Last year, my husband Buddy and I added an enclosed studio space to our huge garage, and also a working woodshop on our property.

When we moved here in 2018, I used a portion of our garage to work; quite challenging in the winter time since it was difficult to heat the area with a space heater..(the garage was 2000 sq ft!) I did however get used to bundling up and donning my fingerless gloves to work, and considered myself fortunate that I was able to paint still life in the garage space and plein air near my beautiful new Colorado home. All that came to a halt when I had to have a rotator cuff surgery to repair my right shoulder in May. My dominant arm was out of commission for a few months, and we used that time to hire a contractor to help us with our studio construction.  The 300 square foot studio was ready just in time for some "non-dominant hand" practice in oil painting, which was truly a very valuable experience for me.  I recommend every artist try it!  (since you can't "peck" at your paintings too much, it forces  direct and spontaneous brushwork.)  I found myself "thinking" more about my next stroke before I put it down.

The woodshop was next, and it was built just in time before our first snow in October!  It serves as a storage unit/frame manufacturing/framing shop. Buddy already has produced a few frames for me, and is perfecting his new craft. (He retired last April after 30 years on the Los Angeles City Fire Department.)  Buddy was watching lots of youtube videos and learning tricks from other woodcrafters,  and implementing them in the shop before he had an unfortunate spill on the ski slopes and tore his rotator cuff.  So, that particular area of our business is "on hold" for a few months until he can re-hab his shoulder. Thank goodness it is (at least) not his dominant arm!

 

Years ago, I was gifted a precious and used easel from Buddy's uncle David Pacheco, who was a professional artist.  I treasured the easel, and will never part with it but it was literally not functional.  I could "set" bigger panels on it, but they were never "secure" between the spacers in the easel since the parts that move the spacers up and down had broken.  So, I used my trusty "outdoor easels" for much of my indoor work and had several tables set up for a larger indoor palette I used....lots of clutter ensued.  And so painting on bigger panels was a real problem for me.  

 

In December, we hired Mark Roberts to make me a beautiful hand crafted easel, along with an attached taboret and I could NOT be happier with it!  (Well, he's also fashioning a custom "sliding mahl stick" for it soon, so I guess I will be EVEN happier with that)  Mark has a website: http://robertseasels.com and is on instagram, so you can view, admire his work and contact him if you'd like one of these beauties for your own studio!