Moon Bunnies

I still love the feel of these Moon Bunny paintings. 

 Since I no longer have a greeting card contract, I'm trying to figure out the next big adventure for these paintings....

Kids' Murals

Lately I've been moving away from painting murals and focusing more on creating home decor and design. It's fun though, to look back and see where I've been--here's a small sampling of murals for children I've painted over the past 10 years. I still get so excited to see how transforming paint can be in a space. 

A Plane's Cockpit

Mice Under a Mushroom

 Sea Turtle

Surfing Corner

Revisiting the Tour of Homes

Last year at this time my home was featured in the St. Paul/Minneapolis Tour of Homes, mainly due to a creative and unorthodox use of space, oh and probably dumb luck. My all-time favorite touch is the living room tire swing--free to make and ever-popular with pint-sized visitors (and me).

I'm bringing this up today to remind myself of my ongoing goal to keep creativity alive daily. It's a brand new day for brainstorming (aka daydreaming) about how to continue that creative spark this year.

I've mentioned my professional artist dad before, but in case you're wondering, that's his water lily painting hanging in the dining room. You can see more of his amazing work at michaelkuseskepaintings.com

Yellowstone Mural

Recently I received a commission to paint a Yellowstone-inspired mural for two boys who were enthralled with their summer road trip out west. Having lived in western mountains myself (Park City, Utah), I could totally relate to their enthusiasm for natural beauty. It is impossible to capture the feelings my own kids and I felt of seeing our first bison calmly standing on the road's edge during our own Yellowstone trip last summer.

Cafe Dog Paintings--the original dogs

I've been an "artist" all my life--I'm sure I was easy to pick out on the playground because I was the skinny kid with glasses buried in my sketchbook with How To Draw Horses book in my lap while most of my classmates volleyed tetherballs back and forth. My dad, who at the time had one year of his MFA under his belt, used to give me assignments when I was bored like, "try painting a painting with only 3 colors and see all the great shades you can mix and create." His passion for his hobby fueled my own creativity. Eventually, he was able to leave his job as a house painter behind and create a successful fine art career. He says that now he looks forward to every day of "work" when he gets to sit and paint giant modern-looking, sculptural flowers for a living. See http:/michaelkuseskepaintings.com and prepare to be blown away. He is really talented...

The dog photo was my inspiration for a line of cafe dogs I painted last summer. Something so silly and interesting about this furry pair captured my attention and I became hooked on painting these guys. I've now painted three paintings based on these two.

The grumpy bunny

Illustration from a children's book I'm working on. Up until last week we owned two bunnies. These bunnies (as I'm sure all bunnies are) were full of character and provided ample entertainment. However, they also provided ample poop and other messes I won't go into here. We found a great home for them with a family of four boys who I'm sure will love them until the mess overwhelms them as well.

Bunnies are smarter than you'd think, and ours were constantly scheming of ways to escape their cage. Once out, they scampered around the house with glee and eventually plopped on their sides, usually side by side, and go to sleep.

Butterfly in process

Since it's finally spring I decided to update my palette (I love to work in greys and what I call "muddy colors") with brighter, more fun hues in celebration of the season. Here I'm working in acrylic, but wanted to create the look of a watercolor wash to capture the fleeting nature of the butterfly.