Lightness and darkness. Lightness and heaviness. Sometimes, I feel heaviness settle. I try to find ways to sit with it, consider it, and then let it go.
I sat outside and blew bubbles for you. Bubbles are nearly weightless. They float on air. They catch and reflect light. Their beauty is fragile and fleeting. Each bubble carries a bit of our breath with it, but the air and our bodies are quick to replenish our lungs. Inhale. Exhale.
When the heaviness and darkness come, I try to remember the lightness of you and our time together.
I tore out another reverse coloring page. I took circles from Kendra Norton’s book, and then I outlined them and as artist Andrea Nelson suggests, “rounded off the corners.”
Happy Earth Day 2024! I have few details to provide about the creator of this art. I paid for and downloaded it digitally from the Etsy account Unlimited Extra, where it’s listed as Earth Day 2024: Everyday, Protect Environment, Save The Planet.
Every day should be Earth Day for sure. I hope you find a way to honor and provide stewardship of our beautiful planet today. I’ll shoot and add photos to this post later to show a little of Nature’s beauty at Houndstooth Hall.
Growth returning after I pruned these a few months back.
Scenes from Debby’s work around Fairy Cottage.
Some of Tim’s plants in the Hall’s front beds.
Tom always prunes the lantana after it freezes, and this one is already flourishing.
And in the other bed, this one always blooms later and is starting that now.
A peek at the tops of the mimosa and magnolia trees from the back yard.
Fun fact: I did my first Mood: Monday post on An Aries Knows on December 3, 2018. I used BluntCards until May of 2020, then used my own photos or photos from the Internet, including Wititudes, until March of 2022, when I began featuring art, until the last one on April 22, 2022.
One day, back at The Compound, I picked up a fresh 4×6-inch canvas and chose my paint colors, only realizing sometime into my painting that I was being influenced by the painting on the wall behind me.
It was a painting my father gave me, which I suppose one might call an unpaid commission, since I said, “Please paint me a city.” I gave him no other parameters, and this is the large canvas he painted and gifted to me. I’m SO, SO glad I gave no input, because nothing I could have said would have been as beautiful and perfect for me as this abstract is. It has traveled and lived with me since, and now it hangs over the fireplace in the library at Houndstooth Hall, where I get to enjoy it every single day.
Recently, when we celebrated my birthday, Rhonda and Lindsey gave me this great coloring book, The Reverse Coloring Book, from Kendra Norton. The colors are there, and the person coloring the page gets to decide how to use the shapes and colors to create their own work of art.
This page made me think of The City, so it’s the one I chose to work on in honor of today’s date. April 18 is when my father died in 1985. I know I’m one of the most fortunate people in the world not only to have endless memories of a good father (and trust me, having endured my teenage years, my father might be surprised at how I always praise him), but also so many tangible memories of his creativity. I never went inside a museum until I was in my thirties, but I’d long been prepared to fall in love with art.
I’ve seen some great versions of that coloring page online with people using pen and inks, adding architectural features to the buildings, and even including some foliage at the ground level. I chose to keep mine simple and make it another homage to my father’s.
Photo previously posted here was of the painting Books, palette knife and oil on canvas, date unknown, by Leonid Afremov.
Today is World Art Day. As mentioned on the linked site, art may be visual, written, spoken or musical.
My love of visual arts skews toward paintings more than sculpture, but that could be more of a lack of education and exposure than anything else. This blog makes it clear I’m a music lover. I’m also a fan of performing arts (movies, theater, dance), but of course, my own favorite art is written, whether as fiction or poetry, thus my choice of a painting spotlighting books.
Some of my characters in the Neverending Saga are big readers; others aren’t. But they all love stories–telling, hearing, imagining them. It only came to me slowly why these novels would likely never be commercial–there is plot, with some storylines resolved quickly and others spanning decades, but really, the novels are stories about people who love to share stories with one another.
It’s bizarre to think I did the No. 1 post in this Thursday series in January 2022, scattered them up to September of that year, then did no. 24 in March of 2023. It seems like so long ago! Some new decks have come to me since then, most recently a fascinating deck from Jim: Cheryl Kelleher Walsh’s Aqua Summersus Underwater Tarot. Above are bits of the Major Arcana cards to give you a sense of how beautiful the photography is. Yes, those are photos, not paintings!
Walsh shoots her portrait models underwater, and in 2019, she decided to create a Tarot deck using the same technique. The models she discussed the concept with were eager to claim which cards they wanted to represent, and they then created their own costumes, along with designers and a headpiece maker. They did all of this while dealing with pandemic precautions in 2020, including safe distancing, masking, and each model bringing their own safety person.
The results have an ethereal beauty that dazzles me, and I also like many of the things Walsh says about the project, including her explanation of how she uses the deck, which aligns with my sense that Tarot is a good tool for self-reflection and examination:
Walsh: I constantly strive to better myself as a person and an artist. While I deeply respect Tarot card readers and their unique abilities, I am not a Tarot card reader myself and recognize that connecting with the cards is a personal experience that varies from individual to individual. As the creator of this Tarot deck, I poured my creative energy and positive intentions into it, but I understand that it is ultimately up to each user to find their own connection.
…..
For me, Tarot cards serve as prompts that inspire me to explore different aspects of my life and journey. They encourage me to delve deeper into areas that I may have overlooked or not considered fully, ultimately leading me to personal growth and self-improvement.
I look forward to getting to know this deck. Thanks, Jim!
Back in early April, the creator of one of my favorite webcomics, Life of Sharks, invited readers to submit their illustrations of the ever popular Barry, the problematic shark. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to go to my tiny sketch book and create Barry’s Mondrian period…now with a little shimmer.
Just a wee 4×6-inch canvas, painted in acrylics in 2007. I was looking to see if I’d ever done a painting in the One Word Art series with a particular title, and I haven’t. But in looking at all my photos of old paintings, I see a lot that became part of other works and then disappeared into the unknown. I hope some of them found homes where they were wanted.
Every time we share any part of ourselves, whether it’s been channeled into visual arts, words, performing arts, confidences to people we trust, we take a risk. Sometimes we find affirmation. Sometimes we don’t.
However you present yourself–your feelings, your thoughts, your creativity, your dreams–it takes courage. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. People who make you feel small or weak are not your people.
Art posted here previously was of The Fool, 1997, acrylic on canvas, Rolf Eichelmann, artist.
Happy April Fool’s Day, and happy birthday to our friend Geri! I hope her day is full of mischief and celebration, if those are what she seeks.
Are you in a foolish mood in honor of the date? Did you know that Mercury goes retrograde today? I hope that planet doesn’t toy with you.
Today, instead of shenanigans, I have the first section of the seventh book in the Neverending Saga to edit: around 82 pages, so that I can pass it to my two readers for comments and criticisms. Then I’ll shift from this brooding character’s point of view to a more lighthearted character–lighthearted FOR NOW. Can’t be fiction without conflict!
I’ll just trot out my old Easter Beagle button that I’ve used before, along with a new photo of the bunny from the last Easter basket my mother ever gave me (it was in the early 2000s so clearly I was an adult, but you can’t be too old for an Easter basket or a parent’s kindness–and speaking of a parent’s kindness, some of these eggs were gifts from my mother-in-law, many of which she made herself).