. . . were almost finished

cleaning up the garden plots. I have one more spot to rake out and then I have to chomped up the leaves and spread the resulting compost around. I found a bunch of big fat juicy worms hanging around, which is always a good thing. A toad that I thought was a rock scared the crap out of me the other day. It's weird when a rock moves in your hand, isn't it? The toad hopped off into the base of an evergreen bush just as the neighbor's cat discovered it. The cat seemed to be a bit confused that a rock would hop, too. I started digging up a whole patch of garden phlox that had taken over a large part of the garden. It's pretty when it blooms, but the deer eat it and it has invaded and taken over the surrounding plantings, so it's got to go. The roots go deep and it's hard work. The bigger hunks I will replant out in the green belt between the house and the golf course. The phlox can naturalize and grow as wild as it wants out there. One of the bits of nature that fascinates me is how weeds and other seeds snuggle right down next to and among the shoots and roots of "good" plants, so that you have to dig up the plant to get rid of the weed. Natural self-preservation. . . you gotta love the tenacity of those weeds.


In between bouts outside, I finished the painting above and I have started another one. I'm going for color, color, color. I want it to stand out on the wall. I want it to be happy. This picture is crooked, but the painting isn't. The inner critic is screaming at me. . .

. . . tried new things

This is one of the paintings that was in the art auction a couple of weeks ago. I took the picture hurriedly and just for documentation purposes so I have had to crop it in order to show it on this blog.


Friday I did a couple of things that I have not done before, and for which I am inordinately proud of myself: (a) I mowed part of the lawn and (b) I stretched a painting. Yeah, I know, no big deal for most people. But I did them and now I know I can. Please don't hate me because I'm such a wimp.


In cleaning out my flower beds, I had raked leaves and garden detritus onto the lawn in piles. I knew it was going to rain and I didn't want to leave the stuff there to kill the grass, so I got out the lawnmower and ran it over the leaves, twice, chopping them up into tiny little pieces and catching them in the bagger attachment, then dumped the stuff back onto the flower beds for mulch and composting. Ecologically correct, as well as economical and easier than raking. It wasn't that I had ever had an objection to mowing, it's just that my husband enjoyed doing yardwork and was very picky about mowing, so I just never had to do it. I can't say it was fun, but it is empowering to know I can do it. Except I couldn't get it started toward the end, and it may be out of gas.


The other thing I did was to stretch a painted canvas. I paint flat on a table, as you may know if you've read this blog for a while. Walter, my art guy, wants them flat for easier transportation and/or shipping. But a gallery on the Plaza wanted to display a piece, and to do that, it had to be stretched. So I bought the stretcher bars, assembled the thing, and put the painting on it. It worked out beautifully. And it can be easily unstretched if needed. So, on my way home from delivering the piece (which I forgot to take a picture of), I stopped and bought four more little stretcher bars and stretched one of the small paintings I have, and it worked out pretty well, too. Again, I'd rather paint than stretch, but I feel like whole new opportunities are now available.

. . . worked toward expertise?

Remember the book The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell? Where he claimed it took 10,000 hours of practice to become proficient at your craft? Well, I've been working on those 10,000 hours this week. I have finished a painting, which I may post here one day. I have been looking at art created by other people, including Charlotte Foust, who painted the above picture;

and Karen LaBorde, who painted the picture above. I am intrigued by LaBorde's "Waterworks" series pictured here.

I have also read three books about art: Ann Baldwin's Creative Paint Workshop for Mixed-Media Artists. Painting Abstracts; Ideas, Projects and Techniques, by Rolina van Vliet, and Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him, by Danielle Ganek.

I'm a long-time fan of Ann Baldwin, and have haunted her website for years. The subtitle of her book is "Experimental Techniques for Composition, Layering, Texture, Imagery and Encaustic." The book is full of Ann's artwork, and I will continue to read and study it. I've already looked at all the pictures.

I was not familiar with Rolina van Vliet, but her book got good ratings on Amazon, so I purchased it, and I'm glad I did. She encourages experimentation and presents 65 exercises that start with the words "Playing with..." I will do those many of those exercises.

Lulu is fiction, and a quote from the back of the books capsulizes the plot "As The Devil Wears Prada demystified the world of high fashion, this funny and insightful debut novel dishes the crazy and captivating Manhattan art scene." And further, "[A] glossy, amusing story that still finds time to wonder. . . how, why and whether the art world differentiates between trash and treasure" from The New York Times. Quick mindless reading, but sometimes that what you want, right? I am sooooo glad I don't have to deal with the NY art scene.

