Eye With A View

studio copper pot

2012-01-18T14:19:00.001-08:00

little satisfactions

2012-01-18T14:12:00.000-08:00

The days grow longer already. Perhaps more noticeable in the places I inhabit....Texas and California. It's nice not to be driving in the dark at 5pm. Little satisfactions. The structure of bare trees made visible by the season; the low slant of afternoon light like a spotlight on humble things giving them life; people taking turns at a non working signal; smiles from strangers; falling asleep with a book on my lap.

I promise I'm not about to break out into song....but it's good to not be rushing around so much and take in the view, the moment, the breath ....right now.

Peace.

soothing still life

2012-01-04T07:21:00.000-08:00

New Starts. Painted over a partly done canvas and did a large still life.....something I could control, to bring in the new year. Combining the hills of California and some objects in the studio. Objects I've painted for many years. Old friends. Objects standing in for people. An avoidance of emotion. A way to deal with the death of a friend, the end of a year, the prospect of more drought, the calendar turning pages faster than I can count.

Painting soothes the soul, erases the worry, allows my mind to wander in small jerks forward and backward without edit.

More still life for a while I think.

Peace.

time

2011-12-02T07:08:00.000-08:00

December. Houston. Cool, cold even. The difficult summer forgotten. We seem to dwell only in the present where we are ok, or not ok. I find myself thinking forward when in uncomfortable moments: "in one hour, I will be home (or through, or out of the airplane, or done with the dentist, or off the freeway) and 'this' will be over". I helps.
I am now of the age where in my mind I can travel long distances through time. Can even get a bit lost there in the loops and small passages. Some to savor, some to spit out, and some....to put in trunk, in the basement and slam the lid shut.
But, it seems, we must live in the present moment and make it count by being aware of it. Tick tick. It slips away.

Peace.

heaps of good food

2011-11-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

I am here in Palo Alto, home of Stanford who just ended their 11 game winning streak to Oregon...not that I usually know anything about football, but it was hard to ignore all the RV's and tail gating cars and trucks with people clad in either red and white or green and white.

No, I am attending my mother's Endgame...although she's no where near that, really. I can no longer take her out to lunch or on long drives as there is too much discomfort for her in the car. So I now bring her tasty morsels to alleviate the boredom of bland assisted living food. Heaped on her plate are:
figs; kiwi berries; blueberries; strawberries; sliced kiwi; sliced apple; a lady apple; stone wheat crackers; cheese polenta (if it's not turkey or chicken salad); fig cookies; and to drink, S. Pellegrino. She loves it...the taste, and the vision of all that color.

And the color here in Palo Alto is weeks ahead of Houston....so the trees are glorious. And although it is quite nice here and my mother is doing well, I can't wait to get home again to He Who Snores, but I love him anyway.

Peace.

standing proud

2011-11-11T19:21:00.000-08:00

My, my, my. What a lot of time we have to mull over what we post in haste. I'm so over my out burst about the bumpy ride through my household relationship with the person who snores. It was only a day or so before said fine person was willing and able to perform household duties and heroics. He is, in fact, redeemed.

I don't regret my fuming, as it led to greater things. We need to protest on occasion. Be it on Wall Street, in Oakland, or at the local tax board. We need to have our say and not get run over by bigger folks. I think of the original tea party, the one that actually threw tea over the edge of the boat, and I think of the Vietnam war, and perhaps most poignantly, the protests for Civil Rights. People, regular people, stood up and were counted, and change was made to happen.

Peace out, y'all.

snoring irritating men

2011-11-01T16:33:00.000-07:00

This has nothing to do with painting, except that it has been one of my subjects for the last 35 years.

The painful subject is relationships. Two adults living together and creeping up on each other's last nerve. I mean, come on, I almost never complain here. But:

The toilet runs and has to be babied in order to work.

The sidewalk and walkway to the house have been uprooted by the oak tree and will cause someone to sue us for millions of dollars when they trip and die!

The house has not been painted for decades and the roof is surely due to fall in.

And the other person in this house SNORES LIKE A FREIGHT TRAIN.

I have painted some funny, some poignant, some soulful, some outrageous, some angry relationship paintings for years and years. Now you know it's based in life. Arggh. And most of us live it.

Oh, yeah, and Peace.

the quiet place

2011-10-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

A little cooler now in Texas. Had a chance to see some of the scorched land left by the wildfires here lately. But ....although many sad and horrific things are on my television, alerts on facebook, in the newspaper, I choose not to paint from there right now. I am painting from an interior place and hope that it communicates the quiet sadness, the quiet optimism, the joy of books and memories and those things that are from the personal two square feet that I inhabit.

Peace.

New wallpaper paintings and no damn Ipad.

2011-09-10T16:43:00.000-07:00

What a difficult summer! No rain here, too much there. And there. Well, the calendar says it's pretty much over, reality says it isn't.

But onward. I now use the IPad for reading books and playing games. Doing art on it turned out to be not my cuppa. Too complicated. I'm a simple soul and real paint on real surfaces works best for me. But now I have a fun companion to take on the plane on my monthly trips.

The painting is going well in my weeks in between trips to California. I removed some of the wallpaper from my mother in law's house to use as collage. I've done this sort of thing before but not with 60 yr old wall paper that is crumbly and fragile. I was so excited I stretched up five or six good size painting and slapped on the wallpaper willynilly. Then with each piece I have to figure out how to make it work.. Fun. Ignorance sometimes makes the path easier. Except in the case of the IPad.

Peace.

learning to speak Ipad

2011-07-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

Well, I went and did the unthinkable. I bought an Ipad with the intent of joining the 21st century. I get along great with my simple cell phone and my computer, but doing art work on the Ipad is going to take training wheels and a good deal of time. As an artist, like many artists, especially old ones like me, tech stuff, I find VERY difficult. Part of the problem, the biggest part, is that I'd rather not read instructions. I mean I don't even know how to work the coffee maker, as I usually only have coffee when someone is in town...then they have to make it. The other part of the problem is that nothing is simple anymore. Like the tv. No more easy off and on. No knobs. Yeah, yeah, I know there haven't been knobs since like 1975, but even the remotes were simpler then.

So, I'm learning....but at dowager snail speed. Meantime, I'm working on some good sized paintings that incorporate my mother in law's wall paper. Collage and paint. That I understand.

Peace.

to ipad or not.

2011-07-08T18:26:00.000-07:00

It finally rained here. Grateful us. Only downside is the mosquitoes are back. And I'm back working in the studio on drought banishing paintings. Can't help but be influenced by what is happening around me. I'm considering buying an ipad......it looks like fun and maybe could do sketches when I'm off to Calif every month. But, it means getting my brain cells around more technology...can I get them out of retirement and into the moment? It remains to be seen. But I could also play movies on the plane and read a book that doesn't weigh 3 lbs. Surely this is a good move. Hummm, thinking about it....almost ready to do it.

Peace.

the morning after

2011-06-21T05:35:00.000-07:00

It was one of those nights when the air conditioner was broken in the record heat wave in June. When reading, nor listening to my MP3 nor watching tv would coerce me into sleep. Sleeping felt like what I must do, knowing the morning would bring the monthly trip to California. But the mind is a child when there is a must do required. Waking after pieces of sleep felt like I was all apart. My molecules were spinning off in different directions and causing denial and confusion amongst the body parts. Even the stomach had something to say. The kindest remedy was to sit in the reading chair downstairs, doing nothing, musing delicately so as not to disturb the balance of molecules attempting to realign, and watching the sun begin to dance across the wood and textiles in the room as a new day began.

And now, contemplating toothpaste and shower, I know that my morning ahead, in the sky, watching the earth roll by, I will sleep on the plane and all will be well.

Peace.

hot hot hot

2011-06-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

Needless to say, it's hot. We are in a record breaking drought in a place that is normally sub-tropical. Scary thoughts seep into one's mind when thinking of tornadoes, floods, droughts and fire....all happening at the same time.
While doing the good and hopeful things like not running the water while doing the brushing of the teeth, and taking canvas bags to the grocery store and keeping the A/C as high as possible, I am making every attempt to remain optimistic and buoyant. Getting to be an old fart has the benefit of having lived through a lot of the debris of life and knowing that we'll get through it.

Meanwhile, painting, reading, watching and listening and hoping for the best.

Peace. And maybe a little rain?

there is no place like home

2011-05-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

Houston is heating up for the summer. It happens fast, like someone opening the glory hole at a glass blower's. One day it's a balmy 72 degrees and the next: 95 and sucking the air out of you. Then we all say: Why do we live here??? I think the answer is habit. We all visit places where the weather is fine, but then we come home and rationalize. I count it on my fingers:

October through May....IF we are lucky....that is eight months of good weather, right? No snow, no ice. Well once in a while. And if I'm honest it's usually November through the first half of May for good weather. And once in a while, Christmas is scorching. And no place is perfect. We do have the occasional hurricane.

But we stay and we come back because of family and friends and habit. This is where we dug in and got comfortable. There is no place like home. There is no place like home. There is no place like home.

Peace and coolness.

Looking after mom.

2011-05-19T17:01:00.000-07:00

Back in California visiting what my mother calls the "loony bin, you know the one that flew over the cuckoo's nest" and she knows it well. She resides there in the loony bin with Lewy Body Dementia....not regular dementia or Alzheimer's but the really loopy one complete with hallucinations and delusions. Most of the people in her very assisted living abode have various forms of dementia and many have Alzheimer's. Most do not carry on conversations. My mother like to talk. But not to them. And worry about what people think ....but mostly about what they are thinking about her. I believe this comes under the gray umbrella of paranoia. She has been in this facility for the past 26 months. And I visit 2000 miles one way and 2000 miles back once a month for a week or a little more.

