When I'm Painting I'm like a Pig in...........

......well, you know what I mean.
Seriously though.
I had two idyllic days of painting this week which is more than I have seen in a long time. I was working on submissions for a juried show held by Art Saint Louis, a local organization to which I belong. I joined this group right after I moved to St. Louis nearly ten years ago. Connecting with like minded souls is incredibly important to me and I have met many of my friends, most of them really, through local art groups.
The show this time is called Under the Influence and the submissions are supposed to be referential to some influence, either an artist, a time in art history, a movement, that sort of thing.
It was hard to decide what to do as so many things tend to influence my work. I eventually decided on Richard Diebenkorn since he was an early inspiration to my abstract painting, back when we lived in California. I remember standing in front of his Ocean Park paintings at the Palace of Fine Arts. It is a miracle someone didn't have to pick me up off the floor as I swooned over his work.
And he has influenced the way I perceive divisions of space within my work.
Here are the paintings I did. As you can see, one of them has jumped into my new banner.

"At the Corner of Park 5.01", 40" x 30" Mary Beth Shaw, copyright 2013

"At the Corner of Park 5.03", 24" x 20", Mary Beth Shaw, 2013