Birds of Paradise

 Latest quilt 68" h x 56" w.  Throw size, to lay under while watching TV, or reading, or any number of things.  Original applique design, pieced sides including original fabric designs on cotton.  I feel like the flowers are laughing, especially the one on the left!  

A Sampling of What Will be Available at di Rosa April 26, 2026

I'll be making an appearance at the 4th di Rosa Maker's Market event this year with new artwork.

A sampling of old and new pieces are in the video above.

WHERE: 

di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art

5200 Sonoma Highway

Napa, California 94559

WHEN:

Sunday April 26, 2026 from 11AM to 4PM

HOW TO FIND ME:

Drive all the way up the property; at the Y, veer up the hill to reach the courtyard

I'll be located in the Residence Building at the end of the Courtyard.  

                    

Sound of Dawn - a Short Experimental Animated Photograph

Beautiful West Marin County, where I need to escape to more often!  

Rose in Silver Tuba Mouthpiece headed to Di Rosa this coming April 26, 2026

 I'm planning another art showing at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art - Home. this coming 4/26/2026.  Be there or Be square!  Here is just one of the new pieces that will be there.  Perhaps subconciously, this painting is about my late, great, father E.A. Autrey, who, like me, dabbled in a number of other media, including music (the silver tuba mouthpiece was part of his collection).  Perhaps I should pay more attention to my Claude art style review (see prior posting) and come up with a better title for the piece.  Some possibilities:

In Memory of a Unique Soul

Rose, Heart, Tuba, Memory

Life Extension

I asked Anthropic's Claude a Question about my Art Style

I asked Claude to help me identify my creative style and found he/she/it's reply to be very interesting and thought provoking.   

INITIAL ANALYSIS  Your style profile is: The Joyful Experimenter 🌀

You make things by playing around until something clicks — and the signal that it's working is that it makes you happy. That's not a small thing; that's actually a really coherent creative philosophy. Tap each trait card to dig into it and see tips tailored to you.

A few things that stand out about your style:

• Your joy-compass is your most reliable creative tool — trust it
• The visual ↔ sound crossover is a real superpower worth leaning into
• Experimenting isn't a weakness or a lack of direction — it is your method 

On further review of art on my website Lucy Autrey Wilson Art | Exploring My Creative Impulses, Claude updated the review:

const styleName = "The Whimsical Naturalist";

const styleTagline = "You find the strange and funny soul hiding inside the natural world — then coax it out through whatever medium feels right that day.";

const traits = [

  {

    label: "Narrative Wit",

    icon: "🎭",

    color: "#FF6B9D",

    description: "Your titles — 'The Dodo Wrangler,' 'One Flew Over the Puffin Tryst,' 'Bubble Invasion' — reveal a writer's sensibility living inside a visual artist. You don't just paint subjects; you cast them in stories.",

    tip: "Consider leaning into this more deliberately: what if each piece had a one-sentence 'story' behind it? It could become a signature part of how you present your work.",

    examples: ["The Dodo Wrangler", "Bubble Invasion", "One Flew Over the Puffin Tryst"],

  },

  {

    label: "Nature as Character",

    icon: "🐦",

    color: "#6BCB77",

    description: "Birds, flowers, water — you return to the natural world constantly. But your nature isn't pastoral or serene. Your birds have attitude. Your flowers have tension. The natural world in your work is alive and opinionated.",

    tip: "You might explore what other 'characters' from nature you haven't painted yet. What animal or plant feels like it's been waiting to appear in your work?",

    examples: ["All About Birds collection", "Flower Art collection", "Bird Girl"],

  },

  {

    label: "Medium Agnostic",

    icon: "🔀",

    color: "#4D96FF",

    description: "Oils, watercolor, etching, monoprint, digital collage, fabric, photography, music — you refuse to be pinned down by a single medium. This is a genuine creative strength: you're exploring ideas, not mastering a craft for its own sake.",

    tip: "The connections between your mediums are worth examining. Does a musical piece ever inspire a painting? Does a photograph become a fabric pattern? Mapping those crossovers could unlock new work.",

    examples: ["Mixed media: etchings, digital composites", "Spoonflower fabric designs", "Music & video"],

