Recent Awards:

  

I am pleased to report that I was awarded Renner First Place 2-D at the Park Forest Art Show in Park Forest, Illinois, September 20-21, 2014.  The award was for the entire body of work in my booth, not just one specific piece.  The Park Forest Art Fair is the second oldest show in the Chicagoland area in a very special community.  The organizers were wonderful and the show a pleasure to do!  Thanks Park Forest!  I am truly honored.

I am also thrilled to announce that I was awarded the Third Place Prize for the plein air, snow painting entitled, "Hazy Snowy Day, February 18, 2014" in the Juried Member Exhibition for the Indiana Plein Air Painters Association held at the Hoosier Salon Gallery, 22 Rangeline Road in Carmel, Indiana, on exhibit from November 8  through December 7, 2014, so there is still time to catch the show.  The juror, Tom Post of Cincinnati, selected 100 plein air paintings by 47 artists to be included in the exhibition.  IPAPA is one of the largest plein air organizations in the country with lots of great talent so I am humbled and honored to not only have three paintings in the exhibit but to win an award!  The reception was packed with people so it was hard to see the artwork.  I need to run up to Carmel to pick up frames sometime soon so will drop by the show again to actually see the paintings this time.

Here is the award winning painting:
"Hazy Snowy Day, February 18, 2014", oil on panel, 16" x 20", by Charlene Marsh

 

Thanksgiving and the miracle in losses.

Sometimes miracles happen when you least expect it.  Sometimes they happen and you don't even know it...until later. 

Meegy in his last hours.

I wrote this in my e-newsletter dated October 7, 2014(Scroll down for updates): 

"As you may remember from my last e-newsletter, my adult size Shetland pony(my pet term for the ponies), Amigo(Meegy) had been very ill most of the summer and, sadly, had to be euthanzied on August 29, 2014.  I wrote a blog about him here.  I ran into one of his original owners(who had purchased his mother, Missy, when she was pregnant with him) about ten days later and broke the heart wrenching news to her and we both cried standing there in the produce section of Bloomingfoods.  Another ten days later, as I was pulling out of the driveway to head to a show in Chicago, I checked the mailbox and pulled out a plastic bag full of pictures with his sweet face on top.  Thunderstruck, I started crying all over again.  I couldn't look through the packet because I was already running late and knew I could spend an hour looking at them so I tucked them in my luggage to review later, in the hotel.  Later that evening, I carefully looked through the 30 odd pictures, mostly taken when he was a baby colt, before I adopted him, and a few from a visit after I had brought both Meegy and Missy home.  I must have looked at those pictures a dozen times over the weekend and vacillated from pure joy to pure tears and back again within minutes.  I still have Missy who is now 32 and blind.  She seems a bit disoriented without Meegy to help guide her.  I have to call her several times when I head to the barn as she doesn't seem to hear me at first.  Instead of two whinnies, there is only one.  His stall in the barn is empty.  There is a big hole in my heart and his mother, Missy's, heart."

Meegy and Missy in 2010.

One Miracle
Well, there is an additional twist to the story.   The original co-owner I ran into and to whom I told about Meegy's passing is named Suzanne and I sent Suzanne a thank you note via USPS mail(yes, some of us still mail letters), thinking she had dropped off the photographs of my beloved pony after she ran into me and heard he had died.  Then, just a couple of days ago, I ran into Jane, the other original co-owner, and asked if she had heard about Meegy.  She said "yes", that Suzanne had texted her after she got my thank you note and had asked if Jane had dropped off the pictures because she, Suzanne, had not!  At first I did not understand and kept asking, "Yeah, but who told you he had died?" thinking that is why she dropped off the pictures.  

As it turns out, when Jane dropped off those pictures, she did not know Meegy had just recently died!   She had those pictures for nearly twenty years and dropped them off to me within 2-3 weeks of his death, without even knowing he was gone.  When it hit me, I cried again and so did Jane.  I marvel at the magical, perfect timing of almighty God.  Those pictures meant more to me at the time I received them than if they had come years earlier. I relished each one as I looked through them over and over, remembering all the wonderful times we shared from the time he was a baby to the time of his death. 

Another Miracle
This reminds me of another magical, synchronistic connection about twenty years ago when I used to teach oil painting at the John Waldron Art Center in Bloomington, Indiana.  I was working on updating my student roster contact information and came across the name of an older gentleman who had taken my class over a period of several years.  He had quit coming to class and I had heard he got cancer and subsequently died.  Simply tossing out his name seemed so cold and a little voice told me to send his widow a note.  

So I wrote to her about how much I enjoyed him in my class, how much I enjoyed his lovely paintings, even citing one in particular, a still life with lots of golds and blues, and about how sorry I was to hear of his passing.  I dropped the note in the mail and forgot about it.  

A week or so later, I got a note back in the mail from her telling me about the day my note arrived.  She wrote about how she woke up that morning all depressed and ready for a sad day of crying and loneliness and feeling sorry for herself. You see, that day was their Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary and the first one with him gone.  She dreaded the day without him.  Then my letter arrived.  And she said when she opened and read that letter, it turned her day around to one of absolute joy and happiness.  I tear up a little every time I think about it - what perfect timing! - and the small part I played in God's magical plan to bring happiness to another and let her know she was remembered and special. And her husband was safe in the arms of God.

May God's mercy and blessings be upon you.  We need to be grateful every day for everything we have.  At this time when we focus on Thanksgiving, let us be thankful every day for our family, our friends, our homes, our automobile, the clothes we have, the food we eat, the sun and the rain.  And all the miracles that abound around us every day.  Pay attention to God's voice and do what He says.  You will never be sorry.  And know that even when things look bleak and dire, you are special and loved by God.