. . . showed Mike's pictures

, originally uploaded by finsmal.

Here is another one of my favorite photographers on flickr. His pictures have been the source of much inspiration to me and he has always been willing to share and very supportive of my attempts to capture his photos in paint. Mike and others like him have helped me to see ordinary things in a different way and appreciate the random beauty of artful decay.

I did spend time in the studio yesterday but it was such a mess I could not have painted. . . there was no surface that wasn't covered with stuff. I did clean off the painting table and I did sand down the big canvas from which the paint had all peeled. And I did find a bunch of 12x12 stretched canvases.

When I came up from the studio, there was a very sick looking baby fox at my back door. At first I thought it was the neighbor's cat. But it certainly wasn't either Georgia or Chester. When I went to investigate, it slowly walked off the back porch, around the house and into my garden. I don't think the poor little thing has very long to live, and I don't know why it was at my door. It didn't look like it had been in a fight, but it did look diseased (no hair, matted eyes, other creepy stuff I won't related because it's gross).

And I worked a bit more on the shade garden. I played with making a brick path through part of it. It was fun. . . like putting together a puzzle. Now if I could just make those bricks curve a bit.