Inspired by an silly insult I received from someone at a recent art event, I have decided to try my hand at making small artworks. And by small artworks, I mostly mean small portraits. Very small. Portraits that take up a fraction of an 8 x 8 canvas.
The insult, that I paint small, made me laugh and didn’t hurt at all. I just couldn’t understand why someone felt the need to tell me that I paint small but she, the insulter, paints big. What does that even mean?
Well, the small pieces she was referring were little 4 x 4 wood panel abstracts I’d made, little abstracts she said looked like I cleaned off my pallet with them. HA! No, not quite. I paint with intention. But that didn’t matter. She offered me a challenge and I decided to run with it.
Local artist Heather Rene Dunaway hosts an annual Halloweeny art exhibition called the October Spooktacular. I have been juried in a few times in the past. For this year’s submission, I decided to paint small with a fanciful portrait of one of my favorite writers of all time, Edgar Allan Poe. It took me four sittings to finish this little gem, and I was so happy to find out that this piece, Edgar Allan’s Lost Lenore, was juried into this year’s Spooktacular!
So, maybe it’s not a bad thing to paint small after all.
The exhibition will be held at Le Chat Noir in downtown Augusta, Georgia. The show will be up from September 27 through November 8, Reception will be Friday, October 17, 2025 from 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
If you’re not afraid of small works, I invite you to the reception where we can snicker over my small art.