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I can't remember when music wasn't in my life. Some of my earliest recollections in Central New York are of warm summer days and classical music emanating from our old farmhouse softly drifting over vast fields of dandelions. On those lazy summer days, our old farm horse Tony would stand under the living room window for hours on end with his head hung low, mesmerized by strands of Beethoven and Bach lofting through the air from my mother’s record player. Another early recollection is of a little Yellow Finch we called Flicka. Flicka had fallen out of a tree during a bad storm even though he had lost a wing, he survived and lived comfortably with our little family. I never hear a Strauss Waltz without thinking of Flicka, whenever my mother played them he would sing his little heart out to his rendition of, “The Blue Danube;” which was particularly sweet.

As time went on, I found my penchant for music was almost as great as my desire to become an oil painter, and now I find the two going hand in hand. Now when I paint, the music progresses right along with my painting.

Even though I have painted hundreds of paintings, I am still nervous when starting out on a new canvas, wondering and hoping that I will be able to put down on canvas the European landscape paintings I am envisioning in my mind. The slow, solemn repetitious lines from ancient Gregorian Chants help sooth my jitters and keep me on task at that point. As the work progresses, so does the music as it jumps ahead into the classical era, and once again I find myself listening to those wonderful classical pieces from my childhood. A good part of my painting experience is done in this time period, as if hoping the old masters will rub off on me. As I near the end of a painting, the music moves up the time line to the old Crooners such as Sinatra onto The Beatles, Beach Boys and the like. Finally--believe it or not, at the end with the finish line in sight, I crank up the volume and rap music goes bouncing off of my walls.

I like all types of music, but I still hold the classics of my childhood as my favorite.

I am almost as passionate about history as I am about art. For me, the two go hand in hand. Perhaps this is why I have gravitated toward European art. Painting Medieval buildings along ancient canals and rivers, or buildings along narrow cobblestone-lined streets, holds a certain appeal for me.

My love of history has not only influenced what I paint, but how I paint. At a time when so much art is abstract, I go totally in the opposite direction spending hours in detailing my work. It is my desire that when someone looks at one of my paintings, they feel as if they can walk right into the painting and feel the history which is embedded in the landscape painting. Hopefully, my Italian paintings and French landscape paintings inspire your imagination to come visit.

In a historical point of view, it would sadden me if I thought I only have one more year to paint—as many predict the world is coming to an end Dec. 21, 2012. We are bombarded with the disastrous news of the coming of the end of the world due to the Mayan calendar which ends Dec. 21, 2012. Again, paying attention to detail has become a comfort to me. I am here to tell you not to worry, this isn’t the first time the Mayan calendar has come to an end--actually it will be the 12th time. The Mayan calendar is on a 144,000-day cycle from its mythical creation date, which means that Dec. 21, 2012, will end its 5,200-year cycle. It’s hard to end history when it’s always repeating itself.

I took some time off from painting on my newest painting of Brugge, Belgium, and was unpacking my Christmas ornaments the other day which always has a way of becoming a nostalgic experience for me. As I am sure it is true for so many of us each year as I go through my Christmas box, I find myself unwrapping years of memories. One of my earliest and fondest memories which I still hold dear is my little plastic snow globe with its nativity scene. I first held my globe in tiny, little hands shaking the globe and watching in fascination as snow swirled around Baby Jesus. Now I hold my globe in hands that aren’t so youthful looking with crooked fingers and still my little snow globe fascinates me as I give it a shake making sure the snow still swirls around Baby Jesus.

The exact beginning of the snow globe invention can be traced back to France and its first public appearance was at the Universal Expo of 1878. The globes were a big hit for shortly afterward at least five companies manufactured snow globes and sold them throughout Europe. In 1889, snow globes with a tiny Eiffel Tower commemorating the newly-built landmark and the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution burst onto the scene. Their popularity spread to Victorian England where they were wholeheartedly embraced.

Soon after the snow globe was shaking up things in America (in more ways than one), when in the “Roaring 20s” they became an extremely popular collector’s item. Many of the Christmas snow globes were crafted by the Atlas Crystal Works company which had factories in Germany and America. Even today, most finely-crafted Christmas snow globes still come out of West Germany.

With the manufacturing of plastics in the 1950s, the quality of snow globes took a nose dive with mass productions of cheap plastic snow globes which diminished their appeal as a collector item. Fortunately, in the 1970s several American novelty and gift manufacturers decided to upgrade the production of the snow globe as gift items and collectables.

This week finds one painting coming home from New York City and three going out to the Cazenovia Public Library in Cazenovia, New York. It was exciting to display “Quiet Repose” at the National Association of Women Artists at their gallery, and now “The Garden Gate of Cinque Terre,” “Colmar in Full Bloom” and "Arch of St. Cirq in Lapopie” are hanging at the Cazenovia Public Library. The exhibition goes from now through January.

It’s been a busy week getting ready to leave for a few weeks stay in New Mexico and tying up loose ends here in Upstate New York. The tree is decorated, presents bought and wrapped and finishing touches being done on my latest painting of Bruges. It’s exciting to see the painting turn a corner and looking so good, soon I will be able to put this one to rest.

