Warm places

My own starry night to weave dream around and into. A lovely escape from all the gray cold already creeping into my cubbies and hiding places. A glance at the weather says snow flurries this week end. Oh did I really go sailing just two short weeks ago ? Can I sail away now into this starry starry night. Just a short escape from flourescent lights and emails and all that techno stuff.

Ah, that's better. I ran out to get a 2009 planner. The brightest I could find. Mary Englebreit has done a special one as a fund raiser for the local library. It's her library, too. She visits often I hear. I carefully marked off the first week in May. My escape to the shore, a few days of wild painting, a few days of wandering the beaches. A few blessed days to let my hair be wild beneath a pretty scarf and collect sand in my shoes and tote bag. A few days to be a sea creature. Oh yes. Oh yes. some, when they are Old Women shall purple. I will wear seashells and bright pink colors upon my toes. I will twirl in the very wildest of gypsy skirts and dance in the surf in the full of the moon. When I am an Old Women. ....Oh why should I wait. May shall come and I shall do as I please for seven long days.

And eat only the finest of things.

Breakfast companions

Pink elephants and blue pigs.

That's what happens when you get up at 5:00 AM. Obviously this was taken a little later, with a little more sunshine, but these guys do live in my kitchen. the elephant gives me the giggles everytime I focus on him. You see I have these pepto bismol pink vertical blinds hanging in the kitchen. DH says they stay. I actually contemplated spray painting them. then I thought if you get lemons, you make lemonade, if you get pink blinds you make a pink kitchen. A pink kitchen ? Me ? Only if it is a really different kind of pink kitchen. so the elephant came as a muse. The pig has been a muse for a long time. He is a leftover from a business I was involved in when I lived in Santa Fe...a lot of fun actually....a heartbreak to leave. The cup is one of my favorite coffeecups. I love cups with something INSIDE. I had a cup with a little boy at the bottom..a figure that popped up through your milk as you drank it...another one with a frog. Hard to find things like that. this one has a rose on the side. I have a porcelain mug with a butterfly on the inside.

So I won a giveaway on a blog called Tuttichic. Check her out. Very cool. One of the many wonderful things included a set of chargers with pink stripes and wonderful vintage fleurs. I think I am going to hang them in the kitchen, then hunt down some retro pink curtains..something with stripes..or pink elephants....maybe both. DH is going out of town this week-end. He may come back to something that goes with those pepto blinds....or he may be suddenly inspired to trade them in for the soft beige woven blinds I have circled in a conveniently placed catalog.

Oh, and I haven't been speaking to my blow dryer for two weeks. Not a major tiff, just not involved. this means my hair is a wild semi curly wavy wild woman on the loose kind of thing. I tease it and fluff it into shape every morning, but otherwise leave it alone. I've gotten complements from total strangers and even a flirt or two. DH just verbalized something this morning. "your hair looks crinkly".

"yes, it does" as I waltzed out the door. I wonder if I can find a bejeweled pink elephant clip for my hair ?????

"I am not eccentric. I am simply an electric Eel in a goldfish pond"...can't remember who said that...but I love the quote.

I am not eccentric. I am simply a pink elephant waddling around Saint Louis.

ARGH.

Weight Watchers

The Secret has been a rendevous on Monday every noon time. A Pass book hidden in the depths of my purse. Mail quickly snapped from the mailbox.

The Secret has been running off to try on new jeans...and even buying a pair as gift to myself. Size 8.

Then having them feel just a little too big a mere two weeks later.

Giggle.

But Secrets are so hard to keep. They leak out at the corners. They peek out at the edges. All of a sudden you don't want to draw seashells or empty teacups. You want to draw a luscious cranberry tart. A lovely lollipop. A bright red apple. Ok. You are going to eat the apple and draw the goodies because if you are busy drawing them you are NOT eating them.

The pencils are Inktense watercolor pencils, my new passion if I can't eat that *&%$ tart. The journal is a lovely handmade one I made for me back in Vegas and need to fill with yummy goodness. The beautiful plate holding my pencils and lollipop is a thrift find...I could not resist the color and gilding. It was actually pretty expensive for thrifting..$10., and I didn't quite know what I was going to do with it until I got home and put it down on the table next to the tin holding my pencils and realized they needed an upgrade. It's perfect. I love having it out on my library table and it encourges me to sketch away.

