This is whats next.....

I love the smell of paint.... Love it.

May have mentioned it before.... but it is true. Inky fingers from printmaking.... paint in the pores love it.

through a series of random events I have had the chance to paint the largest and most fun painting I have painted in years, So sorry about the delay in posting and thank you all for being so patient with me.

I live in a town that decided to host a competition to paint Abe Lincoln..... to replace one that was stolen. Do I think I will win this NO.

I spent some time wondering - should I? - shouldn't I - whats the worst that could happen? (Rick has a painting of Abe for his classroom. My Husband is a history teacher who spent a week at the Lincoln Library last year. Lincoln means a lot in our house.)

Stretchers check -

Paint check -

Photo of Abe .... Well we will work that out in the wash.

We have spent so much time together I feel as if it is acceptable to call him Abe rather than the more formal Mr. President or Mr. Lincoln.

This is the funniest part, at the pivotal moment when I wasn't sure if the image I put on a canvas was going to say what I wanted to say I was Christmas shopping in a little store in Mystic CT. You know the kind of place, stuff so you can remember your trip. The General Store sells everything from summer sausage to cow bells and there amongst all the tourist t-shirts and lobster pots with Christmas wreaths on them... Was a book that has nothing but images of Abe- just about any photo of the man I could ever want. No talk just a paperback of Abe. Now I do believe we are led to do certain things but this feels (although in the nicest most pleasing way) like I have a bull ring in my nose. So who am I to say no. Who am I to wonder why? Or even question what is next....

The paint is going on that is whats next and that my friends is the fun part....

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=162289600483645&id=109053815807224&aid=31199

What's Next? No really.....What's Next?

That is a question I have been asking myself lately. What is next?
I have been enjoying using the internet for it's intended purpose and really getting out and looking at all forms of visual art and it makes me wonder. What is next for me? What is it that make a piece of work move from the "That's nice" and walk away stage (which is quiet frankly where I feel that a majority of my work falls into.) and go to the Wow that makes me.....think, feel, desire, enjoy, despise, what I am looking at. How does any artist make that jump? There needs to be a depth of emotion in the work as well as a desire to show something in a way that it hasn't been seen before even in the most mundane of subject matter. Can an artist feel deeply for what they are working on without it being all consuming? I have no idea.
I do know this...I will keep looking and when I feel that passion about a subject... you my dear reader will be the first to know.

Today would be a good day for......

Sleeping, and yet here I am. I was told that if I didn't update my blog I would be booted out of the funny people club and post haste so I figure I better do as told
Today would also be a good day to do laundry and catch up on housework, but I think that tomorrow really is the better day for that. I consulted my inner child and they told me that playing hooky was what I really needed to do. I tend to listen to my inner child they get sulky if I don't. Then I will have to ply the little snot with Chocolate and that isn't good for anyone involved.
Today would have been a great day to clean out the gutters.....Wait I did that.
Today....Yeah I think I am going to stick with door number one, Nap. Funny can wait another day.
Night all.

Sand in my suit.

I never understood why swim attire was called a suit. You wear much less than a jacket, tie, vest, button up shirt and slacks. If I were a different type of girl my suit would be small and held together by floss but, seeing as I have always been a full coverage gal my suit is like myself sturdy and with hidden panels for extra coverage. The best advice I ever got about going to the beach......Was from my friend Kim she said "My body is what it is. I like to go swimming. If people don't want to see cellulite they don't have to look". It made perfect sense and the veil of trying to hide my imperfections fell away. Armed with sun screen, sarong and shorts to cover my flab we headed to the beach. Wow is is bright there and hot and crowded and sand gets everywhere but, and this is a big butt.....If you love the feeling of throwing yourself against a wave and having it carry you toward the shore then you are willing to deal with SAND IN THE SUIT. In July my family went to Virgina beach for a few days of sun and fun. It is not an exaggeration to say that I am still finding sand in the modesty panel of my suit. Leaving the beach at the end of our day I had enough sand in the lining of my suit to give the illusion of having swum in a diaper or that I had not completed My gender reassignment surgery. That night I beat my suit against our porch railing doing nothing but spreading the sand around rather than dispersing it. But, hey I did get another souvenir. Two months later, I have gotten the bulk of the sand out but still it still haunts me like toilet paper flecks. I decided to go for one last labor day swim and later in the shower there was still grit swirling down the drain. Summer goes so fast when your having fun.

Sweat and Raspberries

On a wild bit of land near our house, my brother and I would trek up a steep incline to go blueberry picking. The hard little berries were more nut like than the berries you see in the store and my mother always gamely tried to make something out of them but the results would leave me less than thrilled. The berry to sweat ratio was not even and to add insult to injury I didn't like blueberries very much. Now Raspberries are a whole different story...Let's jump ten years into the future. I am living in my first apartment and the bush that marks off where I should park my car is a pricker bush that I almost crushed the first time I backed in my car. My usually sweet tempered landlady left a nasty note on my door telling me to be careful with her berry bush....You know the kind of note, black ink and underlining words like idiot and new growth. I laughed it off. Hello it was a bush right. Right? WRONG. Summer came and showed me what a error I had made. The bush survived my winter back up and grew into a leggy pricker. My landlady tied back each runner and kept them off the ground then as if by magic the berries started to appear. Huge ruby red and full of the most amazing, sticky, bits of summer. My landlady collected all she could (except for the few that ended up in my tummy) and then the cooking started, the smell in our shared hallway was enough to send me downstairs with a slice of bread and a hang dog look on my face. She explained she was making jam and it is not an exaggeration to say that I never got more than a spoonful for that one slice of bread. That was until the year she went away for the summer. One night when the berries were ripe I got the largest bowl in my house and picked berries until I could find no more. Sweaty and with fingers that looked like I had just killed with my bare hands, I snuck upstairs to my third floor apartment and learned to can. The perfume created from all that berry boiling lingered in the hall for days. I was sure that if she decided to come home early it would be the smell in the hall that would give away my thievery and not the lack of fruit on the bushes outside. Now for those of you who haven't tried canning it really is very easy. Crushed fruit is mixed with vast amounts of sugar. Then boiled until the sugar is dissolved. Pectin is added at the end to make sure that the jam jells and then the hot jam is ladled into hot jars, covered with lids and stuck in a pan filled with boiling water for 10 minutes. Magically delicious.
Which all leads me to today. My son who is 6 is carefully carrying a plastic Hanna Montana bowl filled to the brim with sweet ruby red berries. There is a slight swagger in the way he climbs the stairs to our kitchen. He has been picking berries for our jelly and I know that when he hands them to me to make into something good, the sweat to berry ratio is just right.