Hoping

It has been a busy week so far: classes, painting, garden and..oh yes ! a birthday !!!! I started it with pink cupcake goodness and a rasta birthday song from my brother and sister in law. So I have been happy dancing all morning. 50+ birthdays can be as magical as any other kind. It's all on how you look at things. Am I getting older, or am I just trying to live the very best life I possibly can and been magically granted another year to do it in? Gotta say, I'll take the second any day. Actually I will take it this very day. I have promises of sushi and some lovely serenades on my voice mail and more happiness planned for the next few days including an Etsy meet-up where I will meet St. Louis Etsy creators and share adventures and ideas. whew...lots of stuff and its all good.

Ok, the Hope cup jumped into my head as soon as I saw it. It really exists as a creation by my beloved Pastor who is a ceramic artist of great talent and wisdom. The arrangement begged to be painted and I snapped a photo quickly, but the painting was already done in my mind. I have been admiring the Still Life paintings of the Impressionists for the past few weeks. Most folks are familiar with their landscapes..but they all did quite a few Still Lifes, too. Manet did many floral Still Lifes towards the end of his life and they are soft and amazing.Berthe Morisot and Toulouse Lautrec favored dark backgrounds and colorful foregrounds so I decided to prime this small artboard with black gesso and work the colors over that. WOW, was that fun. It came together really quickly and I loved the effect. Colored gessoes are my new true love. This will go into my Etsy in the very near future.

My classes at the St. Louis Artists Guild are going great. I had two more students jump in this week and they are exciting, talented folk. This is my demonstration piece from Monday. Our goal was to collage as much as possible of our image. We covered altering magazine pages with Nevrdull and citrasolve. This piece started with a page of carpet advertisements and a few calendar pages from a butterfly calendar., then I layered on paint, stencils and stamps to complete the image. The journal I am working on is an old date book with long narrow pages...a bit of a challenge as far as composition. The journaling (writing) part is about my feelings regarding art as a spiritual path.

Next week we are going to focus on creating faces on the journal pages and losing fear of drawing ! That should be a lot of fun. After next week's class, my birthday celebration will continue with a visit to the St. Louis History museum to see an exhibit of treasures from the Vatican. I have constant fantasies about visiting Italy, and visiting the Vatican as well as other wonders. So this is a teenie tiny step in that direction. I'll have to find a sidewalk cafe serving cappuccinos afterwards !!! OK maybe I'll just have a glass of Chianti and some pasta and call it even.