It’s been relatively warm here.  Sunshine – no rain, no snow.  I still feel comfortable in bare legs and/or sandals at forty degrees!

I think that’s because last winter it was, like, four or more below zero in the winter, so we Syracusans think that thirty degrees is sort of warm.  It’s a relativity thingamabob.

Whenever I wear Trina Turk, the amazing fashion designer likes or comments on my Instagram pictures so, of course(!) I do it as often as possible.  Here is the outfit with and without the Banana Republic cardi.

This Free People cardi is in heavy circulation.  I just love the color.  It’s a sort of raw sienna/yellow ochre dealio, which truly suits me.  I am always instructing students to use this color as the underlying structure to a painting or a colored pencil drawing – the perfect neutral.

Been going to Green Lakes after school every day – I either bring exercise clothes to change into or I’ve been wearing leggings almost as a uniform, which is just easier.

The picture below was my casual Friday look.  We call it dress down day.  The teachers contribute money to fund various charities in order to wear denim since jeans are technically not professional attire.

I always top my look with an apron or a blue smock during the school day.  I look more like this crazy guy when I am not posing for a picture:

He’s Gustav Klimt.

I love this man!  His work is sooooo beautiful!  He was very eccentric.  He loved cats to the point that I think he hoarded them.  I only have the one – I am not technically a crazy cat lady, but just being an artist, the word crazy is tossed about a lot directed towards me, like some sort of embraceable put-down, lol.

Right now, I have something like six or seven different preps – I am doing different lessons in every class.  Painting – Wolf Kahn barn paintings in acrylic, fluorescent clay lizards and frozen faces; additive sculptures in one class, reductive sculptures in another…what else?  Colored pencil dessert drawings à la Wayne Thiebaud and Japanese fan mixed-media pieces,  Needless to say, the classroom is a crazy, topsy-turvy mess.

So, smock, cats, crazy…you can see that I identify with Klimt.  We could have been besties in another life.

This is my favorite Klimt painting.  When I stood in front of it at the Met years ago, I literally wept at it’s beauty.  It just has this innocent freshness.  The painting is actually life-size.  The girl and I are the same height. Hmm, that gives me an idea for a fashion look….  Think I will sport the side hair part tomorrow, maybe wear my white BCBG Max Azria dress again…but I think I will pass on the white tights.