Tag Archives: Paper

Heart-flower Hand-painted miniature, acrylic on paper in glass & copper locket

hand-painted locket, acrylic on paper in glass and copper locket, one of a kind art jewelry by Leah Palmer Preiss

Back in the day I did a lot of greeting card & wrapping paper art in the hearts-&-flowers vein. After a few years of that I had had about all the sweetness I could swallow. I called it a quarter-life crisis… & my art has been getting weirder ever since. Someday maybe it will catch up with the rest of me… then look out! ;-)

But speaking of hearts, flowers, & veins, this little anatomical-botanical curiosity popped into my head recently, & I thought it was a perfect candidate for occupying a small empty locket I’d purchased on Etsy. And to continue the wonky circularity (or should I say circulatory system?) of the tale, it’s now available in my shop!

It’s about an inch wide by two inches tall if you count the bail. The picture shows both front & back. The text was borrowed from an old dictionary.

Fever Dreams Acrylic on coated paper, ~10" x 7.5" including frame

FeverDreams-LeahPalmerPreiss

This is quite an old piece, but I just had to post it now, because I’m getting over a mysterious fever that went on for a week. I had a bunch of intense dreams, as well as a very strange waking episode when my hand was attempting to draw vector lettering on the pillow. I kept trying to stop it, but it wouldn’t give up. Mostly “R”s, forward & backward, for hours. It was one of the creepiest feelings I can remember in a long time. I was afraid I might truly be going mad.

Happily I am much better and the major weirdness seems to be over. Unfortunately I’m quite far behind in my work though, so my Halloween image will still have to wait. Maybe by Thanksgiving. ;-)

Apologies for the less-than-stellar scan– it’s framed with glass, so there’s a bit of blur & distortion. I tried to Photoshop it back to health, but just like me, it’s not quite 100%!

Namazu Acrylic on paper, ~6.75" x 4"

Oddment99-Namazu-LeahPalmerPreiss

I painted this last year as part of the AlphaBeasts! series.

From my old Oddments blog:

This week’s critter for AlphaBeasts! is Namazu, a giant catfish monster who causes earthquakes & tsunamis whenever he manages to wrestle free from his usual captive state. I thought it was interesting that catfish do tend to abandon their normal bottom-feeding habits when they feel tremors; their unusual activity at such times probably led to this legend.

Acrylic on illustration scanned from Cornell’s Primary Geography, 1873. (And yes, I know catfish don’t live in the ocean. Namazu is a river-beast. But I figured he might wander seaward when he’s in mid-mischief.)

Prints are available in my Etsy shop!