All and all, it’s been a productive week.

Thanksgiving gives us all time to reflect and think about the culmination of a year and what we can be thankful for. This has been an extra special year in our family. I have a healthy new granddaughter, and within a month another granddaughter will make her arrival. Our son is doing exceptionally well in College as he starts toward his new career endeavors. Since spring, three new horses grace our lives. We have a new garage where only grass grew last Thanksgiving, and our family members are all healthy.

It was a little over a year ago that I launched Wishful Traveler Gallery of which I am thankful for the 3 online galleries sponsoring my work, 15 group art shows this year and 3 shows of which I was the featured artist.

Since last Thanksgiving, my career as an artist has hit new heights when I was inducted into the National Association of Women Artists last Thursday in New York City. The NAWA is the oldest professional women’s art organization in the United States having been founded in 1889.

The induction ceremony was held at the Rubin Museum with the reception later held at the national headquarters of NAWA. Until I got there and was inducted into the association, I hadn’t realized just how difficult it is to get into this association. Many of new inductees have been trying to get into the organization for years. This year out of 160 applicants, only half were accepted and of that number only 33 are oil/acrylic painters like me. So I am thankful and humbled to have gotten in after one try.

The reception featured my painting “Quiet Repose” hanging among other works from new members. As an artist, New York City is the “Promised Land” and although it is not the first time one of my paintings has been hung in a gallery in NYC, it was the first time I have been present to see it for myself and that was extra special for me.

Lastly but uppermost in my thoughts, I am thankful for all those who bravely serve our country and are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to keep us safe.

I spent last week on the East Coast of Florida visiting family coincidentally at the same time of the annual Italian Festival. As an artist who focuses on Italian paintings to capture the beauty of the boot-shaped country's magnificent landscapes and seascapes, I was very much looking forward to going to the festival. I have been studying Italian for the past year and I am always looking for events and activities to fulfill my passion for this gorgeous country.

I guess for anyone who hasn’t been to Italy it was great fun, but for us who have and love the friendliness of the people, their language, music, history and surroundings--it was a great disappointment.

Unfortunately, the Roman soldiers stayed home for I saw none walking the streets (what a great photo op that would have been). Most of the vendors didn’t speak Italian, and even the food was a disappointment (which there was plenty of.) And when is pulled pork Italian? My ears are still ringing from sour notes sung by wanna-be Sinatras flatly singing “Volare.” The one bright spot of the festival was a lone gondolier playing the according and singing Italian songs. I began to think my $5 spent at the gate was worth it. Wouldn’t you know it after two songs in Italian he switches over to “Danny Boy!” How is that Italian?

It would have been nice to have seen a display of Italian cars, a gondola or two on the lake (I would have bought tickets for that). How about strong, young Italian men touting large flags and throwing them into the air and catching them as the come back to Earth? I would have liked to have visited a tent displaying artwork from local Italian artists? Since I was in Florida, where was the sand sculpture of Michelangelo’s Pieta? And would it be that hard to scatter a few fountains around the area--after all they are a dime a dozen in Florida.

I called my daughter and expounded on my disappointment hoping to hear I had been to a bad festival and that most of them were pretty darn good. She tells me all of the festivals here are like that. Hoping it was only the Italian Festivals, I asked her about the German Festivals, she tells me it’s all the same, none of them are authentic unless you go overseas.

If I want authenticity, I have to go back to Italy…to Europe itself. I miss Italy all the more now, for now I will have to satisfy myself with being there through my European landscape paintings. It’s also sad to think of all of those lovely German Christmas markets that will be starting up soon, which I won’t be strolling through to sip glühwein, listen to the folk music bands and shop for handmade treasures. I named my art gallery well--I really am the “Wishful traveler.”

It’s kind of funny what people will throw out in the trash. Even stranger is what some people will pick out of the trash. The old saying, “Someone’s trash is someone else’s treasure,” surely fits this story.

Back 30 or so years ago, Robert Leitch was driving through a rundown neighborhood of rooming houses in Philadelphia. The eagle-eyed gentleman spotted cardboard boxes by the curb, heaped high with wire-formed objects waiting for the next trash pickup. Something told him not to leave them there, so he pulled over and loaded over 1,200 pieces of wire-wrapped cocoons containing broken reflectors, mirror shards, crumpled cigarette packs, junk jewelry, coins and nails into his car.

The funny thing was that Leitch kept the collection under wraps, doling out a few pieces here and there to friends, who finally persuaded him to bring his treasure trove to a gallery curator back in 1984. In the beginning, only a few pieces sold for a paltry amount. In today’s art market, the “outsider art” by people on society’s fringes has been accepted and much sought after. The current show lists Wireman’s work anywhere from $2,200 to $9,000.

No one knows who the “Wireman” artist was; although it is assumed the artist was male because the heavy wire was bent by hand, requiring considerable strength. Most likely he was an African American after all the relics were found in one of Philadelphia’s oldest historically Black neighborhoods. It is surmised that the “Wireman” either died and a landlord put his possessions out as trash, or he was evicted and sadly left his belongings behind.