Oh, the Secret. Eight pounds so far. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but I am very short so it is enough to make a noticeable difference. I am afraid I gained a bit with a slipped disc and migraines and all that sad stuff of having to lay very still so my head wouldn't fall off. I really joined Weight Watchers so I would be forced to toe the line every week. It's actually been fun to get my little sticker and stars and try new salads and such. Today I have a warm bean salad along with marinated artichoke hearts and lovely homemade corn muffins for my lunch. I eat a very light dinner which lets me sleep better. OK, truth is , I fall unconscious from exhaustion, but having an empty tummy helps me stay asleep. Lots of veggies and fruits, which I love anyway. Early morning walks and hikes along the lake get me fresh air and exercise and every week I get just a little bit smaller.

Like Alice.

Maybe I should paint a few Flamingos.

So I think I am painting some creme brule this week-end. Maybe a few quick cupcakes.

Shhhh. don't tell anyone.

The Good Life

Ok, Nasties are over. the sun is shining and life is good. I have been scribbling madly with my Inktense pencils and loving them dearly. I excavated my good art journal with the decent paper in it and began with a sketch of a lovely cranberry tart. I also have a watercolor going of some pistachio cupcakes. do we see a pattern here ? I've lost seven pounds in six weeks, so if I can't eat the darn things, I'll draw them, paint them, eat them with my eyes and devour them with color. It actually works. then I'll have a pretty stack to do the kitchen with !!!!

I do get to feeling sorry for myself and perhaps I had few good reasons, but it's time to get up and do something. I volunteered at the church for a mission to work with the local safe house for abused women. Christmas always depresses me because DH never wants to do anything special. WE do up Hannukah, but ignore my christmas..well, he tried last year, but we wound up eating pizza on Christmas Day. well, this year I'll be serving up a Christmas dinner at the safe house. Also be teaching a few Art classes. so I am off and running again. It would be nice to get some $$$ somewhere along the line and I am sure I will. these dessert paintings should make someone drool.

nonfat desserts.

Ok, I'll photo them over the week-end. I'll need to pick up a few models, too. The fun part will be letting DH eat them when I am done. I guess I'll have to work a little bit faster. Maybe pick them up on thursday and sketch on Thursday night, start painting on Friday and finish up on Saturday. DH gets a fine dessert on Sunday. this could work.

Temporarily Out of circulation

Ok, I still can't get into the Romance of Autumn everyone else in Blogland is waxing poetic about. I am not disparaging that approach one bit. I wish I could put that cap upon my pointy head. It just doesn't fit.

I sat at the window this morning, quietly sipping my Autumn spice coffee while burning a Yankee Candle Candy corn candle. I am working it, folks. I am working it. Handmade quilt tucked around my feet. I had just changed out all the table dressings last night from flower fairy houses to gilded pumpkins.

Piffle.

It's cold and damp. My DH has pumped up the heat so high my sinuses are blasted far worse than any desert wind ever dared. I either dehydrate or shiver and nothing in between.

Oh, I am whining a good one, am I not.

The painting, then. At one point , I had decided I would never, ever paint flowers because every watercolorist under the sun did flowers thereby creating the very definition of trite.

The problem is, Watercolor is perfect for flowers...and I LOVE flowers. So I batted it around my pointy little head and came up with these taped down beauties. No vase. Flowers in bondage. A bit dark, so I used soft colors. I like it. I want to do more along this line, maybe throw in some gold leaf and collage. Maybe let it get darker still and be what it is. though I am still kind of stuck on these orangey, pinkie reds. Can you see Mums taped down to some crumpled tissue, maybe a bent a twisted tag sadly blowing in the breeze ?Some misty painted daisies, alittle bent, a little bedraggled pasted to some corrugated cardboard.

I just realized where this is coming from. When I was in High School, I was always out of school with some weird thing..anemia for the most part. It still bothers me. My DH finds it tedious. Anyway. I was taking an art class, which I just plain adored. It was an entire hour of blessed heaven. The teacher had to kick me out at the end of each class. We began a still life of daffodills in a bucket and we were working in watercolor, so you know I was one happy camper, but I somehow missed a class and when I got back, the daffodils were pretty much done, very wilted and turning brown. Pretty darn sad looking. Poor things. They looked like I felt. the rest of the class was finishing up their work or starting another project, but I sat down with the dead and dying and painted away. In fact, I came back on my lunch hour and after school. The teacher must have been in a patient mood because she let me. I finished my painting and handed it in.

