“Sarah’s Smile” (for Sarah Ovenall. July 2013)

Perhaps I should emphasize that Sarah’s no softie….she’s recently sat me down and firmly said “Now, you CAN do this!  It’s not HARD!  You can learn how to update the thing yourself!”.  Terrifying news to technophobic-me….but Sarah was, as ever, right.

Let’s see?….what does Sarah “do”?…..along with her good husband George (they were married by an Elivs impersonator in Vegas a few years ago), she wrote and published the “Victoria Regina Tarot Card Pack”…..and she has a wonderful radio program (through the Duke University station) called “DIVAVILLE LOUNGE”….and she gardens, and cares for rescue animals….and she works on her “art cars” (this is a picture of her with one of the best…..as I recall, the theme was “Underwater Mah-Jong”)….and she establishes or patiently fixes folks’ websites for them……the list goes on and on…..

And yes….she DRIVES these art-cars….all over town and sometimes up to Maine or down to Austin (Apparently, there are entire conventions of folks who make “Art cars” and hold parades….who knew??????).  When I first met Sarah, she had a car that was pig-themed….covered with thousands of pig-replicas.

Rather obviously, nothing Sarah’s ever driven would function efficiently as a discreet get-away car if she ever took up (in addition to her many other activities) bank-robbing.

Oh, I forgot to mention……her hair has been about 19 different colors since I met her…..teal, sea-blue, pitch-black, grass-green (she admits this one didn’t really work out once the sun hit it), etcetera.

She graduated herself from buying vintage sixties dresses to simply buying the vintage patterns and making them for herself.

She always looks wonderful……although she’s never so shocking as when (as she does once or twice per year) she shows up with her hair naturally Little-House-On-The-Prairie brown and wearing something completely “ordinary”.  This is always a bit disorienting for me….sort of like Queen Elizabeth II showing up to borrow a cup of sugar and try to act like an ordinary/average/just-like-you! person).

And, yes, Sarah always makes me smile; she’s a lovely, smart, and funny person….hence, this painting will be a gift to her and George.

By the way?….bubbles aren’t really that hard to paint. I cheated by following my instincts and going to a website for science-fiction book-covers……it was FULL of book-cover illustrations featuring bubbles of various sorts and wildly varying sizes.  I found that a bit odd, but useful.  Quite frankly, I’m from a financially conservative family; I was raised to hate “bubbles”.  Apparently, a lot of other folks love them.

you can find out all about Sarah Ovenall, her radio show, and her other activities at her own fine website: