The box is completely painted in ivory then decorated with ribbons, lace, crystals, sparkles, a design and many hearts.  The little feet on the bottom are hearts.

Inside are more hearts including nearly 100 hand-drawn and individually cut hearts that are blue and pink, polka dot, plaid and sparkly, small, medium and large.  Also included are assorted other hearts in different sizes and colors along with the keys.

Please scroll down to see the images.  At the very bottom is a survey – please fill it out! Thank you!

Please answer this survey:

Wren (Photo credit: gypsy_roadhog)

This morning something very magical occurred in my front garden.  A Mama desert wren was instructing her baby who was practicing flying and feeding in the Lysiloma and Paulo Verde trees that are happily in bloom.

I thought at first that the little baby was a hummingbird because of how fast

he was fluttering his wings.  But after carefully watching, I realized that it was a mother bird instructing a baby.

The mother desert wren would fly to a branch and as soon as the baby arrived to the branch, she would fly to another one.  It looked kind of like tag.

While the baby was working hard to keep  up with his mom, he would occasionally take a moment to sip some nectar from the blossoms on the tree.  In order to do so, he had to beat his wings very hard to hold his position while pleasantly sipping nectar.

The mother bird was so caring of her little baby.  She was hovering a little bit away from her baby not trying to interfere or be over-protective.

The mom and baby wrens spent quite a bit of time in the baby trees in my front yard.  It was magical to watch the scene as momma bird got her baby to follow rapidly from branch to branch higher and then lower – round and round the trees.

Where’s the camera when you need it? 8)

You can still feel that spiritual-ness when you visit the ruins.  That’s what my new series of paintings is about.

This latest painting is titled The Warriors Pride.  It is the tender side of a fierce and mischievous warrior as he protects his two children and his wife.

Here’s the photograph I took of the ruins:

Here’s the painting that I did – can you find the people in the image above?

At the top is the warrior himself, directly below him is his son, to the right of the son is the daughter and directly behind the daughter is the mother.

If you look inside the cave on the wall right above the ruins you can see the warrior.

And today I finished the painting of the Warrior, here he is:

Let me know what  you think of him!

Isn’t she pretty?  I like her little crown and I think her dress is nice, too.  I’m really glad that she decided to grace my garden!

I do think that you have a special quality to your paintings, I love them and know that you could do justice to anything you paint. L.C.

Your paintings are magnificent!!!! Love the dragon! K.C.

I loved your sites! Wonderful! I loved both your paintings and your poetry. I am proud indeed to be your friend! R.E.G.

I think that I could pick your paintings out of the “crowd” because of the soft colors and the light flow of your brush, I LOVE it. You have a lot of peace in your work, like love in pastels. L.C.

This is a very nice work of art. You are quite talented. A.T.

By the way, I LOVE YOUR WEBSITE! You have done some amazing pieces. R.W.

wow very nice!!! its very pretty I like the colours you used in it. K.L.

Beautiful! It’s soooo light. I love it. E.S.

OOH! I love that one, too. The colors are wonderful. E.S.

LOOOOVE the colors, nature at it best. As always, I love the gentle flow of your art. L.C.

This is lovely and very appropriate to view in the early morning that it is here. Gorgeous! G.A.

Wow! Your art is amazing!!! A.A.

I looked at your art and found it amazing and that’s a large understatement. J.R.C.

Your art is beautiful!! Thanks for sharing it with the world!! B.C.

Thanks for sharing your beautiful art work! I also visited your website and enjoyed seeing your creative products. It was also very inspiring as I am working on getting an artistic career going with both painting and writing. R.H.

I visited your web site. You are truly a talent. All I can add is “WoW”. Fondly, M. Dignard.(Lakeside Creations Publishing)

“It has been my privilege to have followed ILIA’s career for more than fourteen years now. I have never – in any field – seen anyone grow so fast or so much as she has done. Each painting she creates surpasses all the other ones which she has done before. I consider this phenomenal.

‘I have shown her work to two other professional artists, one of whom has exhibited in many major museums around the world. Each admired her work. One of them remarked that she has “a wonderful eye.”

“It is not merely that her paintings have beauty and power, although they surely do. It is more that they are filled with new and valid perceptions of reality which cause the viewer to cognite.

‘Her work is bold, imaginative, creative, powerful. These are much more than pretty pictures skillfully done. It is clear that she has something new and valuable to contribute to the world.

‘It is an honor to have followed her career.” R.E.G. Master of Arts Columbia University

You do beautiful work! M. B.
Love your website. You are a very good artist. Your style is very unique and diverse. Rosi
LOVE this site. Beautiful ! Beautiful !
I see a lot of you in your paintings, a soft, gentle free spirit, they are so easy on the senses. M.

Wow!!!!!!!!!! This is very cool!! Very Impressive – really!!
W.M.
Dear Ilia,
Have been checking out your new web page and LOVE it.
Got a few laughs from the Hudini story, reminded me of all our trials with the dissappearing e-mails.  I especially love the Max picture and story, he is quite a cat. keep up the beautiful work. L. C.

If you look at the cave wall directly over the ruins you will see two “eyes.”  On closer inspection, you can see an Indian Warrior wearing a mask.

I drew this Indian and his mask – while looking at the cave.  I was thinking that I wanted to get brightness and the earthy colors while also accenting the mask.

I was very careful to follow the image closely to create the design of the mask.  I finished my take on what I saw, mask included – then labeled the different areas for the colors that I wanted to use.

I had a bright idea to go ahead and search online to find Indian masks, especially the Anasazi so entered the search in Google to find images.  What I saw blew me away because I designed a mask nearly exactly like the images that I found on Google!

I’m making this painting bright like the sunshine of the summer day that it was taken on.

I’ll be adding some in-progress shots so that you can see how the Warrior is coming along.

Best,

ILIA

When you look at this painting, you get the feeling of timelessness.  It’s very fitting for the series of paintings as this painting honors Arizona, Native American Indians and also represents the messages of the ages of how to care for our “home” – Planet Earth.

Here in Arizona, we have a long history of Indians – for instance, there’s the Anasazi.

This painting is a composite of different photographs of Native American Indians from the past and present – plus, the sky and clouds are a skyline that I recently saw.

It rained last night and was still raining this  morning.  I looked outside to see a marvelous sight: the Lysiloma tree “decorated” for the season with raindrops that were sparkling!

I braved the rain to go snap shots of this marvel!  What do you think of the decorating that Mother Nature did?