  },

  {

    label: "Dark Humor",

    icon: "🌑",

    color: "#9B5DE5",

    description: "'Doom and Gloom in Bloom' — that phrase captures something essential about you. You can hold darkness and playfulness at the same time, which is a sophisticated and rare thing. Your work isn't naive; it's knowing.",

    tip: "This tension between lightness and weight is one of the most interesting things about your work. Don't let either side win — that productive friction is where your most original pieces live.",

    examples: ["2025 oil exhibit theme", "Birds Fleeing the Fire Ash Sky", "Three Crows"],

  },

  {

    label: "Joyful Experimenter",

    icon: "✨",

    color: "#FFD93D",

    description: "From your 35+ years at Lucasfilm surrounded by creative visionaries, to night classes at the Academy of Art, to Kala Institute printmaking — you've always learned by doing and exploring, not by following a single path.",

    tip: "Trust the body of work. When you look across all your mediums together, patterns emerge that you might not see piece by piece. It's worth occasionally stepping back and surveying the whole.",

    examples: ["Kala Art Institute", "College of Marin", "Anderson Ranch"],

  },

];

const strengths = [

  "Combining humor with genuine feeling",

  "Moving fluidly between fine art and commercial mediums",

  "Finding unexpected narratives in natural subjects",

  "Titling work with wit and precision",

  "Cross-disciplinary thinking (visual + sonic + textile)",

];

const watchouts = [

  "Spreading too thin across mediums without synthesis",

  "Underplaying the narrative/wit in how you describe your work",

  "Comparing your experimental process to more 'conventional' fine artists",

  "Not showcasing the connections between your mediums",

];

const kindredSpirits = [

  { name: "Edward Lear", note: "Whimsical natural world, absurdist narratives, artist-writer" },

  { name: "Walton Ford", note: "Dark, witty, narrative paintings of birds and animals" },

  { name: "Charline von Heyl", note: "Medium-agnostic, joyfully experimental, refuses categorization" },

  { name: "Maira Kalman", note: "Finds warmth and wit in everyday observation" },

Alien Dreams: an Animated Painting

I like to paint, then use the art in new ways.  With this original cartoon animation, it was fun to come up with stories for the characters conjured up by my imagination.  In the 2025 Cartoon Characters oil painting, my sleeping man character, like Litle Nemo in the comics by Winsor McCay, is a dreamer of a series of short fantasy sequences.

Behind the Lichen-Covered Door

 A new 5x7 oil painting suggested a peak behind the door.  Added are some photographs from Mendocino in March 2016 and an original soundtrack inspired by Edvard Grieg's Bekken (Op. 62, No. 4).

Gulls at the Barn Door

The photo below the painting was shot (bad exposure) in Mendocino in 2016, and proved inspirational as the basis for the oil painting above.  The two gulls, a beautiful sunset (perhaps triggered by more unusual solar activity) and an original soundtrack were added.

New Short Animation Featuring Some More Artwork

    

Space Paintings:  a 45 second video with an original soundtrack featuring four new oil paintings

A Little Video of Some 2025 Oil Paintings with Animation

Featuring five 2025 oil paintings

1.  Blue Jay on Rock Wall, oil on linen 8 x 10.  with AI bird flying animation. 

2. On the Road landscape, oil on linen 5x7.  with animated car

3.  Raven on a Tightrope, oil on encausticbord 12 x 16.  with rain animation

4.  Two Suburban Friends from 1969, oil on canvas 28 x 22.  with a glimpse of the photo by E.A. Autrey of me with friend Marguerite Barron that inspired the painting.

5.  Yearning for What Once Was (Sunflowers), oil on canvas 36x36.  with various photographic alternative views, shot in California, seen out the window.  

