Friday, January 23, 2009

Bliss is.....


Bliss is doing the work you are meant to do. I just read a book by Michael Gruber "The Forgery of Venus" which deals with the issue of what in the world happens to your head if what you are meant to do...say paint in a manner of a 17th C. Spanish painter. Can it be done and at what cost. an interesting question.

One of this year's goals is to live with less stress, not make such a big deal out of the stuff that really does not matter....like housework and fine dining (that would be me doing the cooking) and focusing on what the soul needs for sustenance. I think we so easily lose touch with that little issue. then we get ulcers, cancer, failure to thrive. Pretty bad stuff. I am definetly keeping a gratitude journal to thank God for all the blessings in my life and there are many. We are what we focus on. A conversation with my physician this week got me on this, but I had been stewing on the edges of the subject for some time.

This morning, I stopped into my studio, a place I have not been all week, and thought to just do one tiny thing, just see if a stamp would print over a heavily painted page. It did. I did some more. Wow. How about UNDER the paint. I had a self portrait sketched onto another page. I slapped a few stamps onto that. Hmmm. I could keep going. I could do this all day, but I need to get into the office, make sure the deal is moving smoothly...this will support an art escape in May..so very important....but the feeling stays on my senses like a good wine. So good. More time, dedicate all that worry time to making , creating, playing. I was playing, just seeing what would happen if...... It's a great game that opens the heart and mind.

And then as the morning progresses I notice there is no headache, no flashing, pulsing, ugliness pulling my world oout of focus. Hmm, a few moments did that. An hour may be a cure that would outdo the physicians prescriptions. One hour a day for a calmness and focus that would allow me to accomplish more in other areas of my world. Not a very high price.

There is so much more to us as beings that we just refuse to consider and if and when we do, we are called dreamers...or even mad. That there is more to us than a body and a mind, that a spirit may exist and have it's own needs and existence staggers most minds into fear and denial. There is more to this world, Urich. Much more.
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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Rest a spell

Oh it is cold outside, come on in and have something warm to sip on. I've made some fresh coconut cupcakes to go with it ! I missed my usual coffee with Sacred Space friends..sigh..but business called..and a girl has to make her paint diva pennies. So let's just take a break right now as all that needed to be done has been done, parayers have been sent heavenward and a sigh has been let out. I need a little pick me up so I cna get in some painting tonight. I need to fix up a little sketch I did yesterday. For some reason everything is turning green, which wouldn't be bad except I am doing a lot of little portraits and these poor ladies are looking a bit ill. Also, I have more cupcake paintings waiting to be finished......
And I have such lovely models. I want to immortalize them in paint instead of on my hips, where they tend to go under regular circumstances. If I can just get them onto the prepared canvases and then up on the kitchen walls, I can enjoy them with caloric impunity. HA ! I can also enjoy them while sipping my coffee and dreaming up another batch to stuff my dear husband with..and he's wondering why the bottom three buttons on his shirts keep popping open. Poor guy......
So while we sip and munch or paint or whatever we can enjoy my little tableau. these are actually from Christmas. My son sent the beautiful floral arrangement. I love it that the vase looks like a gingerbread house...more vicarious food !!!! The flowers lasted well into the New Year with different blooms opening up as time progressed..very cool. The little green ornament is a "Christmas Hug" from Dear Genie and has wonderful writing on the INSIDE, which I love and the little blue lady is actually a rattle that chasses sadness when shaken..it works..the more you shake the more you smile and that was a lovely gift from Cathy P. I had a few bumps around the holidays..sadness involving family members. New Jersey just is NOT a healthy place to live. Everyone there seems to be dealing with these HUGE issues. I am not talking about skinned knees here. Anyway, these dear ladoes gifted me with things to make me smile. There does always seem to be a silver lining in any cloud. Even very dark ones. sometimes its only a glint or two, but it is always there if you look carefully enough....and often that glint is glow of dear hearts.

Have another cupcake and something warm to sip......
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Thursday, January 8, 2009

Sweet Dreams are made of THIS

Oh yeah, I am still sublimating paint for food. Pretty cupcakes, pistachio icing, sugar roses and a hint of almoond in the cake. Oh yum. they never crossed my lips or my hips, people. I have now managed to discard 10% of my body weight. There is a huge grease slick somewhere out at the lake and a growing stack of paintings with sugar as a subject. SIGH.
Actually, I have to admit I am having fun with all of this. DH bought me teeny tiny jeans for a Christmas gift and I am so enjoying wearing them. I really do like the way I feel right now. I may howl a blue streak, but I feel healthy, just a little involved, shall we say, with certain subject matter. I did indulge in a huge chunk of my favorite cherry pie one night of Hanukkah celebrating. I was miserable all nnight long with a tummy ache. Ah well, that will teach me a thing or two. I made a WW apple crisp last night and that went down a lot better. Fruit is really my new dessert.

So the newest art project really is a series of cupcake paintings. I finished one, hated it and gesoed it over so I can start again. while that is drying, I am playing in a small moleskine doing collages and teeny paintings..not watercolors...acrylics..kind of different for me. I am playing more with figures and faces, compositions that are a little different. it's a laboratory..a tiny Laboratory.

Well, back to work, which is kind of busy. there are some things I have going and for some reason I have a cup full of optimism that is carrying me through. Like the page says: WOO HOO !!!!!
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Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Tracery

Happy New year ! Here we are in 2009. I dallied about for two weeks during the holidays, not quite working, not quite on vacation. sleeping, eating, clearing up my studio and this appeared in the window one lovely grey morning. I ran for the camera, loving it and loving the concept that my camera needed to spend a little more time with me and we bonded quite well over the next few days. I love the colors in this...exactly what I was seeing, those lavenders and golds. someone once tried to tell me I was wearing clashing colors due to a gold sweater and purple pants. Humph. Obviously they didn't take in dawn's early light.. I love the tracery. Is this why we love lace so much ? Because we see such delicate lines of open work stretched across the wintery lights? Magical lights and darks. They were a little bit hypnotizing to watch as the colors changed and the sun rose up. another reason to love my aerie studio.

Christmas week promised to be icey, though it actually warmed as we got closer to Christmas Eve. I saw more lacey patterns stretched across the lake. Every once in awhile I would hear a huge cracking sound, like a gunshot, but it was only the ice. As cold as it was there was a kind of softness in the day, perhaps in being all bundled up as I walked the path around the lake and through the bird sanctuary. Perhaps it was the colors, soft blue grey, warm gold, smokey lavenders. Who wouldn't want to paint this? who wouldn't want to be in the painting?
Off into the woods, I half expected to see elves of some sort wandering about scouting for bits of twig and mushroom as I was. If you look very carefully you can almost see a few stange and wonderful shapes in that small piece of foreground, something to build a fairy tale on, something to dream about a bit later as you sit sipping your wine after a fine dinner, wondering if imagination commands perception or vice versa. Perhaps it is better to simply accept that imagination, set loose from videos and television can take one on a fine journey on grey winter's day... or on a summer's day or on any day at all. Ask Louis Carroll, or J. M. Barrie , Dr. Suess or Jim Henson..all my heros, all my friends. Especially when I am considering the tracery of perception.
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