I would like to think that I am a caring person....I guess I am....but honestly there is some guilt that drives the plane here every month. And that need to "please your mother". Much as we love our mothers, there is always that tone of voice, that can bring us to our knees. In my case it's " GAaaailllll." my name drawn out in long and judgemental syllables. And she worries about me. And that is so sweet, so how can I bitch and complain. Well, for one thing she's not reading my blog, so that's how.

Peace Peace .....please, Peace.

Studio cleanup so I don't have to paint.

2011-04-18T15:27:00.000-07:00

Moving things around in the studio is, according to mood:

1. Destructive.
2. Invigorating.
3. Hair Pulling.
4. Renewing.
5. Baffling.

I find I don't really need to buy new hanging apparatus as there are three under the table, several on the flat file, and many amongst the cockroach wings and legs in the corners. I know....gross.

I find I have more supplies than I would have guessed....and most are not dried up
.
I find many artifacts of nature once or twice used in still life or intended for such, most are dried up.

I find brushes, long fossilized, that I could never throw away because they might be useful someday.

I also find objects that look like they belong to something. I have to keep them in case I figure it out someday.

I finally shove most of it back into drawers and behind other things and go back to painting. I was just procrastinating anyway.

Can you relate? Peace.

A Dog's Life

2011-04-09T18:00:00.001-07:00

Here is a story about a dog. This dog, a big shiny black lab, romped up to my son the day after he graduated from University of Texas at Austin. My son was unsure about what he wanted to do, which direction he should follow. But the dog, who was homeless, knew exactly what his own role was. He hung out with this young graduate, gave him the doggy equivalent of wisdom, guidance and boundless love.

This was a noble dog, with a big wise head, and he won me over by sitting on my feet and sliding to the floor in a puddle of warm friendship the first time we met.

Big dogs aren't supposed to live to be fourteen years old, but this dog did. He saw my son through some hard times and into a good new life with his own family and his own new roots. And my son saw to it that this dog had an exceptionally good elderly dog life. And yesterday it came to a peaceful noble end.

So I want to say goodbye to Jake....the noble lovely dog...I will miss him too.

Peace.

Houses and Trees

2011-04-05T18:07:00.000-07:00

Getting back on the aircraft, back into back and forth. Finished a painting. Started several others, mostly still life pieces, my favorite at the moment. Maybe the stability of still life is stabilizing to me too. In my back and forth. In the sky.
This current painting that I'm posting is about a nature preserve I saw...many acres given to the community by a couple that had lived in a cabin there long ago. Originally, there was open space around the acreage....now houses are right up against the preserve. Made me feel claustrophobic. Houses pressing in on the trees. So in my painting the trees are griped by orange ribbons, the crow has a house in his mouth and the orange houses are fielded across the background, taking over.
On that happy note....I fly away for a little while.

Peace.

Spring frustration

2011-03-31T11:07:00.000-07:00

Arrgh. I'm at that place where you work and work and paint and over paint and still something isn't right. Well, that's anything, I guess. The garden is a work in progress too. I'm slowly finding out which plants wickedly take over others, which are prissy and want too much attention and which are stars that will survive twenty degrees and ninety five degrees.....they get to stay.

I have finally figured out the background in a stubborn painting and now the cherished foreground is looking horrid. Push pull yin yang. So I've come in to be distracted by the computer. And we all know what a time suck that is. So soon I will forget about the painting until the answer will come like a bolt to me and I'll go fix it.

I went to a "function" last night. A quality socialite type thing where an artist's work hangs but truly, the artist should never be there. Unless they are the outgoing clever type that can talk talk talk and be quite delightful. I hovered around the edges of the large room, sipping champagne and eating incredibly tiny hors d'oeuvres, until I could make a break for it....out the door and into the freedom of the evening. Sigh. So good to be free and alone in the night, in the studio, in a book, and until I really want to be with people.

Peace, Y'all.

Texas spring

2011-03-27T17:30:00.000-07:00

With great heaps of worm wiggling dirt, digging, hefting, and back aching efforts, the glorious month of March has been happily squating here in my yard. So now, there are rudbeckias, pentas, purple cone flowers, society garlic, sage of every stripe, kangaroo paws, senna, st. john's wort, and many other odd little green things whose names were forgotten between the nursery and my house.....all here and thriving. I know that my friends in upper reaches are still bemoaning snow....but it is spring and nearly summer in the south east of Texas.

And the mosquitoes and fire ants are happy to remind an intripid gardener just who the real bosses of the backyard domain are. I am already waging war. Not that it helps. And certainly not with anything nature unfriendly....which of course is why they are all still here.

The studio is getting a bit too warm....but early mornings are still fine. I have a window a/c unit...which somehow needs to be removed and wrenched into working shape every year. So far this 82 degree spring it isn't working. Which would be ok if the do0r to the garden could be left open....but you see, I would then be breakfast for the winged assasins.

Peace.

The other world...

2011-02-14T08:45:00.000-08:00

Continuing my monthly trips from Texas to California to be with my mother and spend precious time sitting in the sun, telling family stories and breathing in the the air, sky, flowers, my arm around her tiny bent back to keep the iron of the bench from pressing on her. She was 92 last Friday. She lives in assisted living where there are many activities that she does not wish to participate in, continuing her private quiet way of life. She has a private room with as many plants as I can keep alive on my monthly visits. Happily, she is the type of elderly person who has become more blissful and lovely as she ages. She also has become physically very tiny, even gnome like, more fragile and less capable...people find her adorable.

But after two years of this....I am coming to some sort of breaking point. It is an endgame and I am so emotionally drained. Yesterday, I watched as a new resident, a man who looked like an ex-CEO who was used to making decisions, carry around a little pad of paper and repeatedly go to the phone and try to reach someone....he was confused with Alzheimer's or dementia or some such, but he was also terrified and caught in a nightmare. The man was carefully redirected by caretakers and treated kindly....but even they feel this pain. One of the caretakers said to me that maybe he comes from "big house, maybe born there, now little room...." and she patted her heart.

My mother was pretty much out of it when she came here and remembers little of adapting to a new way of life. But I see it all and I remember it all. I am very taken with the residents here, who are not exactly of this world...the one out here with speeding cars and speeding Internet and quick game plans and talk. They are of some in between world. Most of them seem quite happy within the restrictions of a now limited life. There are people here who were doctors and teachers, artists and... some CEOs......they were vital in their day...and now they are remaindered I guess. And for the families who visit here....at least for me....walking in and out is walking in and out of different worlds.

Peace.

Cold studio, cold dog.

2011-02-01T17:23:00.000-08:00

It's so cold for people up north I'm a crumb for complaining...but it was cold in my studio today.
When Ollie the dog came to me at the easel for a pat on the head and I felt his skull shivering, I figured it was time for us both to head to the house. It's been going so well out there for me I didn't really notice til he told me.

Have to say, all that noise I was making about switching from oil to acrylic is now in the past. It's finally working really well. I'm back to working the way I like doing the sizes I like and zipping along. I'm in the middle of a sort of "not Alice" Alice and rabbit painting, with them in a kind of strategy meeting with Crow looking on as witness. I figure they're out to dethrone the red queen.

The last time I did a series of animal headed people was in the early 80's....it's fun to be back in that fantasy.

Hope everyone is keeping warm...hot chocolate or English breakfast tea with milk is the ticket.

Peace.

Calif January

2011-01-13T15:40:00.000-08:00

I'm in California for my usual one week a month, visiting with my 92 year old mother. I see to her needs, the needs of the house, the garden, the car, and the connection of my 21st century splintered self to her wise and funny soul. It's a pretty good trade off. When I can slow down and really listen....there is still much to learn.

Wet and chilly I walk around the garden where the moss is green on the Japanese lantern, and the empty trees rattle. There is a redwood tree nook, where one tree planted fifty years ago has sprung a family. The ground is springy and soft there and it is very quiet. Christmas cactus is blooming exceedingly well and all the perennially green things are vigorously so.

I've just heard from a painter in the Netherlands, Fons Bloemen, whose work I like very much and who has a wonderful list of links to figurative painters. Not always something so easy to come by.
At least here in the U.S. ....in big cities where more conceptual art or abstract art is paid more attention. I'm adding his website to my list of links....be sure to check him out.

2010-12-05T12:37:00.001-08:00

Since I posted last, I have slugged it out with acrylic vs oil and finally have a happy new relationship to plastic. It took some 18 months to make the change over. I'm sure most people would do this in a speedier fashion, but I was stubborn. What eventually worked for me was to stop giving a damn and just slather it on. So I made the commitment to go from big tubes to pints and pledge my allegiance to acrylic.

So now, in between shows and anyone caring what happens in this studio, I am feeling free. The problem with feeling free is how to pare it down into something that makes sense the next morning when I go look at the previous day's work. I have long wanted to make larger paintings of my tiny gouaches, and this seems to be the time. So I am taking inspiration from my own work and doing variations on older pieces. I've never done this before and had some concern that I'd be mucking about in old ideas. But once into a piece it naturally change and morph into something quite different.

So aside from the spiders and mosquitoes (yes, still, until a hard freeze comes Texas way), life is good once again in my studio.

Peace.

arts galla fundraisers, oh my!