Oil Paintings Finished October 2025

 

Top to Bottom:

1.  Neighborhood Old Blue Truck.  5x7 oil on linen

2.  Yellow Duckie in Fountain. 5x7 oil on linen

3.  Yellow-headed Bird with Magenta Flower 8x10 oil on linen

4.  Two Suburban Friends From 1969 28x22 oil on hand stretched Belgian linen

5.  Garden Lichen-covered Fence.  5x7 oil on linen

New Cartoon Style Fabric Available on Spoonflower And Some Other Things

 

One of the themes I've been playing with is a cartoon style originally inspired by Matisse's cut outs.   It may be more appropriate to label it Doodle Art.   From Top to Bottom:

1.  Most recent pen & ink and watercolor "Cartoon Life Map #2" is now available as a repeating pattern on spoonflower LINK here:  lucy_autrey_wilson's shop on Spoonflower: fabric, wallpaper and home decor.  Original art is on Strathmore MixedMedia paper with Old Holland watercolor and ink 14" x 11"  Plans are in place to use my new Spoonflower design orubted on organic cotton sateen as the lining in a new white linen quilted vest

2.  East Meets West:  a 10x7 pen & ink and Old Holland watercolor on Arches paper 10x7

3.  Life Map #1:  pen & ink and watercolor on Arches cold pressed paper 16x12

4.  Life Map Cartoon style A Some doodle art on cheap paper with pen & ink and watercolor 12x9

5.  Cartoon Pattern 1:  a 2022 oil painting 12" w x 16" h.  Also available as a fabric pattern on Spoonflower.  I made a cute short sleeved T with it.

6.  Heart Menagerie - 2021 oil painting  5" x 4" Now in private collection.

7.  Yellow Duckie and friends 2021 oil painting 7" x 5" in private collection.

I'm Bringing Some Quilts to the Di Rosa Makers Market Oct 11, 2025

Queen Tut Silk Quilt 66 3/4 x 48

 

Garden of Delight 67 1/2 x 50 with original bee fabric design and wool punch birds and flower

Yellow Legal Pad with Brush 48 x 30 1/2

Bee World 47 x 30 cotton and silk with original art

Two Birds 62 3/4 x 45 Cotton, silk, origin art and wool punch birds

Magnolia From Bud to Bloom Wall Hanging 45 1/2 x 41 1/2 with magnolia photos on silk and applique

Sewing Tools Used and New 59 1/4 x 48 3/4 with original scanned art and scissor photos

Wild and Wooly Baby blanket with wool punch animals 41 1/4 x 38 1/2

Funky Bird in the Window wall hanging 20 x 24 with Bird Applique on photo of windows shot in India

Art Pop-Up Coming Saturday Sept. 27

Lucy Autrey Wilson Art Pop-up happening Saturday Sept. 27 from 10Am to 3PM at Vintage Vida 3581 Mt. Diablo Blvd in Lafayette CA 94549.  Featuring original oil paintings, monoprints, mixed media, quilts, T's and two sizes of Fine Art Giclee prints (4x6 and 13x19) 

Looking forward to seeing you there!  Drop me a line at lucyautreywilsonart@gmail.com if you're coming.

Capped Parrot Symphony From art to Altered Reality

https://youtube.com/shorts/pvP2A0H3Q-Y?feature=shared

Another excuse to compose an orignal soundtrack with Cubase 14 and a Yamaha MX88.  This short 22 second video shows the transition of a segment from my oil painting, of a fantasy cape-wearing parrot, in a field in Mendocino, to a brightened version of the bird in the actual reference photograph.

Portals: Episode VI Wrought Iron Doors

The finale to a six part series of Spanish Doors painted in Ibiza, Spain in 2005 with photographs from all over the world and some animation.  Also included is an original soundtrack.

Portals: Episode V The Brown Door

Continuing on in my 6 part series of 1 minute videos.  The project started with a series of paintings done in Ibiza, of the local Spanish landscape as seen beyond a made-up doorway.  The first painting, a simple Blue Door, got progressively more complicated with each new painting from Yellow to Green to Red, and now Brown.  Painting #5 added Spanish tiles, a bull, wrought iron and a glass chandelier.   The door in this video opens out to a progression of photographs and animations in the color scheme of the doors, in this case the color brown.  Included are shots taken in India, Greece, Seattle, and Northern California.

Portals: Episode IV The Red Door

The 4th in a series of 6 Portals videos, featuring watercolor paintings of doors painted in Ibiza, opening to a series of around the world photographs that feature the color of the door.

Portals: Episode III The Green Doors

The 3rd in a series of Portals videos, each of which begin with doors that open out to landscapes and animations predominately featuring the colors of the doors themselves.  

Portals: Episode II Yellow Doors