Today our gorgeous, brilliant and hilarious granddaughter, Maddie, turns 15. (I know I’m her grandmother, but I’m not exaggerating.) She fills our lives with laughter and joy and makes us proud of the amazing young woman she has become. Happy birthday, Maddie!

My winter project in Florida this year is to paint my three oldest granddaughters as they look now, to replace some paintings hanging in my condo here that I did of them when they were very little and I was just beginning to paint. It’s so much harder to capture people you know and love and are emotionally tied to than strangers, who can be reduced to pure patterns and measurements. There’s much more pressure to get the likeness right. Someone I once knew liked to say that everything easy is done already, and that is certainly true of portraiture. I’m no Michelangelo, but painting a portrait is 95% agony and 5% ecstasy…and only if you actually achieve the likeness. Believe it or not, that 5% is enough to bring you back to paint another. So here I am, already working on the next portrait…