Vacation time.

I'm on vacation in Boulder, Colorado, where I was born and grew up. We drove out through Utah and some other states which I cannot remember. It was very hot. We did stay in Glenwood Springs and swam in the coolish pool. The Colorado River was eleven feet higher than normal. It took out parts of the bike path. It's taken me a few days to regain my feet but I did some art as you can see, hopefully on the left.

This is how green it is in Colorado. We moved to Bellingham, WA because I was tired of the drought here. The past couple of years it's been looking like the Colorado that I grew up in, instead of the desert it was a few years ago. Here, with the high altitude sunlight, you can see all the way to the horizon.

This painting sings to me.

It's funny how the one remove of a photo of my painting start allows me to evaluate it more objectively. I was so enamored of the marks and shapes that I was making that I was down in the painting, swimming around in it.

With the photo, I can see that the bottom right dark shape needs to go away. The composition is too round and dizzy making. I've finished the other painting but you'll just have to come see it at Art Walk. I won't be there, I'll be in Colorado but it'll be nice to see the paintings without the artist hovering anxiously over your shoulder.

Love this painting!

can't rotate it here, too late to do it on computer.

This is why I'm an artist, not a computer expert.  So it's a little disorienting to look at the photo sideways but the painting is not necessarily sideways.

Anyway, I love a painting at this stage. It's so exciting to put in any shapes I want knowing that I can paint 'em out later. I've entered my 50th decade, my son has completed his first year of high school. These advents have had me thinking of what I was like as a youth and what time has smoothed out and what it has distilled into an even more fantastic mix than ever. People and paintings have wonderful things in their personalities that have either been covered up or are still peeking out, beckoning the viewer to discover what mysteries are lying just beyond his reach.

When I was young, there was a lot I didn't understand and I wondered if I would be able to cope with whatever came my way. There is still a lot to be discovered but now I enjoy the thought of taking on something new and challenging.

As I Promised...

My Satisfaction, mixed media on board, 9"x12"

Today is Sunday, a day I give myself permission to spend relaxing. I spend other days relaxing but I have to spend brain power justifying it or feeling guilty about it. Not today.

I wrestled with this painting yesterday until I finally decided to paint out the troublesome shape entirely and immediately felt a sense of lightness and calm.

This morning, I was woken up early by a hysterical crow outside. Later my son told me he had to go out and yell at it to make it go away. I continued to sleep in. My son and I went to breakfast at Harris Avenue Cafe which was full to bursting with people. Instead we went to tea at Abby Tea. I love going to tea and love that my son is willing to go with me which is thanks to my husband's willingness to go. Manly men like tea, too. We had a chat about my side of the family. It wasn't very in depth because my mother died when I was young and I don't know many of her family.

We went to the book store where I bought more books when I haven't read the ones from the last trip.  I got yet another book on art books which I intend to do some day: "Masters Book Arts", "The Taliban Shuffle", by Kim Barker;  and the "Believing Brain", by Michael Shermer. I'm sure that I punctuated that last sentence all wrong. Sorry. My father, an anthropologist, said once that brains are hard wired to believe in religion. When I mentioned that some time later, he said, "I never said that." Someone's brain in this family isn't hardwired at all.

I hope that everyone is having a great Sunday as well.

I am not the building's information booth.

The art I've been doing lately in one pic.

I did not think that I'd get much art done today as I have been feeling very 'ify' lately...if I can continue to produce interesting art, if I'm happy to be here, if I exist... But look what I did! Last week, I painted cheesy horse paintings like a 12 year old while I was at home just fiddling around. I was heartened to see that I was able to handle the paint and the values such that I produced a modeled figure, though.

The last two days, came into the studio/gallery and tried to paint a large painting of a horse and got so bogged down in proportions that I grew frustrated again. Today, I turned that icky painting around and found an icky drawing. I was just in the mood to fool around with that and so produced the thing you see on the easel. I'm not thrilled with it but don't hate it either. Its just another step down the path shrouded in mystery toward the goal that's obscured by mysterious shrouds.

FINALLY I took the cradled boards that I got from Dakota Art and immediately felt intimidated by their more serious nature than the paper that I have been working on recently. I have no problem pushing flimsy paper around. What the hell, I put some marks on the boards and found that they weren't at all slick as I had thought they'd be. I feel like the more solid feel of the boards encouraged my confident handling of the shapes. I will put a photo of one of them up in my next blog. I want their insouciance all to myself for a while.

I stopped into Allied Arts of Whatcom County to check out their 2001 Juried Artist Series and saw Yvette Neumann's ( www.particularsstudio.com ) and Enid Wilson's ( www.enidwilsonstudio.com ) paintings. I was very inspired by their beautiful treatment of shapes and colors. It's very exciting to have such artist's of high caliber living and working in this area.

What to do with the blahs?

Endeavor, mixed media on paper
10"x7",$100

Last night was art walk and I sold another small painting. Four months of running this gallery and I've sold three small paintings. It's better than nothing but really need to start working on getting the world out. I seem to be completely immobilized by fear. I tried to start a figure painting but quit to fiddle with my blog. I'm going to have to fake myself out by doing some practice drawings while I'm watching a trashy rom/com. If my brain is busy being sated with goo, it can't nag me about what I'm not accomplishing.

For a while, I was drawing everyday in my little notebook that I take with me everywhere. I need to get back to that. I have another trick to get over my nerves about leaving the crutch of reality and trusting in my fecund imagination, well, my mildly active imagination. I have been doing one glance sketches. I take one glance at someone and then do the drawing without looking (too long) again. Surely with all this model groups attendance, I'm starting to get a reservoir of knowledge to draw from. Maybe such a practice will more thoroughly fix what I'm learning in their.

I finished a three or four small paintings this week. This one is the giant egg I loaded onto my page in Facebook, repainted. These paintings looked like objects in space so I thought I'd name them after the space shuttles that are being retired now.

Endeavor

Endeavor, mixed media, 10"x7", $100

The space shuttle is being retired this month. I created a series of little paintings on paper. They looked spacy to me so I thought I'd commemorate the event by with these paintings. I named this one for the shuttle Endeavor partially because I endeavored mightily to make it more interesting that it was the first try. I posted the first one on my Facebook page and it looked like a giant floating egg.

I'm going to be late to take my son to his music lesson so I have no more to write.