Welcome to day twelve in the 33 Paintings in 33 Days Project of Alaskan artist  Nikki Kinne and Wisconsin artist Helen Klebesadel.

As I walk out my back door and head across the yard to my wonderful little  studio I am hit with a heady rich sweet perfume that pulls me up short and demands my attention.  Its source is the patch of milkweeds that I grow every year to lure Monarch butterflies to my yard.  Milkweed is one of their favorite food.  This twelfth painting is this years attempt to capture part of the budding and flowering of these wonderful weeds.  I’m sure I will revisit these plants because of the way they capture my  olfactory attention every day, at least as long as the flowering lasts.  I thank them for the butterflies too.

For her twelfth painting Nikki is celebrating too, a celebration in finding her friends home when she came visiting.  This is a lovely little plein air painting created as she traveled to Homer by way of Soldotna on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula with her husband Ken.  (He is a pilot and they have their own plane.  This is far more  common in Alaska where there are more registered pilots and privately own aircraft than in any other state).  More plein air paintings from this trip coming soon!

Many of my daily works for this project available for sale online in my Meylah shop here: http://meylah.com/HelenKle​besadel  I post them each day after they are posted in the blog.

Thank you for joining us as we share our creative work!