LA life magazine

Just after grousing a few days ago......I'm happy to say that my work is featured in downtown Los Angeles Life international eMagazine: http://downtownlalife.tripod.com Look for my name down a ways on the left of the main page. Thanks for looking if you check it out.

I should only paint....not talk. So that is the agenda.

art openings vs. holing up in the studio

I posted an old painting on flickr today that got me remembering and thinking about my shows in galleries and small museums and universities. It is a bitter little painting done in 1989 about the crowds at openings talking and smooching with each other and ignoring the work on the wall (which in this painting is hung upside down....not a tribute to a well known 90's painter). Many people have had wonderful openings, me included, but this was just a jibe at what can and does happen when an artist hangs his/her heart and soul up on the wall.

How does a poet get up and recite, or a singer or comic get the nerve up to perform. It's a wonder really. Visual artists are often much more shy of attention. Well, ok, I am. I love to do the work, it's great for the work to get attention.....but I'd rather stay home. I love to talk to people about my work....but on a small scale....a few people at a time...preferably over coffee or a beer. I can even talk to a big group quite easily....but I'm just happier in the studio. Bah, humbug and all that.

Pacific Ocean spirit lift

Back in the studio after more toing and froing ....Calif to Texas and back and back.

Great lungfulls of Pacific Ocean air gave my spirit a lift. Freezing toes and bits of sea kelp and drift wood remind me of what life is about, really. It is animal satisfying to snuggle into a crevice of sandstone out of the wind and listen to the surf.

I look forward to finishing my paintings of boats and people but in the meantime am concentrating on small bits of sea kelp....can't beat the great form. It is hot and wet here now, storms moving in and out, sweet smell of wet plants.....

Back to work.

the need to create....for us all

The nice thing about "creating" something is that it takes you away. We are happy spirits if we can compose or whittle or paint or build or paste things onto things. Hours pass and the afternoon turns to night and my wrist feels funny and my eyes are tired, but I have been to this wonderful place where I am queen of the paper/canvas/pasted thing....and I am blissful.

No wonder when people get a chance to make something with their hands, they do...they return to pre judged childhood...where you did it for yourself. Pre parents telling you how fabulous you were, pre teachers telling you to use the pencil for other things, pre your inside critic telling you that "it" wasn't good enough. When a human gets a chance, that human will create. In the dust, on the wall, in the margins......maybe just in dreams. But it is in us.

Fire ants. Dying bamboo. Withered ginger. I really need to whine. It simply feels like the earth is burning up. It is something like the "sad" phenom that happens in cold climes in the winter.....we are listless and depressed and "sad" with our heat.

Truly, I feel like moving. Even got on Zillow.com and checked out neat places to live. But each place has its own problems. I don't think I'd like a long winter cold "sad" either. And we can't help thinking about the planet in general. The future. Taking our reusable bags to the store doesn't seem like much....I'd be much happier if the big corps would do more than try to make money.

Well, the swallows in the chimney are still singing. There is a new addition to the Cardinal bird family that lives in our yard. I'm trying to cheer up.

heat in the world with us

This feels like the apex of heat, the apex of summer (too early), the apex of doldrums. Here in Houston, strangely we have had no rain for weeks and week.....gardens drying up, new little trees turning brown, and heat hitting 100. San Antonio weather, really. We are used to an average rainfall of 54 inches per year. That keeps our gingers and loblolly trees sprightly.

I am reading a book that started out fascinating, and now has me wrapped in worry. The book is:
The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. Yes, yes, I know there is some similar tv program, but the book is far more informative and interesting. It gives me some sense of pleasure to think that the soil, animals, rivers etc would come back strong if we just vacated the mess we have made. But it is not quite that simple. It is a good read and a lot to think about.

I'm painting as usual every day....in gouache, but am about to get back to the boat paintings. And water paintings....ironic, what?

Peace in the heat.