2010-08-23T07:29:00.000-07:00

Tis the season when there are galas and auctions for the benefit of arts related non profits coming up in the fall and therefore a few requests for donations of artwork to help support them. Artists have a love hate attitude about these donations. Some of us are concerned about our pieces being sold for less than the gallery prices. Or being tapped too often.

My own attitude is that I make a lot of work....why not let it go out there and support something....and maybe be enjoyed. Obviously I wouldn't feel this way if I only produced three or four pieces a year. And maybe there would have to be a limit of donated pieces if I were famous and a hundred people asked for the work. But, hey, that's hardly the case. Just don't ask me to go to the gala. I'd rather stay home and paint. Or read. Or garden. Or actually anything other than get dressed up and smile.

So, here's to ya, all you hard working arts supporters, cheers, bid high, have fun.

From little stories to little sculptures, sort of...

2010-08-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

Ahh.
After a meltdown yesterday, bathing myself in swaths of self pity because I can't figure out how to fix things on my: blog; organise things in my: house; studio; paperwork; life or even the bathroom faucet, I arrive at today full of optimism and elation. This might lead one to assume I am tilted a bit off my base, but this is the way I have always led my life.

So, while the little colored pencil drawings were fun, a bit, and made me feel like I was doing something with my need to make stuff, they were really a bit of puffery. Or that's the way they seem today. I cleaned up the studio, wired up the last paintings and worked on a piece that is going to take some time.

Then I dug into my basket of gouache and started some new semi abstract pieces that do not feel like puffery. To me they feel like plans for sculpture, which of course I will not be doing....but what interests me is the form. Looking for and finding form.........I like that.

So peace to all in the dire August heat.

the short story of little drawings

2010-08-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

In the wilt of the year's hottest month.... after a few more paintings in the studio, I have taken to the pine table in the cool of the house. Armed with colored pencils and stray sheets of paper, work continues. Or, rather, play continues. There is so much less to invest, in time and even effort, in a sheet of paper. You know, just throw it on there and see if it works.

So I'm doing these geometric landscape type things that are whimsy and doodles...perfect for August. The world spins around, I'm no longer working "out there", and my world shrinks a bit.
My world becomes more interior even than it was in all my somewhat narrative paintings. At least for right now, August. And I find myself using symbols and abstracting shapes and using color in a more haphazard way. Who know what September will bring. Meanwhile these colored pencil things are the perfect short story.

studio procrastination

2010-07-23T17:42:00.001-07:00

Geez.....making things work out in the studio has been more exasperating than I imagined. It is like getting muscles to perform properly after being atrophied. I imagine. Months working on the mural and weeks and weeks traveling, looking after other people have put my imagination in dumps!

I put together some stretchers. And I am procrastinating about stretching the canvas on them. "It's too hot" "my hands hurt" "I don't feel like it".......and the best one: "I just need to finish this book".....ah yes, actually, quite a few books.

But finally .....I completed three small works on panel....panels that were already prepared, mind you. And I have to say....."I still HATE acrylic paint" .....and hated that I had to give up oil due to my crumby lungs. But maybe, maybe, things might be cooking in the studio again. Pahleese.

And Peace.

facing the canvas

2010-07-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

After a month or so away....I'm back to the home ground again.

The garden, after weeks of rain, has become a jungle, complete with voracious mosquitoes vying for a piece of flesh.

My dog barely knows me.

My studio is free of the smell of anything creative and looks hollow and lonely.

I have read more than my share of summer books.

And although I'm still in love with fish and boats to paint and draw, I haven't a clue as to what I will do when I can finally paint again next week. Probably I will thrash about a lot and swear and pitch a bloody fit as I face the blank canvas and feel that I don't remember how to paint.

I base this on years of bloody fits. And then I will begin again.

Peace.

mural done, relaxing begun

2010-06-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

The mural is finished.

It was fun. It was work. It was good to know that in my dotage I can still climb ladders and swing that brush all day.

I am trading in mural walls for tiny gouache paintings for a while. While the humidity spreads its soggy wings over my house and garden for the summer, staying inside and painting would appear the more comfortable occupation....vs. pulling weeds and chasing the dog.

Besides, someone just told me that there were three copperhead snakes found on our block last week.

Peace.

lost restaurant not on the whiplash road

2010-05-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

Finishing up another week in California.....and finding that my patience isn't what it needs to be.

Of course, it is not all the mother/dementia thing....it is also me taking her out for a last day beautiful lunch and getting lost on the upper reaches of Page Mill Road where it nearly connects to the ocean.
That is to say, the restaurant I was looking for was somewhere else and we drove for 90 grueling minutes on a whiplash road with countless switchbacks with me always thinking we'd gone beyond the point of return and might as well keep going.

It is a beautiful road with amazing views of the bay and surrounding hills at the top. And all the way up and all the way down are groves of redwoods, buckeye trees, madrones, oaks and ferns. Gorgeous. And the mothership loved it, except for getting very hungry and a bit tired of sitting and waiting for that wonderful restaurant. And then it started to rain.

Oh well. Back on level surface we had a rather late lunch, more good talk, promises of what to get/bring/remember for next time and a good goodbye. Til next month.

We, of the generation that serves.....elderly parents, overwrought grown children and grand children. We are a self reliant and hardy bunch. In my opinion.

scrim vision

2010-05-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

Driving home along streets I have driven so often for decades allows me time to day dream. Even to the point of getting home and not recalling the drive ....but that is seldom, I promise.

What I vision often is a kind of scrim over the current landscape of telephone poles, car lots, fast food joints and gas stations. The scrim is a vision of what used to be there. How the street used to look, how this particular long corridor of cars four lanes wide used to be a lazy two with dirt shoulders and mom and pop stores and a few more trees.

Maybe just overactive imagination.....but when I was a child riding long hours in the car, I would see horses galloping along fence and telephone lines, keeping up with us. I don't see the horses any longer, but my scrim vision can produce an active farm scene where there is now only a collapsing barn....and it even allows me to see someone young in someone old. Doesn't work the other way around though. I don't have any future scrims. Probably a good thing.

Peace.

From potholders to macrame.....again.

2010-05-01T14:28:00.000-07:00

Spending time with two of my grandchildren, girls, has my domestic seed pods stirring. I remember making pot holders of cloth strips and glasses cases of leather, wishing wells of Popsicle sticks and the occasional ill fitting doll outfit when I was a kid. Being pregnant at a time when maternity clothes consisted of lime green big sack dresses studded with white dots, drove me to sewing my own clothes for my three time motherhood largeness. At the time I was also doing window display and making/sewing the display things I couldn't find in stores. And naturally, it being the 70's, I also got into making everybody long patchwork skirts and purses. (Awful, isn't it? Can you believe I was also making tons of macrame wall hangings and plant holders to sell....I feel responsible for some of the residue of that stuff still around in the the thrift stores.)

Sooooo, I bought a sewing machine today. I gave the last one away ages ago. This one promises to be somewhat simple....I hope so, because I plan to bring my grandchildren into the fun house of making stuff. They too can learn to make things no one wants but will love because they made it. Another generation of the pleasures of making things with your hands....can't think of a better gift.

Peace.

Mural nearly done....twenty eight cans of paint

2010-04-29T14:50:00.000-07:00

Working on the mural. Maybe two more weeks. We are at the point where it seems endless. Especially with the beautiful days outside....and us in the attic room. Big as it is...it's indoors and up very high. We can look out the large dormers onto a beautiful garden and a landscape of large houses with multiple chimneys and slate roofs. We are inside with paint fumes and twenty eight cans of paint. Oh, I know, grouse, grouse.....it's a good job and we're nearly done so shut up.

It is interesting to have two artists who have never worked together on a project before attempt to meld personalities and styles in one mural. Especially as one is a ceramicist and the other a painter. Fortunately the ceramicist used to paint, long ago, and is also the instigator and doer of many public art projects. And fortunately, although the painter is a virtual hermit, and prefers holing up alone, she is also able to be nice and knows how to play well with others. So it sorta works. We are working in an extremely high end neighborhood.....and find it odd that the people we see are all workers...gardeners, dog walkers, maids, construction people......it's amazing really. All I can think of is, at least a lot of people have jobs helping the rich be rich.

Peace.

new garden for the butterflies...and me.

2010-04-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

Why is it that the "weeds" (those plants that crowd the ones you actually planted...see, I hate to discriminate against "weeds"....somewhere else, of course, they are not weeds) grow so much faster than the ones you are favoring. Evolution, I suspect. Someone has been weeding them out for eons and they have the spirit of survival in them that says GROW FAST before that damned gardener tweezes us out!

The garden is fabulous this year. I took a hunk of money from the mural project and plunged it into getting people over here to dig and heft and plant for me this year. Digging out the giant ancient gingers was the biggest gift. So now I have even more garden space for pentas, lobelias, rudbeckias, passion flowers (for the swallow tail butterflies), senna (for the sulphurs), butterfly weed (for the monarchs) and much much more. Even something called Kangaroo Paws. So all I have to do is water and pluck weeds. I liked where they put things but I am moving things around quite a bit. Like the furniture in the house.....over there....no here...no over there, might be better.

Sometimes it is quite fine living in a sub-tropical zone.

Peace.

the excellent lived in face

2010-04-23T19:33:00.000-07:00

Just saw Olivia Newton John on the bbc Graham Norton show. I have to spout. He is so funny, do love him. But. Much comment on how great she looks and my my she is 61 years old. I object. Her forehead never moved. Her hair is the color it was forty years ago and there is suspect puffy lip syndrome. I'm just tired tired tired of it. What the hell is wrong with being the age you are?

