Studio cleanup so I don't have to paint.

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

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

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

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

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...

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.

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.