I think before I throw that next heap of wire fencing away on our farm here in upstate New York, I am going to look at it long and hard. Who knows if in 20 to 30 years from now it will be bringing in thousands of dollars in a Sotheby’s auction?

Halloween takes on a special meaning for me, not only because it is steeped in European Traditions, but because I am a New York artist which is home to Washington Irving’s “Ichabod Crane and the Legend of Sleepy Hallow.”

The origins of Halloween date back more than 2,000 years ago to Great Britain and northern France when the Celtic people celebrated New Years Eve and the end of another years’ harvest on Oct. 31. It was believed that spirits rose from the dead and returned to walk the Earth and cause mischief.

Today’s Halloween is a witch’s cauldron of traditions full of 19th century Irish and Scottish traditions, sprinkled with Christian interpretations of All Souls Day. The name, “Halloween,” means All Hollow’s Even or the day before All Hollow’s Day, better known as, All Saint’s Day, a catholic celebration that honors Christian saints and martyrs and is observed on Nov. 1. The colors orange and black are Halloween colors because orange is associated with the fall harvest, and black is associated with darkness and death.

You can thank those great storytellers, the Irish, for giving us the Jack-o-lantern. As the story goes, there was a man named Stingy Jack who tricked the devil in such a way that when the time came, the devil would neither let Stingy Jack enter into heaven nor in hell. Instead the devil sent Jack off into the darkness of night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth ever since. The Irish called the ghostly figure, “Jack of the Lantern.” However, the story didn’t end there for another tradition evolved out of Jack’s misfortune, that of carving faces into turnips and other foods on All Hallow’s Eve, and sometimes hallowing out and lighting the insides in which to ward off evil spirits like that of Stingy Jack and his tricks. As the Irish immigrants found their way to America they found the pumpkin to be a bigger and easier item to carve and soon it replaced the turnip as the ideal way to continue the tradition of casting off evil spirits.

Today’s Jack-o-lanterns have come a long way from those of my childhood memories when I stood on a chair so I could lean over and scoop out the insides of the pumpkin my dad was working on for me on the kitchen table with his trusty old jack knife. There are those who have taken pumpkin carving into a whole new realm of art which often leaves us shaking our head in wonder and amazement. Carving pumpkins gives all of us license to create whatever fanciful whims we may wish for from the simplest to the most intricately complicated creations. After all, it’s all for a good cause, for on this one night of the year, All Hallow’s Eve, those pesky evil spirits are kept at bay.

I am constantly reminded how subjective art is. Last weekend I participated in an art show in which a photograph of a car placed fourth place over some very fine artwork in which the artists took painstaking time and talent to create. Is it wrong to think a photo snapped within a nanno seconds should get the credit it did? Well that depends on who you talk to.

Personally, as a New York artist who takes what sometimes seems like forever to detail and finish a painting, I think categories should exist between the two mediums.

I am probably not as open minded as I should be or should I be? I am reminded of a memorable day a few years back while in Paris, France. I spent a glorious day in the most famous art gallery in the world--the Louvre. I was looking at what arguably is the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa. Standing there looking at this simple, little painting by Leonardo da Vinci, which is surrounded by such wonderful masterpieces like those by Giovanni Paolo Panini, I had and still have trouble understanding what makes the Mona Lisa so special.

Some would say it is the mystery of her smile; well what about the mystery behind the smile on Johannes Vermeer's "Girl With The Pearl Earring" in 1665? It is a smile, and what is she thinking?

However you look at what you call art, the one thing that we all surely can agree on is that we agree we can agree on nothing at all. That is what makes art in general so interesting; it lets anyone express themselves with artistic liberties which will find a place in at least one person’s heart.

As an artist who paints French landscape paintings, this recent art mystery fascinated me. In 1875, the city of Douai, France, in the northern part of the country commissioned Jules Breton to paint what became known as “Fisherman’s Daughter.” Breton lived from 1827 to 1906, and was a French realist painter who became famous for his idyllic version of rural country life.

The painting, “A Fisherman’s Daughter,” hung in the Beaux Art Museum in Douai until 1918 with the occupation of German troops in WW1. During the German occupation, all of the paintings in the museum were confiscated and sent to Mons, Belgium, then on to Brussels, Belgium. A year later the war ended and Brussels sent the paintings back to the Beaux Museum--all except one, “Fisherman’s Daughter.”

No one knows what happened to the painting after that except for the fact that it had been successfully restored (it had been cut out of its frame). The fate of the painting, which is valued at $150,000, haunted the art world for nearly a century. In 2010, there was a break in the case when it was rumored that the painting was to be sold in New York at an art auction.

Ironically, it was a little known office inside our own U.S. Department of Homeland Security, known as the Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities Unit, took over and the allusive painting and finally returned it to its place of origin, the Beaux Art Museum in Douai, more than 90 years after its disappearance. The U.S. Department of Homeland Defense has repatriated more than 2,500 items to 22 countries since 2007.