I like my salt and pepper hair. My mouth is beginning to have a few lines around it from whistling for years. My face and forehead are in continuous movement when I'm talking or listening and responding to someone. I have character, damn it! Too bad of me to take it out on the innocent O. N. John. There are plenty of other examples. She just tipped me over I guess. I love a good lived in face. People not in the movies or on tv are mostly good faces, it would seem. It would be nice to see an ad or movie with a few normal looking people. Agggh.

Peace.

Volcano slows mural

2010-04-21T16:47:00.000-07:00

Back into the lushness of Houston from the spring of Palo Alto and San Francisco. A month away really messes up one's schedule, gets you behind on bills, wash, weeds and friends. I'm amazed that my garden did well. Just replanted it before I left..........how's that for trusting the rain and the stars? (And a kind son who came and watered).

But the biggest job waiting is the mural. We're about two thirds done with it. While I went to Calif to attend to the mother the house and all concerned with both, my mural partner and friend, Elena, went to Barcelona to visit her daughter. We didn't expect a volcano. So she's still there. And I started back on the mural alone today. Not a problem, just not as much fun. Elena has a Spanish accent and a fiery attitude about politics......she keeps me entertained. We talked on the phone today...she's going to have plenty to say about the airlines when she gets home.

It's amazing how out of shape you can get in a month of walking around s l o w l y with a 91 year old. I was groaning on the ladder today. And my painting arm was making silent but insistent pleas for me to cut it out and go read a book.

Peace.

blasting the termites and forgeting the light switch

2010-04-08T20:09:00.000-07:00

Still posting from California.
I am sad to say that I have joined the war between nature and humans. I didn't want to be part of this war....I believe in peaceful co-existence. But the termites were taking more than their share of my mother's house. So, I had to let the poison brigade in the front door. Preparations of safe guarding any indigestibles and plants were taken....which only convinced me of what a violent move this was to be. The house was tarped. A warning sign posted to keep us away for two days. And today we returned to clean up and return the house to normal sans the termites. And a few carpenter bees. I am sorry I had to be part of a poison solution. But I'm glad the fifty year old wood structure will last a bit longer. A few plants too near the house look shocked, but all is in better shape than I had imagined.

As to my mother....still suffering from Lewy Body Dementia...although she still tells wonderful stories and can keep up her end on political conversations....she has forgotten how to turn on the lamps in her room. She asks me again and again to teach her...and I do. And she tries, and cannot manage this once simple task. We have taken another step on down the road.

Peace.

back road dawdling

2010-04-01T23:44:00.001-07:00

Took the tiny cute mother out on a wild ride today. With my long suffering life partner in the back seat and tiny cute mama in the front seat, we set upon the back roads of California hills allowing whimsy to lead us. Hairpin turns, one car roads, muddy and impossible turnouts, a bit of rain and glorious views cleared my head of any crackly ordinary chore dreary thoughts. The roads through the area between San Francisco and Santa Cruz may look merely hilly from a distance, but the car, the transmission and my adrenalin say they were mountains. Happily we saw few other cars until we resurfaced after mazes of old stage roads, onto incomparable hiway 1.

The surf was wild and foamy, the wind enough to stall a few seagulls and the smell of fresh was exhilarating. This is perhaps the best time of the year to dawdle around in back roads here....the hills are Irish green, blossoms abound and the undergrowth below redwoods, madrone and oaks was a fairy land. Which suits my mother very well...she has the magic of belief and wonder about her and enjoys every cloud, every forget me not and every twist of the road. The back seat other half of my life was patient and enduring. And in Pescadero there was pie and coffee.

Peace.

mid-century housing, the Eichler

2010-03-28T15:04:00.000-07:00

Away from the mural. In California. Amidst the mother in assisted living, the house with termites, and bountiful pollen.
It is funny how one perceives things. I was just at my nephew's wedding, all nice and family and all that. In talking with another nephew, I found he thought of my mother's house as having the look of military housing. I was flabbergasted. How funny. The house that belongs to my mother is an Eichler, built in the 50's of stained redwood and glass with a slanted roof. No attic, no Tudor redo, no traditional barbie house, no grass. It is what is now called "mid century", and rather desirable.
I have always liked this kind of housing.... I grew up in it and felt the inside-outside California vibe of it, and it's connection to nature and the land around it. And I ended up in a house much like it in Houston.

But my nephew is right. This sort of house does not appeal to everyone. It doesn't have an attic or a basement or drywall. You can hear the rain on the roof. You can see the garden from almost every room. You are part of it. Certainly it is getting a bit rundown after 50 years, and I have a lot to do just to keep the termites at bay and the garden trimmed, but there is meditative peace here. The house dwells in the garden, they co exist and belong together.

Peace.

achey breaky wall mural

2010-03-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

Working, working, working on the mural. The mural of Mozart's Magic Flute. In a big third story room for an opera lover. It's been a while since I've done work on a ladder, balancing on one foot, reaching my brush to the far corners of the top of a wall. Criminey, I'm freaking too old for this. While I'm there I'm all bravado and blazing brushes but when I get home I'm beat and can be found in the kitchen fumbling with the advil bottle for a quick fix of ease the sore muscles.

O.K. It's actually quite fun, but the stamina that once was, isn't. Today I found myself quite irritated with the house paint that wouldn't behave, the idiots in the traffic on the way home and then, heaven help me, I had to go to the post office and wait in line on tired feet. That sent me over the edge. Crispy shimp at the local Chinese helped. Tomorrow is another day, another wall.

Peace.

the woe pit

2010-03-08T05:25:00.000-08:00

Whoosh. The sound of February speeding past.

Enter March. I'm mulling over my show which opened Feb 25th........a nice opening with well wishers, friends and curious parties. I always get the blues after a show goes up. I always think I won't this time, but there I was again in the woe pit. Do performing artists feel this way? Writers whose work is out of their hands and in the bookstores? To let go and put it all in the hands of someone else is hard for a neurotic person. A person who wants to continue tweaking. A person who always thinks they can do better with a few more weeks.

Because I'm working on this mural with my friend, Elena, I am saved some of the doldrums I normally conjure up. I have to concentrate. And it just feels good to have my hand holding a paintbrush and trying to do the best job of painting on somebody else's walls. And painting with wall paint...........that's an interesting twist as well. It's going well. Time to load up the pie tins, the paint clothes, the lunch of almonds, carrots and oranges and head out to the new challenge.

Magic Flute Mural

2010-01-30T12:01:00.000-08:00

My friend Elena and I are about to be awash in the painting of Mozart's Magic Flute. We have accepted the challenge of painting a room of walls with 864 sq feet with the story of the opera. Immersing ourselves in the various performances has been thrilling and........confusing. Let me count the ways it can be interpreted............lots!

We need to paint forests, Egypt, a serpent or shall it be a crocodile? Do I see the pyramids, and a mountain? Hark, here come the three little boys drifting in on a cloud to sing to Papageno and Tamino. Where did the little boys choir come from? It has been eye opening to discover that while the music moves our souls and we love it....the story comes mainly from a guy called Schikaneder who was an actor manager and wanted Mozart to write the music for him and he wanted to play Papageno...(and did for a long time). Mozart was quite taken with the character of Papageno the bird catcher also. He wrote to his sister that the half man half bird was just like his pet canary.

The Magic Flute plays on my computer, my radio, my dvd player (wouldn't Mozart be amazed and pleased?) and I surround myself with piles of sketches and scribbles as does Elena. We proceed at the end of the month to climb the stairs and the ladders to paint the cheeriest and quietest opera that we are capable of doing. If my printer was working (it dies on me all the time like the crotchety old thing that it is) I would post a sketch or two. But we will take photos as this thing proceeds. I've done murals before, but not one quite this large. My knees are screaming, "What, are you completely stupid? Do you actually plan to get back on a ladder!!??" And I say, I'm not dead yet......To paint, to paint....that is my passion.... and my downfall.

Peace.

the power of music

2010-01-19T18:36:00.000-08:00

Meandering about in the old home town, home again in California for my one week a month here....again. I'm in the car a lot listening to my favorite classical station out here and musing at the power of music.

You don't hear so much Rachmaninoff anymore and that's ok with me. We had Rachmaninoff for dinner for at least a decade.....I sat across the table from my brother but also across from a sliding glass door which was a perfect mirror for my overly dramatic young self. I lifted my arms and danced with my hands all through dinner if I could get away with it. But one also had to eat one's hated peas and string beans. Rachmaninoff, in my mind, felt old fashioned and dinner associated.

We listened to Bach, Mozart, Telemann, Vivaldi and Beethoven all the time when I was growing up. We weren't musicians, but my parents gave me a deep appreciation for four hundred year old music and new jazz; with a bit of opera and show tunes thrown in. So naturally, when I left the house all I cared about was folk, blues and yeah, ok, some rock.

But now, for me, it's mostly the old stuff. Albinoni's Adagio in g minor just puts me away. Especially in the studio. I'm still overly dramatic. But now I put it all on the canvas.

And I still don't eat peas.

one world one thread one people

2010-01-15T22:40:00.000-08:00

I sit here in a comfy house with my chin in my hand....well, my hand is busy with the other one at this moment as I'm not a hunt and peck sort of typist...having been forced to take typing during one junior high school summer.....

But I sit here comfy, and the news, as everyone knows is so tragic. Grim and tragic in Haiti. Like so many, I feel the tears well up......and I sent money, which is very little to do when so much needs to be done. And I hope it gets there fast along with all the other money and clothes and goods speeding their way around the world. And perhaps that is the where we can take heart. That we, so very many of us, all around the world, so very quickly acted. We don't want to see a third of the world suffer so much.

