Christmas 2009

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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!