Thursday, January 3, 2008

American Embassy in Lisbon Art Collection

I'm excited to finally have a chance to share some of the latest news and goings on with all of you. The next few posts to my blog will fill you in and then lead us on to a few new InnerViews just completed and ready to be viewed!

Mid-December was my chance to fly off to Portugal and collect a few of my paintings that had been exhibited and dearly missed by yours truly! It was quite an adventure! I met a lot of wonderful people in general and made a few special new friends, stayed at the incredible Pestana palace (which I highly recommend!), visited The Pena Palace- a castle in beautiful Sintra, put my international driving permit to excellent use (thank goodness I have experience driving in Atlanta!), and had a chance to attend a great book store and art gallery opening in Lisboa. As I post this, three of my paintings are on their way back to the U.S. and I'm thrilled to announce that "Blue Field IV" is now part of the permanent art collection at the American Embassy in Lisbon! I was honored to have the U.S. Ambassador to Portugal himself (Thomas F. Stephenson) meet with me for an official ceremony and was truly on "cloud 9" to see how excited everyone was about the painting becoming a part of their collection! This is most definitely going on my resume and special art collections list!

Another exciting development since I have returned to the states is that I have been offered an exhibition by the owner of the new gallery I visited in Lisboa. With a busy show schedule already this year, I'm looking forward to working out a future exhibition date and returning to Portugal again. What a great way to celebrate the ending of 2007 and the beginning of 2008!

--Stay tuned for the next posts!--