Let's remember to keep doing this......for the people who need it...even when the headlines are eclipsed by other more comfortable news items. We are connected by this thread now, we really are one world.......and everything that happens is now is vital to it.

Peace, my friends.

making a statement, paintings speak better

2010-01-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

My show is coming up and as usual I am loathe to explain it.

But I'm going to practice here. It is mostly regarding boats, the sea, storms, and survivors. They are, rather obviously, I guess, metaphors for getting through life. We had some fine life disrupting hurricanes here in the past few years and some quite some years ago that I've never forgotten. They do make you think.

Like, what is really important? What would you take with you? And who. You get to know your neighbors pretty quick during any emergency. Your sense of humor rises to the surface....you need it. And you remember that we are not all that in control after all.

But in addition to all that.......I was born by the sea, in San Francisco. Salt spray, fog, drizzle, and looking out across the Pacific are all deep in me. I learned to sail (after a fashion) with my father on the bay in a little sailboat. He built a little toy sail boat, and instructed the family at the dinner table how to "come about" and tack and mind the mainsail, over and over before we were allowed to actually try sailing the bigger boat on water. Not that we were ever good at it. We got stuck in mud and flipped over and did everything wrong. But it was grand.

So, that's all part of it. I hope people see more of how I feel when I paint, how I am swept away as marvelously as when I read a good book. I hope my paintings speak for me and better.

Peace.

Magical Intuition

2010-01-01T18:59:00.000-08:00

Working hard in the studio. Finishing some paintings that were started 18 months ago. Some seem to need to ripen like slow growing pumpkins getting richer in color and texture with time.
Other burst full grown into life in a matter of days.

It still feels a little like magic to me. To become so sick of a painting and it's ornery ways that I can't even look at it for months and then suddenly know exactly what it wants to grow full and complete..........that is magic. It seems to need to be ignored for a while. My mind needs to be concerned with other matters and come back with no pretencions and no plans.

When I look over the archive of work I've done for the last 35 some years, I feel that I've said something that was unique to me.........that I never did what was fashionable and that I never painted anything but what was in my soul. And. And that I can see the thread start back 45 years ago with my first tentative work that was concerned with trying to speak of the human condition and the effort to connect.

I'm grateful to still be doing it.

Peace.

Christmas 2009

2009-12-27T07:58:00.000-08:00

Aw, the violence and drama of Christmas.
The three and a half year old battling it out with the four year old, the tearful nine year old who is now too big for the little kid fun castle at the mall, the two five year olds with super powers to never never stop running, spinning, leaping and telling ridiculous jokes....THIS, is the drama of Christmas.

After the kid stuff in our house: the quickly giddily opened packages addressed to the little ones....we grownups do a crazy, dirty, silly Santa game with our gifts. We toss the anonymous packages into the center of the rug and one at a time we take turns opening a gift. If someone else wants it, it can be stolen. We play tough....we haggle and discuss the ever changing rules...we are a fine example of capitalism and commerce for the child audience, which snorts and giggles and is amazed to see the grownups in such a state.

I collect just the right sill Santa gifts all year. You have to be on the lookout when the choice item comes across your path. Like the vintage Mr. Spock doll I found at a flea market. He was not haggled over....perhaps he has lost his charm. The bronze Buddha on the other hand, was the prize of the night. Of course there were a couple of choice losers in the gift pile....like the chick and duck salt and pepper shakers still in their 1980's packaging, and the marble lion that has come around for a second year, and may make several more appearances.

Best, of course, was squeezing around the trestle table for the the main event....the food, the laughs, the holding of hands around the table connecting us together for a magic moment in time.

Peace.

mother daughter disconnect

2009-12-13T15:54:00.000-08:00

I need to complain.
One week out of each month I spend with my 91 year old mother. I take her out and away from her very nice assisted living, and whisk her off to shopping; doctor appointments; out to eat; drives in the city; drives to the beach; drives to look at pretty houses; home to her house to pick up more clothes, hats, scarves, gloves, etc; out for coffee; more shopping and more shopping.

Sounds so nice, doesn't it? And it might be if we weren't related. She has had a good life, despite WWII and the Depression. She has wanted for little. She has had face lifts, spa treatments, travel, the theater, and all the clothes that all the closets in the house could hold. She is cute and feisty and everyone loves her. Me included. But. Still.

She makes lists for me to do. Lists of things to get for her. Lists of things to do for the house. (Calling the termite man is one I won't ignore).
And today, she told me she wants me to write to her from Houston to let her know I'm alive when I'm not here. Oh, yes, forgot to mention. When I come out here for a week at a time, I fly from Houston, 4 hours (plus airport hang around time) and take the shuttle from the airport, another hour if I'm lucky.

I am an artist, so today, when things were pretty intolerable, I imagined narrative drawings of my mother wrapped around my throat cutting off my air and circulation. Strangling me.

So, being the only surviving member of this family and being the good duty bound woman that I am, I now feel guilty.

And I need to go hem her new pajamas.

meditation on flying

2009-11-22T14:04:00.000-08:00

To California and back. And out. And back.
Feeling like a yoyo, swinging to the end of my tether and back again.

But I never get tired of looking at the surface of the earth from 30.000 feet. So many scars and marks from another time. Old dried up lakes and rivers. Dried up ranches or farms, vast areas that were once watered and now are not. Straight, beam straight, roads cutting across wrinkled landscape.....all making a kind of earth language on the surface.

It is a time to think. The engines droning, passengers asleep or reading, my own book open before my glazed eyes....all thought turned inward. Flying is a time of meditation.......a time that is inbetween time and doesn't really seem to exist at all. All buckled up and cosseted in....a pause between bustle.

Then arriving and the noise and craziness escalates..........back to earth and time in time again.

embalmed artist might be finished, or not.

2009-11-08T08:07:00.000-08:00

Just finished (always a question mark ? is it REALLY finished?) a piece that has given me fits. It didn't flow, it was stiff, it was folk art, it was wrong. But parts of it I liked, and I liked the idea, that of a young unformed and uninformed painter just feeling her way along, and facing herself in the canvas on the easel.

So, I kept going back to it. What would lift it from what I saw in it to what someone else could see what I saw in it. So to speak. Finally I engulfed it in vines and leaves and called it Embalmed Artist. She's stuck. She wants to move on but is suffocated by indecision.

So, at least for now it is done. Well, we'll see.

Peace.

the old sage drops out on Halloween

2009-10-30T17:01:00.000-07:00

We turn the porch light off on Halloween. Awful isn't it? What dropouts we are.

Well....it's just that we did it already. A lot. In the past. I'm starting to feel like I'm reliving the 1960's in my 60's....you know....turn on, DROP OUT. I'm really getting the drop out part down pat about now. (Turning on is not much of an option any more). Like, it's really nice just reading a book and not going any where. Or sitting really still in the over grown butterfly plants and watching life fly around me, instead of my flying around flapping.

So there is much to be said about becoming an old sage. You can turn off the porch light and not even feel guilty, because it's someone else's turn.

Peace.

paintings that leave and root beer plants

2009-10-15T18:31:00.000-07:00

The rain came.

I'm posting a picture of our root beer plants.....when you break off a leaf and crunch it, the smell of childhood in the form of A and W Root beer fills the air. Wonderful. You can cook with it too I'm told. Not that I cook.

One of the photos shows Ollie the dog in the root beer plants....he is overwhelmed.

The painting continues. Today a nice visit from someone who owns many of my paintings and has come to look for more. A true aficionado who can live with them for ten years and still loves them, how wonderful that is when it happens. Another artist said recently how hard it is to let some paintings go.....I am so glad when they go....they should go breathe and live elsewhere and not in my dusty painting racks. I love it when they leave. They should go have good lives like the little spiders from Charlotte's Web...floating out there on the wind.

acrylic on panels, no gesso

2009-10-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

I'm working on panels....very pleasing to do. I have these panels 36" x 24" that I purchased gessoed on one side, but I'm using the ungessoed side. The acrylic which is what I'm using for these, goes on in such a nice chalky way on the unintended side. But as I'm working in glazes of color (just using water), I can't really make many mistakes as they will show through. So once started on an area, I have to muddle on until I'm somewhat satisfied.

I'll be having a show at Koelsch Gallery in Houston this coming January. I have much of the work completed, but as always will continue to work right up til then....especially as I have to make so many trips to Calif. And inbetween all that other life stuff.

And geez, it was so dark and stormy today, I just submerged into Rutherford's London, which is way over a thousand pages, and dived into history. Which is a little irritating because of all the bull going on with politics since the world began and it is still so horribly that way! Vent, vent!

the mothership's jade plant

2009-09-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've just trundled in from two weeks in California tending the mothership and the mothership's house. Both doing well, although in separate places.

I did a little bit of gardening....and managed to kill a very old jade tree (or bush). It was in a wooden container on the front deck...when I went to turn it so it would get adjusted sun, the whole anctient tub fell apart. Hummm what to do? make several Jade plant containers. So, after repotting and tearing out more rotted boards on the deck, I was quite pleased with myself. Ah, but the next day and the next, the jade plant went directly south, as in crapping out. A little of it all was saved....but it is a mere shadow of itself. The mothership was not informed.

Also got to the Sierras for a nice wedding....but also got to go hug trees, boulders and dance though icy rivers.....my kind of soul resurgence.

