogs, and people. Wear a hat!
In the last four years that I have been in the Rio Grande Valley two years had a couple days of icy weather. We cover all the flowers and shrubs with plastic and cross our fingers. As dawn rises the palms are coated in ice and shine and sparkle. As the sun comes up the ice coating begins to slide off the palms as they are 40 feet in the air and then watch out!! A sliver of ice could be six inches long and sharp as a knife … it simulates the edges of the palm frond. How exhilarating to watch them descend as you hop around to avoid a hit!
Mary P Williams 
I love love love love it! You have materialized the improbable yet curiously harmonious yin/yang of the Rio Grand Valley. It is, has always been a place and people like no other.
On your website I can see your painting spiral outwards in (enriched) ways you never imagined when you started.
You go girl! You have just gotten started on your path!
By the way, on the other piece.the instructor was *wrong* about the grey … your instinct of whites was right. He is just responding to the current fashion.