Figuratively Speaking -Baby Steps #2

5"x6.5"  colored pencil, graphite, acrylic, acrylic medium on Yupo Price $50

Today it is chilly and rainy and really feels like fall. Hurricane Harvey has gently moved up the coast to New England and is giving us a soaking rain.   There is a tinge of color in the mountain landscape.  Hopefully we will still have some sunny warm weather, but the inevitable is on its way.  I don't mind change, and if I could choose anywhere to be in this season change, it would be my backyard.  Vermont is so lovely in the fall and hiking and camping are at their best. Today though, I went swimming indoors and am going to a movie later on.  My swimming has changed as well.  I am having shoulder issues so I am trying to perfect that underwater dolphin kick I noticed when watching the Olympics, not using my arms, but my torso and legs.  Change happens all the time.  My mom was an optimist and I learned so much from her about how to roll with the punches and accept change, throughout my childhood and even in the process of her death.  I chose to focus this September's 30 in 30 painting challenge on the little baby shoes created the year I was born. They represent change for me, and make an interesting subject for still life painting.  It is hard to look at my size 10 feet and imagine that once they fit into shoes just like these...maybe, even this pair.  Weirder things have happened...Go Figure!

Figuratively Speaking - Forever Friends

8"x10" oil

Shelburne Farms is the setting for this scene.  The balustrade is in the gardens overlooking Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains in NY state.  These women are some of the important women in my life.  I feel very blessed to have had so many wonderful females in my life, starting with my mother who was humble, sweet, nurturing, supportive and offered unconditional love.  She taught me to see the world in a joyful way and tried to teach me to not be swayed by silly things, opinions or people.  She was an artist and one of my dreams came true when she and I attended a Dreama Tolle Perry painting workshop together.  I miss her funny way of saying things, her passion for her family and her wonderful giggle.  She wasn't perfect, like the rest of us, but her faults have faded in my mind because her positive qualities overshadowed them.  I remember as a 12 year old hearing her story about her mother's death when she was 12 and thinking I could not go on without my mom.  It helped me start to see her amazing strength.  She couldn't read and would have been diagnosed with dyslexia if they had known what it was back then, and she was left-handed, another deficit.  She was one of 13 siblings and the school decided she was unteachable and was needed more at home rather than get an education.  She was ashamed about this, but I think it just goes to show what a resourceful woman she was.  She went to art school for a short time and joined the Navy as a bookkeeper because she was a wiz with numbers.  She was a talented mom to five kids and the true definition of great homemaker.  She felt insecure about her lack of education, but taught herself to read and educated herself and she and my dad both valued their children getting an advanced education.  I didn't know, until I was an adult, that my mom had been faking her way life because she couldn't read.  So many things made sense then, like: not ever reading to us when we were little, spending nights up reading when we were teens, and the way she wrote notes in beautiful penmanship but would always leave out words.  Vocabulary was important to my parents. My dad taught me the word "facetious,"  and he was a good example of that.  My mom taught me to use "flibbertigibbet," of which she was not at all!  Go Figure!

Figuratively Speaking-Christmas Cookies

Swirly Cupcake  4"x4" oil  $60

My mom made the most wonderful Christmas cookies.  It was an annual ritual we shared with homes all over the world.  She would make all our favorites and decorate them with beautiful designs.  She was an artist as well as a cook.  There is an art to making a good cookie just like there is to making good bread.  With the abundance of cookies available to us, you would think there would be boat loads of great cookies, but alas I feel like the skill of making great cookies is being lost even in the face of much higher sugar consumption in the population.  I have kind of given up on sweets so my contribution to Christmas cookie making is my Booster Balls (does this bring to mind an NPR skit on an old Saturday Night Live?).  They are made from whatever I have that I can throw in, but this batch was made mostly with pecans, coconut, walnuts, almond butter, cocoa, and dried mangos.  I don't cook them, but mix it all together in my food processor and then roll them into balls.  They kind of look like meatballs, but they taste better and are better for you.  I put them on a pretty plate. tomake up for their lack of aesthetic appeal.

My mom learned to cook when she was growing up in a household of 13 children.  She was about in the middle of the lineup, so while the older kids were helping bring in money and being more grown-up, my mom was staying at home and helping to take care of her younger sibs and cooking and cleaning.  She got pretty good at it.  Her mom died when she was 12 so she had a lot of responsibility, and as a result and the fact that she was dyslexic and left handed, she didn't get a good education.  But, she was brilliant and a survivor, so she carved out a nice life for herself, had 5 kids of her own, 16 grandkids, and as of today, 12 great grandkids. I miss her and I miss her wonderful cookies, but succeeding generations need to improve upon what their parents taught them, and I am choosing to eat healthy while still appreciating (from a distance) the art of fine cookie baking.

Do you have a favorite cookie recipe?

Not Just a Pretty Painting

9"x10" Watermedia NFS

Today I have much to say.  Something changed for me.  I am sure it started a long time ago, but the realization just struck me today.  I have been going through a really tough year, physically, with a lot of pain, disappointments and incapacitation.  Although it may have been the biggest physical challenge of my life, and I am still in an unresolved condition, I have been able to stay afloat mentally and even been jolly a lot of the time.  I have attributed this to a number of things including:  having a generally bouyant personality, having inherited my mom's optimism in dealing with life, having a spiritual foundation, having a good family, lots of friends and many reasons to be happy.  None of these things really can be attributed to anything I "do."  It is dumb luck for the most part.  But today, I saw a pattern that has been growing in my life and it has everything to do with daily painting.  For the last 5 years I have attempted to have a daily painting habit.  There have been stretches of time when I didn't do that for very legitimate reasons, but mostly I have developed this habit.  All kinds of things can be said about that, but what I realized today, is that the most important part is that every day I look for things that excite my eye or create a feeling of joy and love in my heart/mind.  I have, through the daily painting process, developed the desire to find beauty no matter what else is going on.  So for me, it isn't really about my art career, or the product I produce, but it is about how I live my life, what I see and feel moment to moment despite the circumstances.  This is what has saved me this year.  This is what is inside me and what I have to say through my art.  It isn't going to be "dark" or probably "deep," but it will reflect what joy I am finding in my daily life.

This painting was a huge struggle for me and I think it was a metaphor for what I have been experiencing. It was a conflict alternating between beating it to death and trying to breathe life into it.  I worked it, reworked it, tried again, and then did some more.  So, at least for me, it's "Not Just a Pretty Painting," but a map of a battle and in it are a lot of lessons for me.  It probably won't ever get framed and hang on someone's wall to bring them a reminder of beauty and joy, but I will keep it to remind myself of this amazing and cathartic day in the life of this daily painter.
This is as profound as I get.

Not Ever Ready to Say Goodbye