And now, gratefully, back to the paint.

reorganizing and painting little pieces

2009-09-04T14:53:00.000-07:00

I organized a little in the studio. I had to in order to get a big piece out that is going somewhere. Now that I'm working in acrylic...sometimes and oil...sometimes and water based oil...sometimes, I had to separate them all and clear space. And sweep out a dead roach or two. And one live one.

I've been working on some tiny little pieces...a break from larger. Not that they cooperate any better. In rearranging things in the studio, I find too much work there. I'm faster at solving problems with the paintings now and that leads to too much stuff. Not saying that they are all successful. Sometimes I don't see the problem for years. But I think I'm going to have to start tearing canvas off stretchers. Of the crumbier ones. In the meantime little ones help me fill the constant need to "make". With a big one now and then.

paintings finished .....finally.

2009-09-01T16:23:00.000-07:00

A good few days. Finished "Lost Voyage" and also "A Little Passion".
I am totally won over to water based oil. It works for me. No more coughing in the studio followed by bronchitis in the winter. I can even mix a little of my huge pile of regular oils into the water based ones.

Just ate the first of our Muscadine grapes. They taste like kerosene. What's up with that? The weather is starting to change....I can feel it. The dog knows for sure. He romps when the weather gets even a bit cooler. Hooray.

travel and back to painting

2009-08-29T20:21:00.000-07:00

Out to Calif and back....just a vagabond. I'm getting so used to the travel that the bumps in the plane ride don't bother me any more....just have to keep adjusting my eyeballs to the print on the book page. And listening to A Confederacy of Dunces many times on my MP3 player. I just never get tired of that book.
Back to painting. I hate acrylic. So its on to water based oils in an effort to not poison myself any longer with regular oils and mediums. And on this last painting, it is actually working out. I'm posting the early drawing of it and part way there. The finished one to come in a few days.
But hooray....so far so good on the new oils.

swimming, the return to the beginning.

2009-08-16T14:12:00.000-07:00

Swimming.

I have returned to the water. Where I move smoothly, effortlessly, skimming the blue, rolling over and watching the clouds pass over the sun. I blow bubbles and move my rather tired body like an old sea lion undulating over and under the surface.

I speak to no one. I hear as distant music, the noise of children and parents. I swim until I begin to tire and then I float. The water from the heat of August is almost too warm, but still refreshing. I rest. I swim again. I rest on a chaise and revel in the warmth of the sun, pulling down my hat and pushing all care from my mind. I have no age. I am invisible. I am sun and clouds and water.

toad table and painting

2009-08-14T17:49:00.000-07:00

Cicadas and toads singing in the evenings here. Butterflies floating, and the dratted large pine cockroaches skittering about.....we have nature.

I've been working in the studio finishing large acrylic paintings...making some sort of peace with the acrylic. The water based oil paint arrived...but I'm waiting to start a new painting before experimenting with it. I think another boat painting. Such a good metaphor for the ride we are all having.

In honor of the fine Gulf Coast Toad, I'm posting a gouache of him/her looking enigmatic upon a table top. The last place you'd like to see a toad, right? Or a cockroach 2" long. The toads have been laying long pearl strands of eggs and they are now hatching. Hope they don't all eat each other. Nature is rough.

A grand day

2009-08-06T16:52:00.000-07:00

A good day. A lunch with friends who get who you are and you get them is a fine thing. It is a relief from the work, the responsibility, the worry, to laugh at the commonplace. It is not something I do often anymore, but when the opportunity happens, it is a joyful thing. Better yet is to almost pee in your pants with laughter over the stupid ordinary glitches of life. It takes all the sting out.

And then to end the day with Tiddly Winks with little granddaughters is life full. Oh, and Popsicles!

Unstalled, paint flying.

2009-08-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

I think I have my mojo on. Things are hopping in the studio. Paintings that have been stalled for months are moving right along. No complaints now. Hard work, sweaty studio clothes, exhausted at the end of the day....this is the way it hasn't been for a little while. I always believed in working through a problem....and finally, finally, acrylic or no, the paint is flying.

LA life magazine

2009-07-31T17:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-30T16:20:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

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.

ALERT...OUT OF iNDIAN VILLAGE PAPER

2009-06-22T11:51:00.000-07:00

....I'm totally out of Indian Village rag paper to paint my gouaches on!!!!!!! I am combing the Internet trying to find something that will do. Needs to be 300 lb cold pressed irregular rag.........I'm so spoiled. For the last ten years I've been hoarding it and using it sparingly, but I'm finally out. If anyone out there knows where to find this precious paper, please please let me know. You will be rewarded in fabulous art karma.

I'm painting on grainy whatever paper that is around here in old flat file drawers.....I'm starting to think about painting on grocery store paper bags....not a bad surface.....and surely I don't need to worry if it lasts for two hundred years. I'm a bit too pessimistic for that.

Have you seen my paper??????

cockroach battle

2009-05-30T19:17:00.000-07:00

Living in the near north side of Houston under oak, bamboo and tall loblolly trees, we are not strangers to the giant tree roach. As in cockroach. Yes, echhcick.

Tonight I did mortal battle with a large handsome example of the species. My tactic, when I see one of these monsters is to attack it with a towel, preferably a small kitchen towel. This I snap, as in showers in boys locker rooms (so I'm told) , at the creature rendering it stunned. I then zap it several more times to make sure.

The next step is to deliver it outside, sweeping it along with the towel or a broom....or if I dare, grab it with said towel and zip it into the garbage disposal or the toilet. I quite like insects as a rule, I even wanted to be an entomologist when I was a child. But this huge cockroach, as any one living in the subtropics will tell you, brings out some sort of primal heebie jeebies.

The roach, rest his little soul, is departed, and I am victorious.

disorganized pumpkin vine.....and house

2009-05-24T12:37:00.000-07:00

My pumpkin seed is flourishing all over the garden. Huge yellow flowers and a vine that grows surely 12" a day decorate yards of my yard. I shall have to be careful of a single pumpkin seed in the future, but for now it is an adventure!

The rest of life is as disorganized as the pumpkin vine. Where is my cable to download photos from the camera? Where is that black top I like so much and no one seems to make anymore? Where are my favorite flipflops? There is a pattern here. Everything is lost until it is found and then you don't really need/want it anymore. Or you've replaced it. Or maybe it wasn't really that important. Like I finally found the instructions to the camera I got for Christmas two years ago. But now I know how to do the camera (at least as far as I'll ever take it).....but where the hell is the cable?????

surgery, impatient patient

2009-05-22T16:35:00.000-07:00

Eye surgery and knee surgery within one week is just plain stupid. Flying to Calif to take care of an elderly parent while a week and a half out of said surgeries is stupid x 2. I have survived the stupid decisions and am back home limping and crutching along a little behind where a proper patient would be, given intelligent decisions.

And I'm a major whimperer to live with right now. None of us likes giving up independence, first born bossy women, least of all. So one should feel quite sorry for my other (not better) half.

All this bodes well for the gouache table, however. I tend to forget pain when I'm slopping paint.
Each day passes, things get better......I remember to be grateful for my minor pains....that thanks to the doc and his magic I am happily, with a little griping, crutching along.

delicious gouache

2009-05-05T18:24:00.000-07:00

Nice thick rich paint.....gouache....my favorite flavor. Fun with still life this week....a sea urchin from Calif, Smiley Guy, and Bobbing Bird's birthday were my don't look past your own desk inspiration these past days. Icing the knee gives me an excuse to paint small.

scratch and dent body repair

2009-05-03T18:41:00.000-07:00

I am back home getting the body work to keep on chugging. Knee repair for the torn meniscus (acquired while convincing my mother at 2:30 am that it wasn't a good time to get dressed and do battle with the perceived criminals in the hall); cataract removal in the one good eye (the other one a victim of NAION, a condition,
while not uncommon, only neuro-opthamologists seem to know about); a quick trip to the dentist to ensure continued chewing......you know, the usual dent and scratch fix up to the old carcass.

And I have to say that I am grateful for living in the here and now. None of this would have been a quick fix a generation or two ago. So, on my crutches and next week with a patch on my eye, I thank the world of medicine for my survival. My mother is doing well, and amazingly I am still the proud owner of all my buttons, as my charming but crazy mother would have said just a month or two ago.

I have been painting....though I'll take a quick break from it next week. Then, I'll see all my recent work with a new clear eye.....

dememtia....the magic door

2009-04-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

A magic door has opened for my mother. She is settled and even enjoying assisted living. And I am amazed at her resilience and imagination and ability to thrive. She does indeed have dementia, but that is only part of her. She is aware and knows everyone, she retains most of her memory, but a funny little door opened in her brain that has allowed her to enter a clever bright entertaining world that I can't see.

She takes care of other residents, councils them with her wise ways, listens to their stories and pats their hands. She is a tiny, charming little person. Just as she has always been, but now with more patience, humor and enjoyment of life. She sees magic in everything. Collected bits of cellophane wrappers are the "skins" of trees. She talks of the "scientists" and "intellectuals" she is living with and of the marvelous things they discuss.

She is 90, she no longer lives at home; she has shed possessions and responsibilities and worry.
She is on to a new chapter, and I am amazed. Don't ever write off an old citizen......there is great life there yet.

giving away memories and wisdom

2009-03-30T15:20:00.000-07:00

Wow. I just listened to the radiocast on http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org on Alzheimer's Memory and Being, sent to me by my sensitive friend, Susan. It is something for us all to hear, as after all, whether we are well or not, losing neurons or not.....it is good to be aware of our own thinking beings....as we take so much for granted.

