Nensi

A friend once said, I'm so amazed how far you've come, with parents who crossed an ocean so young. This weekend, as our tight knit community rose in support of justice and fairness, I walked a little prouder knowing just how far my family has traveled.

1 mural down, and 1 more to go before June 24th...

I've designed a few logos in my career. None of them as fun as Clarke, Boyce Elementary's Cardinal. This year I'm leaving teaching to paint full time, but I'm sure my former students will provide me with vital feedback as VIP clients 😎

Dear Glo, it did not work. I still feel neglected and my issue is not resolved.
#customerservice #yogaglo

The electric depth of the #procreate painting is still missing. In the real mural's defense, it's almost impossible to photograph😂

I love painting in a bathroom with a tub, the breaks in between layers are very comfortable.

New Addiction: painting the same scene over and over. A friend recently put the number 10,000 hours in my head. Obsessive? Compulsive? So were/are a bunch of other artists.

The first pass on the sky in #openacrylics needs time to dry.

The rocky feet of stone bluff meet the edge of turquoise water.

A painting hanging in a tile wall between cabinets. The subject is a country road along an irrigation canal that leads to a cement farm house. The setting is Northern Italy in the fall.

The tops of stone bluffs covered in a carpet of mossy greens that vary from purple brown to electric lime. The turquoise water laos at the feet of the cliffs.

Two paintings share a wall corner. The one on the left is a still life with oranges, croissants, a bottle of white wine, paper bags, all on top of a white kitchen cloth with blue and yellow plaid lines. The painting on the right is an abstract composition combining a lover's hands spread across the small of his companion's back and hip, superimposed with a tiger lily.

Looking at old work while painting is a conversation. Is there a complete expression, with consistent visual vocabulary, grammar and syntax? It's tempting to repaint old work, but they are framed by the past and should stay that way.

The sky is next.

#artstudio #progress #seascape #antrimcoast

Re-developing stamina to stand at the wall to paint is not in the How To Books. Being gentle with myself as I etch new routines into my muscle memory is not easy. I must have painted that 40' x 14' mural in a haze of adrenaline.

#paintinglife #artistlife #seascape #antrimcoast

The #antrimcoast murals begin. It's hard to photograph 5' x 3.5' and 3.5' x 3.5' walls, blank except for very fine pencil lines-- a bit like looking at seeds just planted in the ground🙂

The certain geometry of rocky coasts, buffeted over millennia feels like a refuge.

Only one month until the Spring Equinox’s Full Moon. Bunny is ready to leave behind the chaos for something positive, new and hopeful— a good kind of monarch!
#procreate #bunny #spring #chrysalis #monarch

Stay Silent and Stay Powerless Against Trump’s Tyranny - Ralph Nader By Ralph Nader March 14, 2025 There are reasons why influential or knowledgeable Americans are staying silent as the worsening fascist dictatorship of the Trumpsters and Musketeers gets more entrenche...

nader.org/2025/03/14/s...

Dunluce Castle

And if it is a despot you would dethrone,
see first that his throne erected within you is
destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and
the proud, but for a tyranny in their own
freedom and a shame in their own pride?

—On Freedom
BY KAHLIL GIBRAN
#procreate #tyranny #castle

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents...

The view from a ruined stone window frame of a rocky coastline in Northern Ireland. Rolling hills covered in a carpet of bright greens from lime to sage to forest reach to the edge of bright cliffs that drop into a deep ocean of blues and light greens. There are two mountains in the distance that are a faded blue.

View from Dunluce Castle

A plan for the first of two murals that will be painted perpendicular to each other. Painting this landscape was a meticulous process— like constructing a gem from the inside out. It will evolve as it gets painted on a real wall.

#irishcoast #procreate #emeraldisle

I teach a unit for my second grade students based on the Australian origin myth The Rainbow Serpent. They get to design a fantasy snake with unusual skin camouflage, habitat and unlikely prey. May I use this work as an example of a cleverly camouflaged specimen?