. . . won the lottery?

Unfortunately, I have won it yet. . . in fact, haven't been bought a ticket. BUT, if I had won the lottery, here are two artists whose paintings I would buy immediately (among many others). The first painting is by Paula Landrem; the second is by Jamie Tate. Please click on the links to enjoy their other works.

. . . revisited last April

Since I still have nothing to show for my art work (because I haven't done any of it), I thought I would see what I was doing a year ago. Here is one of my April 2008 paintings. I'll do a retrospective here. . . all the new readers won't have to search througha year of blogs and all the old readers will have forgotten what I posted a year ago. This painting is long gone. . . I hope it's living with someone who likes it as much as I did.


Easter at my sister's house in Topeka. She has a beautiful home that sits on a wooded lot high up overlooking a creek. Since it was raining, the creek was moving fast, and the sound of water was peaceful. Her house is very contemporary and she has lots of wall space for art, including several of my pieces. I hope she doesn't just put mine on the wall when she knows I'm coming over to her house. The youngest of all my nieces and nephews, Chris, a high school freshman, has developed quite an interest in woodworking and using his late grandfather's tools. He and I talked about some collaborations. . . he will make the wooden objects, I will paint them. I told him to just play with scrap wood and be imaginative. I'm looking forward to seeing what he creates.


I had a call Saturday from a gallery on the Plaza asking if I had some pieces to display. All I have around the house is small art. They want my piece in one of their front windows. I want it to be one of my best, a big one, eyecatching and lively. And of course they want it tomorrow. What to do?


On the personal side, I am taking a very big step forward, I hope, today. . . I'm taking the step no matter what, I am hoping it's a step forward. I think stressing about my personal life is getting in the way of creating art, so maybe once I clear a couple of hurdles and come to terms with where I'm going, I'll be able to be productive again. And maybe I can make April 2009 as productive as April 2008.

. . . lost my way?

How can I not be inspired when I look at a picture like this that I took last summer? Line, color, texture. . . what more could I need? Beats me. Yesterday I spent the rainy early part of the day applying paint and more paint to the piece I have started. In the end, after a couple of hours, it was right back to where it had started. . . I scraped everything off. What a waste of time and paint. Or call it learning what not to do. I spent the sunny second half of the day looking for some out-of-print books at the secondhand book store, with no luck. Spring must be here. . . last night my neighbor and I had our first gab session on the porch out back, although we wrapped ourselves up in quilts and blankets to keep warm and we only lasted about an hour. Part of today will be filled with yard work; I don't think I can put it off any longer. And I'll try again on the painting. . . perhaps while I'm doing mindless yardwork, a thought will float into my head on how to finish it.

. . . started a painting

yesterday and worked on it pretty much most of the day, between pruning rose bushes and hauling fallen branches outside. I decided last night, right before I went to sleep, that I was stressing way too much over my painting. . . I just needed to paint, period. No fancy new techniques, just put paint on the canvas, like normal. If it was all geometric, that's okay. If it's not free and easy and spontaneous, that's okay. It's all about color, texture, and shape. And every painting doesn't need every single trick I can pull out of my hat. I have to forget about what was at the art auction, what I have seen in videos, what I have been reading about. If some of those things make it into my way of painting, fine, but otherwise, just do what I do. It's been okay so far.





Okay, so now that I have given myself a little pep talk, you can see that I am still out of any art to show you that I have created. However, I still have a bunch of pictures I have taken of the stuff in the artist cabinet. I love the bright colors in the first and last pictures. I actually love the jacket on the lady in the third picture. And the hats.





Someone well-versed in the history of fashion could really interpret these Vogue paintings (reproductions, I'm sure). For instance, is the hair bobbed? The skirt length in the third picture is ankle-baring. . . is that because of the lack of fabric in the war years, or is it more a statement of the freedom of women, the suffrage movement, etc. I am fascinated by any history involving women, because there just isn't much of it. Also interesting would be the perspective of an art historian regarding the style and manner of the paintings, something I know absolutely nothing about.


These pictures are on glossy paper, probably 8 x 10". There are more of them, but here I picked out the most colorful. I just don't know what to do with them.