They spoke of an Alzheimer's writing group, writing what they could about anything they could remember and handing in the paper at the end of class and "giving memories away". And they spoke of something wonderful I have seen these past weeks in my own mother: a kind of wisdom, a novel and delightful new way of saying something profound and an ability to go straight to the truth of something even if she is not quite aware of doing so.

My mother wasn't sure about the word "daughter" today. She said she would say it and see how it felt in her mouth. And the mother who used to be so frustrated about her attempts at art, today painted ants and wonderful weird flowers and took a complete delight in the effort.

All it takes is love.

wearing pearls

2009-03-29T15:48:00.000-07:00

I sit here. With my mother's pearls around my neck wiping tears on my collar. I have always wiped my tears on my collar that is not new. But I don't wear pearls. The pearls are making me feel closer to my mother. She is a lady of very large and creative brain....but some of it is not working anymore.

She is now living in a lovely place but not her place. She says things that are still profound, wise and clever. She still makes people laugh and delight in her. But I can't really connect anymore. So, like many in my shoes, my generation, my time of life....I am saying good bye to my mother while she is still here.

The world goes round, time spins by..............it is a wisp and a dream.

adrift in the dementia sea.....

2009-03-22T17:27:00.000-07:00

My mother is adrift in a sea of imagination, hyper reality, and super espionage. Wow. She comes up for air on occasion and tells me she loves me...what could be better. As a painter of interior mindscapes, my imagination has always been brimming with ideas, visions and scenes both absurd and profound. But my mother, who once asked me to teach her to draw and became frustrated and deflated over the effort, now has the brain scope to rival any Hollywood script writer.

There is just the little problem of which way to hold the phone and how to punch the numbers in. Dementia is no fun......the early getting to grip with it is devastating to all. But, we've been stepping forward, learning what to do and starting to laugh. Life is a trip a journey and stopping and starting....and I feel better today than in weeks.....I've got a ticket to ride and I'm going to enjoy every day I have....and so will mom ...but she will be warning everyone of the wires in the wall and that damned religious cult that may be out to get her.

a pumpkin sprout in spring

2009-03-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

I never got around to taking the pumpkin off my porch. So, over time since October, it has slumped and grown big black patches all over it. Disgusting to visitors, but I still never moved it to the trash.

Today we noticed a green sprout about two inches high with two green leaves coming right out of the middle of it next to the fallen pumpkin stem. What better token of spring could there possibly be? So, carefully, carefully with a shovel, I slid it into a big wooden bowl.....disturbing a colony of earwigs who scattered this way and that. And finding a sunny spot in the garden, planted the whole pumpkin with the sprout sticking up. Sigh. Life does indeed go on.

brain chemistry

2009-03-03T14:21:00.000-08:00

It is finally happening. My mother, bless her, is losing her marbles. She is in marvelous health for 90, but our conversations in our every day phone visits now center around the "little people" who crowd her house. There are some ten of them now, including the little skinny girl of about three years old. My mother says they arrange themselves in the strangest positions around the room, getting in the way. She tells them to leave and sometimes six or so will evaporate to come back later. My father is there sometimes now as well.

It is all so matter of fact that it sounds completely logical. Maybe it is. It certainly makes one question one's own sanity. I mean, who knows which reality is "real". I do remember the questions in philosophy class as to whether or not "that red chair" is really there. In whose reality is it really there?

As one comes to the end of a long life, and brain chemistry plays tricks or dissolves neurons, perhaps this is the last and best Broadway show. At least it is marvelously entertaining.

flickr artists all friends in the same boat

2009-02-26T18:00:00.000-08:00

I must sing the praises of Flickr.com. I know that it's mostly a photo type interaction but there is a little niche there for visual artists. From all over the world! I mean, really, did you ever have a pen pal? It's better. First, there is the automatic connection of art, and most of us tend to lean into the life style of said animal. Then there is the friendship that sprouts up ......quite amazing.

I get to see how the shore looks across from the Isle of Wight....the snow in countries that used to be Russia....the cafes of Paris.....New York street art.....studios grand and tiny....I get to know students of art and hard working artists who've been at it for 35 yrs.....I see paintings and sculptures in progress....people looking for and receiving advice....people's gardens, people's families.......................................amazing to have a gut connection to others who feel about the world as you do.

I guess artists are, even in these times, still a tiny part of the population. It gives us strength and courage to find others in our boat. I'm so pleased to be there not bailing.

home texas sun writhing garden

2009-02-20T10:04:00.000-08:00

Ah, back to the sun. Just spent ten watery days in California where they need the rain but for me it was starting to get a bit soggy.

Much was accomplished and my 90 year old mother continues to live well and independently. And I actually managed to paint a few gouaches in the wee hours. Back now to the tangle of my writhing garden and and the lists of what I don't think I will do.

Because the sun is shinning and the dog is grinning and the loquats are beginning to ripen and the birds are singing................and the mosquitoes aren't awake yet............it is a day for breathing outdoors. And listening. And for closing one's eyes against the red sun and feeling the thaw.

super bowl sunday not

2009-02-01T15:52:00.000-08:00

It's nice and quiet out there on the streets. Football parties, or in some homes just football is the day today. On a date with someone somewhere, eons ago, I likened the game to that of ancient tribes or Greek games. He liked me anyway. Not a big fan, am I.

Nice day for painting...or the movies. We went to see Revolutionary Road. It is very like a John Cheever novel, I think. We thought it much better than the reviews would have you believe. It was a slice of suburban 1950's angst....that you could apply to any time, really. A movie to cause good talk afterwards.

The football game is on, but it doesn't bother my painting .....so I'm off to do it.

mother parkinson's age confusing to me

2009-01-24T18:59:00.001-08:00

I need to write again. This time about something that really matters. My mother is 2000 miles away, 90 in Feb, living alone, doing very well until quite recently. We talk every day. I go there every six weeks to eight weeks. I try to make things easier for her.....she sometimes resists.

Sometimes on the phone I feel like Alice in Wonderland. She now has Parkinson's....and is lucky that it doesn't affect her in any shaking way...but there are other symptoms. Some of age.

So many people go through this tug of war between children, grandchildren, and parents. But when it comes to rest in your own heart, it is sad....and difficult....and confusing. It hurts.

There is nothing to be done but to take the gradual steps one at a time to make things ok for her and ....for me. She is still such an amazing individual.....she doesn't want to give up and I don't either.

So, I have spoken to the ether. Perhaps the lump in the throat will ease.

bitty gouaches large impressive sculptures

2009-01-24T16:35:00.000-08:00

Working on very tiny gouaches.....about 3 x 3" or 4 x 4" to put in some frames that I have. Lean times call for new ways of doing things. It is a bit odd to scale down even smaller...from the
8" x 6" gouaches I have been doing for years. It certainly calls for tiny brushes and a bit of patience.

And I'd rather be working on the big paintings in the studio.....but the little ones will do for the moment.

I went with a friend to the gallery opening of an ex student of mine: Patrick Renner at Lawndale Art Center. There was a great deal of terrific art there last night. Patrick's has to do with telephone poles (cut vertically to fit the space) with amazing hardware of steel and wood and plastic attached to be pushed horizontally around creating sound. He is an excellent sculptor who continues to move through new ideas. He seems to be thinking: "what if" to see what will happen and what will work. He was in a painting class of mine....and he created a sculpture with wood and canvas....you just can't keep a born sculptor down!

It was all quite thought provoking and grand.

home from the hills

2009-01-19T15:21:00.000-08:00

Home. Although John saved, in the middle of the table, a pile of the remnants of Ollie dogs errant chewing experiments ; although the house is full of floating dog hair; although the refrigerator smells bad, and I'm not sure if the meat pie I just threw out was the source; although I just had to pay a pile of bills;

and although I'm oh so tired from driving for nine hours.....it is so good to be home.

It is good to go.....it is better to come home.

comforting my daughter; cleaning up the dishes

2009-01-18T19:28:00.000-08:00

As I am about to hit the road again early next morning, I am musing:

Boys aged 5 and 8 are loud, messy, tornadoes.

I can't cook.

I can still comfort my grownup daughter in her post op pain.

My son in law can cook.

I can complete six small gouache paintings in nine days.

My daughter's new dog is a spoiled bitch.

But anything my daughter loves, I love too.

Cleaning up is easier than cooking.

My daughters friends are great cooks.

And it is time for me to go home to my own dog, who is also spoiled and ate one African sculpture and one pillow in my absence, and to my husband who says he missed me but only after I begged him to say it.

And....that I love the long drive both here and back home....it is nine hours of personal freedom to stop and pee when I want, to eat when I want and to wander where I want. But I'll head straight home to the cozy that is waiting for me.

blackeyed peas, greens and gratitude

2009-01-01T19:28:00.000-08:00

Shhhhhhhsh. Last night's noisy entrance into 2009 is over. It is quiet. There was a butterfly sampling the last of the butterfly weed today. A fallen blue jay feather lay lightly on the pine needles. The dog scratched his ear. Quiet.

There was the shhsh shhsh of brush on paper, gouache dripping. The smell of onions, garlic, black eyed peas with bits of ham, heavily spiced, and rounds of cornbread. Then at the table: greens and beets and salad.

An early dark night. A longing to be in the desert or the mountains ......just to see the stars.
Gratitude for being here, alive, breathing, walking each day one at a time, into the future.

new year new president new adventures

2008-12-28T08:55:00.000-08:00

A new year ....a new president... a new adventure.