This is delightful. In graduate school I was asked by a snake mom to make a house for her pet ball python Zeus. I was and continue to be terrified of snakes. She asked me to meet Zeus. It was the most interesting "commission" as a clay artist I ever accepted...

A virtual painting of the view from Bear's Den in Clarke County VA. An outcropping of grey, sienna and parchment colored rocks. A few wispy trees in early Spring. Then a valley of green, mauve, purple occasionally fitted with orange and peach stretched out to a horizon of blue mountains.

Bear's Den

A place marker, erased and recreated by years of living in its shadow. I’m a punctuater when it comes to painting. I feel the need for exclamation points, when simply laid sentences will do.

#clarkecountyva #procreate #shenandoahvalley

SHARE WIDELY.
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS.

With mass deportations starting today across the country, it is vitally important - for both citizens and non-citizens - to know your rights.

You have the right to remain silent. Assert it. You have the right to a lawyer. Ask for one.

(1/3)

I create to understand all emotions. Sadness comes from a variety of uncontrollable situations: injustice, imbalance, loss... Creating contains emotion, placing it within boundaries so that something else may grow.

A digital tromp l’oeil painting of an iPad encased in a blue plastic case with black rubber bumpers on the corners. Painted on the screen are a man and woman in pink and green flower costumes dancing in front of oversized sweet peas.

A woman and a man in matching pale pink ballerina costumes with pink satin slippers and tin foiled covered tiaras.

An Asian man and woman in pink and green flower costumes dancing in front of oversized sweet peas.

Pink Perfection on the Silk Road to Taishun, in the prefecture of Wenzhou, in the southern part of Zhejiang province, China. A digitalTrompe l’Oeil painting created on Procreate.

nancypolo.com/2025/01/19/p...

Full Wolf Moon

#oilpastel #gouache on paper. Capturing the view on my way home. 2025's first full moon is the last of four consecutive supermoons, according to NASA.

#dailypractice

Saint Kitts Carnival- Take Two. The difference between creating with virtual stylus is control. Imagine having every paintbrush, medium and color at your fingertips on a palette that never gets messy. This is not a tactile way to create, but it is plastic and satisfying. #procreate #virtualoilpastel

Birds Without Wings Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Birds Without Wings traces the fortunes of one small community in Southwest Turkey (Anatolia) in the early part of the last century - a quirky community in ...

A favorite for me and my son🙂
Listen to Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres on Audible. www.audible.com/pd/B002UZN62...

An oil pastel painting of a dark skinned man in a colorful carnival costume of multicolored floral fabrics with a shawl top made of orange, yellow and red satin. He stands in a sunny street with a cinder block wall behind him, with hills in the distance. It's a scene from a January carnival in St. Kitts.

Saint Kitts Carnival

Huge learning curve with oil pastels continues. The colors and this gentleman's smile are irresistible.

Choosing a challenge, not playing it safe... Even if I fail.

#oilpastel #figurestudy

An oil pastel painting of a waterfall into a small canyon of moss covered rocks with a pool of deep blue green water forming around the bride veil like falls.

Cascata della Civetta, Provincia di Vicenza

Virtual oil pastel, #procreate
Learning a lot about oil pastels, value scale and color theory, even when working virtually. Saving my fingers for real pastels and paper. I’m on the hunt for black watercolor paper.

Winter Fields in Oil Pastels, sketch.

Practice every day. There's a place for oil pastels, and it's not in my skies. The Blue Ridge is difficult like puff pastry. The careful lamination of micro layers drives me crazy.

Imagination Machine

Tempera on paper. Designed after winning sketches from grades 1-5 at Boyce Elementary.

The most important question I ask in my classroom... "Where does your imagination live, and how does it work?"

Spotted Pardalotte, painted with virtual oil pastels after a photo by Marie Williams.

33 works in 2024. Yes, that includes 11 crocheted works (3 of which were not photographed).

July Jewels

Working with a new set of virtual oil pastel brushes. Plan to try the same with actual oil pastels soon.