I lost much of my artwork in a wildfire in 2015. My digital art survived because we were at the Apple store miles away getting a much needed operating system upgrade. While we were away that afternoon, the Valley Fire burned our home along with 1600 others. My artwork from my whole life and John's many boxes of poetry and journals were gone in an instant. But, some was safe with us, stored right there on my iMac while we sat at the mall waiting by the Apple store. The iMac was all that was left.
Over eight years later I've created all new art, most digital. I sync to two cloud drives. Here are some of the oldies that were saved on my iMac that survived the fateful day.
Created in "D-Paint" - 1996
"Deluxe Paint was first in a series of products from the Electronic Arts Tools group​​​​​​​ Deluxe Paint began as an in-house art development tool called Prism. As author Dan Silva added features to Prism, it was developed as a showcase product to coincide with the Amiga's debut in 1985. Upon release, it was quickly embraced by the Amiga community and became the de facto graphics (and later animation) editor for the platform. " - wikipedia
Bella Blue Designs is in business - 2002
Working with my mom was my early attempt to have my own greeting card business. I was 32, a single mom with a full time job living in the Bay Area. With very little self confidence, the cards didn't make it much further than the line sheet. But working together with my mom and her Wildlife and Orchid illustrations was priceless. She is not here now but I know she is the reason I have my business today. She believed in my ability to make something out of my art.
Thee are some other illustrations from over the decades that were safe on my computer tucked into old iterations of my websites, photo albums, and folders. I scoured my old computer folders for quite a few years to find anything I could after the forest fire until eventually every folder had been poured through many times.