The family who filled the house with noise and flutter has departed. It was very full. The dog, Ollie, hid out most of the time, not even venturing about for fallen food. Too many yelping children, too much talk, too much movement. He hid low.

And yesterday, with dear family off to their own lives, I pushed open the studio door and nosed about looking for relics of abandoned sketches and ideas. Certainly avoiding the three paintings in progress. I began on small sketches of heads. The face is so rewarding. A slip there a dash here and the whole expression is changed. How fun.

Today, catch up on abandoned papers. Tomorrow, back to those paintings in progress. I hear them calling. Woooohoooo.

the holidays and the calm center

2008-12-22T12:35:00.000-08:00

At a certain age, given the average procreation, a person finds herself in the middle, the center, the quiet axis of a family. There is extreme age in one circling level, extreme youth on another, and various ages in the rest of the circles. In between these levels/circles there is wind, smoke, fire and cool water. Stay with me here, I really see this.

In the center the middle management holds court. (The metaphors are beginning to get foggy). Occasionally, this calm center, the middle management, offers advice, calms hurt feelings, gives needed attention. It is true that the center does not always hold. But for the most part it is a good place to be.

During the family holidays....all this is more evident. There is yelling, crying, euphoria, delight, jealousy, irritation, burnt food, broken dishes (one here already), sleeping children, droning elders and of course, the quiet fabulous calm center.

I may revise this opinion when I become the extreme elder. But for now, I remain, the calm center.

Peace to all.

handmade gifts and V-8 dinner

2008-12-18T11:00:00.001-08:00

Back in Texas.....la de da. It was freezing the night I got here and now it is oozing slimy rain at 73 degrees. But back to the gouache, back to the hamburger soup (this is great: 1 lb hamburger, 4 med cans low sodium V-8 juice, bunch a chopped new potatoes, buncha frozen veggies, buncha whatever herbs on hand, and presto: dinner......I'm not a cook, I am a painter).

My presents are all mostly hand made this year. Saves on running around and spending too much. Though to be honest, I filled the boxes I made for the grand children with all sorts of cute things that I did purchase. But I tried to keep the buying to www.etsy.com where craftspeople/artists sell their very fine wares.

So, peace to all. Make something. For someone. With love.

the mothership in palo alto california

2008-12-08T19:29:00.000-08:00

I am in California where I have returned to the mothership to help out a little. As time goes along, I find my trips from Texasland to the healthy state are much more frequent. Every 3 mos is becoming every 2 mos or less. Soon, every month and I will have to over come my severe distaste for cramped airplanes. I am in the bay area, Palo Alto, to be specific, and it is a place of health and well being. If you have a job of course, but that's every where just now.

It has long amazed me that potato chips are hard to find here. Not to mention: belching autos, trash, smokers, fried things and fat thighs. I lust for broccoli when I am here. The air is so full of good stuff from the ocean, that I cough the first few days. Texas is grand but it does have a ways to go in the recycle everything and eat your Brussels sprouts department.

So while I try to retrain my painter's brain to recognise all the math things that come with keeping up with the finances of the house of an almost 90 year old neat person, I am also soaking in the good air and maybe scratching out a drawing or two. The mothership is going to live to 105, so I need to get more used to commuting.

painting current water current dreaming

2008-12-04T12:46:00.000-08:00

It has turned a bit cold. This is laughable if you live somewhere north. Cold here is daytime 50's, nighttime 40's (sometimes less!!). But it does make my unheated studio feel like I should store the eggs and cheese there. So I'm doing more indoor gouache.

And finishing up the painted gift boxes. I'm at the fun place where I'm swirling fine holed colored netting inside so little treasures can be hidden there. But the best part was the painting. I think it doesn't matter what I paint as long as I paint.

The need to paint (much more than draw) is as strong a current in me as the push of the Mississippi or the waves back home in the Pacific. In times of no paint.....my mind feels like Death Valley. Well, that is a bit strong.......but not by much. I paint in my dreams. Occasionally, I wake up with my fingers moving the "brush". Perhaps, once, I painted in caves.

Paint. Peace. Rolling waves. Water current. Caves.

Shanty Bellum peace on the river and roads

2008-12-02T10:11:00.000-08:00

A little trip out of town cleared the morose cobwebs. We stayed at a B and B in Nachez, Mississippi for no reason other than a whim. The name of this private no breakfast but perfectly appointed abode is Shanty Bellum, not antebellum like up on the fancy hills of Nachez. Perfect answer to the offbeat weekend. The view of the big river was a half block away and the town in all its architectural interest was spread before us. The charming owner of said Shanty is Tommy Polk, who with friend Elodie Pritchartt, rehabbed this row house into a comfy and crazily delightful place to stay, appointed with thrift store goodies.

We trooped on to Fairhope, Alabama for sprawl, drink, eats, wild children and easy river time with family.

We flew up and down on the blue hiways and found nature, color, history and peace.

Peace to us all.

the burden and joy of life and death

2008-11-20T19:43:00.000-08:00

What is burden? What is loyalty? What has respect and love to do with it? The fading of a parent a neuron at a time while watching grandchildren expand theirs? The needs of the parent and the needs of the children are not dissimilar. There is a selfish streak in both. They both need to survive. And we, the two generations inbetween are the responsible ones, the ones to balance the need with the want and the joy with the grief.

And then.....the generations will shift again. I do not wish to be selfish. Let me fade into my paint quietly in the night and cause not a ripple when the time draws near.

secret boxes of gouache and wispy things

2008-11-14T11:15:00.000-08:00

Holidays swooshing up upon us, circling our ankles and prickling the fingers. My fingers have been about gouache on boxes for my family. It seems childhood for me was about secrets. And secrets were kept in cigar boxes under the bed, or little tin boxes behind the night table radio. They were for stashing rocks and seashells and dried up lizards and lovenotes. I have to say my smaller tin boxes were for dried millipedes and potato bugs.......but, then, I wasn't often the perfect example of a little fluffy girl.

So, even though kids should get to decorate their own boxes, I am doing it for them this time. When they are a little older they can find their own boxes. So I'm doing these in gouache, and then waxing them for protection. I plan to line the inside with felt and some wispy stuff and a few little things to get them started. Like little monsters for the boys and little fairy things for the girls.

And I'm quite having a great deal of fun.

blind, hesitant, dragging of the feet

2008-11-13T06:16:00.000-08:00

I go see the eye doc this morning. I don't want to go. The eyes are not what they used to be, baby.
Some five years ago I had an attack of NAION .....non-artiritic ischemic optic neuropathy. Yes, death of the eye...so to speak. During the night, possibly due to a drop in BP (no one really knows) the supply of blood was cut off to the optic nerve. Bam. That's it. I have maybe 1/4 vision in that eye, and that is not all clear. The other eye is getting a cataract. Geez. Do I sound 104 yrs old? But as I rather like being able to see and paint and draw and just plain see, I will have to have something done. But I am just a teeny bit fearful because I need that one eye.

So. It is a small thing. I am healthy and I am ok and I will march my feet into the building and up the stairs. I guess I could take up sculpture, right?

bad drawing stiff drawing good sketch books

2008-11-08T07:52:00.000-08:00

I have been digging through the old piles of drawings and writings from years past. Putting the writing aside for a bit, I notice how much freer I was/am, most everyone is/was with shards of torn paper or crumby paper or lined paper than in the beautiful moleskin books or the hearty hard backed sketch books. Aren't we all just a little afraid of messing up the lovely buttery good paper? It seems, most of my good drawings are on loose ripped edges of things.

And the good ideas too. So the trick is to gather all these little pieces together. In moments of great procrastination and boredom, I've even pasted some of this stuff into the better hardbacked sketch books. It is difficult to dismiss that parent or teacher or onlooker from your shoulder when you are working in the good book. Sometimes I try and "save" a drawing that has gone stiff on me.....and it gets worse and worse. Then, I suppose it is a good candidate to be ripped out by its roots and saved for collage....but that's another pile of paper.

International Quilt Show of exhaustion

2008-10-31T13:10:00.000-07:00

I have just come limping back from the Houston International Quilt Show at the convention center here. I can't quote numbers or winners or vendors because, really, I was just a quick visitor. Another world spread out before me in dizzying splendor.....and awesome talent.

I thought I might look for some felt in the enormous vendor section, and when i found my way out again I was wishing for a stretcher. This is very serious stuff with extremely serious but happy people shoulder to shoulder and stomach to stomach within it. I was awash in prints and buttons and embellishments and ruffles and fabrics and embroidery and rug hooking and Christmas ornaments.
Not to mention jewelry, purses, silk scarves, do it your self kits and huge quilting machines with people driving them furiously. And about 70,000 women. Even the men's restrooms had been relabeled "women". Perhaps I will go again some day......in a few years.

restoring the used to be

2008-10-27T18:55:00.000-07:00

I drove to San Antonio this last weekend to visit son and family in their hundred year old Sunday house. It is being restored to live-a-bility inches at a time. The neighborhood dangles "promise" before their eyes, being in such a close in location amongst other promising to be restored houses and some that are. There are roosters that crow at 4 am. Dogs that are horribly tethered up the street who bark a lot (who could blame them), loud music from open pickup truck windows and there are shady characters doing shady things on sunlit street corners.

In the midst of this is my son's house, beginning to rise from the dead. The tall ceilings are elegant as are the deep wood moldings and the the restored floors. You have to have long eyesight and faith to do what this family is doing. Is it really very different from homesteading among the wolves and bears of long ago? My bones are too old to contemplate such an endeavor, but I relish what my son and his family are doing. It is difficult, but it is beautiful to my eyes.