How does it work? What is the system? I hear these two questions a lot. So for all you curious minds, here’s a peek into my Bach Project system. It starts with a bit of elementary music theory. The chromatic scale has 12 half-step tones. I’ve drawn it here in C, which is the simplest key on the piano and the key J.S. Bach chose to begin his Well-Tempered Clavier suite. Next comes a little color theory. A basic color wheel includes 12 colors: 3 primary colors, 3 secondaries and 6 tert

One-quarter of the way through — the first six (of 24) Preludes, based on Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.

After a two-year hiatus from selling online, I’m now stocking an Etsy shop with my new Bach Project artwork and oddities. Where else can you buy an original watercolor of Prelude No. 1 in C Major? Or a music-themed Rubik’s Cube?  

Welcome to my studio, dear antique drafting table. Can’t wait to make you look much, much less clean.

“Every Monday for 12 months, The Reconstructionists will debut a hand-painted illustration and short essay highlighting a woman from fields such as art, science, and literature.” [from Storyboard] Think Anna Magdalena Bach will make an appearance? I’m fascinated by this Reconstructionists project (the title makes me think of religious movements?) and love the combo of illustration with text. Together with “The Female Gaze” exhibit I recently saw at the Pennsylvania

I hope someday I get to be included in a study on the role of music in influencing brain functions. Here I am, trying to work on a fellowship application, and I can’t string two words together until I turn on the Bartók Violin Sonatas as recorded by Christian Tetzlaff and Leif Ove Andsnes. It is apparently the only music to which I can write. Now suddenly my brain is in all-out verbal composition mode and I can produce entire paragraphs of meaningful thought. (Never mind that I’m sti

Anna Magdalena Bach was Johann Sebastian Bach’s second wife, mother of 13 of his children, the copyist of his manuscripts and herself an accomplished musician. When I became interested in using J.S. Bach’s music as the basis for a new body of work, her name repeatedly caught my eye in my background research. Then I ran across an article describing how an Australian researcher has theorized, based on forensic science and musical analysis, that Anna Magdalena may have been the composer

Took a couple of in-process shots of my latch hook rug based on Bach’s Prelude in C Major. I’m almost one-third of the way through. Talk about tedious. Good thing I’ve got Doctor Who to keep me company.