A few weeks later there was an open house for the parents. Part of the program was an art show. Yeah, the art teacher framed and hung my daffodils. I remember they looked pretty great. I also remember bringing them home and no one wanting to hang them up because they were dead daffodils.

You would think I would have learned something.

Must be the pointy head thing. Stuff tends to just run off.

Oh Yeah

This is about how I have been feeling recently. I would really like to wax poetic about Autumn leaves and moonlit nights but that just isn't the vibe of late. It's more like this wild jungle goddess with her Eagle familiar ready to do battle and just pulverize anything that gets too darn close.

What's all that about?

I know it has something to do with all of the physical challenges I've been dealing with and fighting my way back from all of that. I know it has an emotional aspect to it, too.

There is a new sign on my desk that says :

"Practice Positive habits Gently"

And I want Jane the Jungle Queen to bat someone upside the head.

Not Gently.

I think I had one too many ego bruises last week. It seems they came pretty regularly from almost every direction. Nothing seemed safe. Nowhere seemed safe. By Friday evening, my husband delivered what to him was probably an innocuous statement and to me was the bombshell to break the wall. It crumbled. Completely. I wanted to crawl under something. I wanted to go into a darkness that would not ever become light. I wanted to deny myself breath. But something else came up out of the tears and pain. The utter futility of life at that moment evolved into an image, a thing separate, yet within me.Not what I expected. She looked a lot like Nikki's goddess. Probably not as round. A lot sharper, a lot meaner. More claws and nasty edges. You wouldn't want to meet her in a dark alley. She settled in and just about dared anyone to mess with her. She scared even me. Then I realized she was there to protect me. She tucked me into bed and told me to rest...and I did. Slept pretty darn good. She is now my favorite bedtime story.

She's been hanging around ever since.

Now don't tell me I'm losing it. Obviously Nikki knew who she was. Look at the sculpture. It's the same gal. I'm sure mine has that Eagle thing around somewhere. Maybe this dark One comes to bruised art girls to glue us back together when we get too banged up. Maybe she is a soul shield to keep that part of us safe from those world bruises.

There is a legend thousands of years old of a Black Madonna, always a dark One shielding a small soul. Guarding. Protecting. Fiercely holding off those who would bruise and tear and take down those who try to look up. There were temples built to her, then churches built over her temples because the ground was considered so sacred. Chartres Cathedral is one such site. There is another in Poland. On and on. Think of Kali. Same gal, I think. All those skulls are a real give away.

I need her right now.

I don't know how I got so fragile. I always thought of myself as a sort of tough gal, but I know I need that dark One and her protection.

I hope the Eagle comes, too.

Nikki and company

Doesn't this guy look like a fine Halloween treat ? He's been sitting in the Missouri Botanical Gardens all summer long. His head is filled with summer blue and has a wonderful bench to sit on and dream fine dreams. You can peek out at the blossoms through his teeth. He has to be the lovliest skull I have ever seen. all that color is fine glass mosaic. there were so many lovely sculptures there this summer. I think they go away next month, but I did get some lovely photos to share and inspire and dream with. I actually liked the Nikki sculptures better than the Chilhuly glass. the glass competed too much with the flowers and I think they got jealous. Nikki's work made the garden feel like a giant playground and I just loved it.

Of course, Chilhuly is a master. don't you love the way the light bounced off this elegant creature ? I can't decide if its a bird or a flower. Maybe both. I love glass and I do love Chilhuly's work. When I lived in Vegas, one of my favorite haunts was the entryway of the Bellagio. He had done the entire ceiling with his flower shapes. I don't know if any of the Vegas denizens ever looked up to enjoy them, but I would throw myself into one of the lounge chairs and just stare happily at all that eye candy. Vegas had a lot of stuff, but not a lot of real art. The Bellagio was the first exception to that. Just beyond that lounge was a wonderful garden room that changed with each season. they flew in Martha Stewart every christmas to do the Christmas tree.

OK, so I am back and hope to post a little more regularly. I have been teaching a fun art class, making jewlery, trying my hand at stenciling with multiple registration stencils and all sorts of fun stuff. My newest promise to self is to attach this little camera to myself and share some of those treats with you. So hang in there !!!!