Wherefore art thou, Spring...

Spring keeps burping up little storms and murky days of really gray, cold clouds.  Well, weather in California, at least the part I live in, has always been schizophrenic, with summers-of-no-summer happening every so often, foggy and dismal.  We are surviving in the little yellow house with layers of clothes, refusing to turn on the heat because, after all, it is SPRING, goddammit.  And the cowwoman has become fierce with the wild things opus, working on stepping out of her little box of self and incorporating new and wondrous non-local color here and there, something she had forgotten about.  This chapter of the work is more fun than a flock of Easter bunnies.  It feels really fuzzy and warm and deeply satisfying, like a fine dining experience.  I am not in the picture at all when doing this work.  It just flows out of me.  When I peck away, it is never as extraordinary than when I make big swaths of color and just stand back. letting it flow from the Infinite.  Bless you, HP.  Sweetness happening.

Wild things, and other musings...

In case you didn't notice, I am taking a sabbatical from birds and horses and koi and landscapes and self-portraits and yes, even cows.  Now communing with the wondrous creatures that roam the forests and jungles.  At first, I moaned about this painting.  Now, I feel really close to my wolf work.  More coming in this vein.  There is something in the eyes of these animals that really says something to me.  Maybe this is the reason I make my bed with squeaky toys under the pillows, so I can call my wolf pack back to the fold every night before turning out the lights.  We all curl up together in the blessed coolness, Pickle snoring, Punk issuing an occasional whimper as he chases critters like Socky Monkey and Little Cowee in his dreams  How sweet it is.

The warm and fuzzy thing...

In my last therapy session, I told my guy that shame had tweaked me more than usual, like the Critic does not like all this worthiness I am trying on like a new bathing suit.  See, Critic says, back fat!  Lumpy thighs!  Shame on you!  And then, I did something worthy.  I did my taxes.  You see, I am kind of cheap, and I think I am more creative than TurboTax or H&R Block.  They would probably not consider the dogs to be "security" as I used to claim when I lived at the house on the edge of the world, where badness slept under every bush.  So I wrestle with the mountain of receipts, tame them into a dandy Lotus worksheet, and run it all up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes it and sends me the refund to which I am so sweetly entitled.  The whole operation takes up the majority of a day, and involves storage boxes, a pencil sharpener, and a lot of yelling to keep Punkin from rolling around in all that paper spread out on the office floor.  Once it was done, aside from the fact that there will be a dandy refund this year, I felt all warm and fuzzy, like what a good girl am I.  So Ian, my baby therapist, commanded the homework this week be something that captures that feeling on paper.  I really didn't plan on it being this darling baby girl (no I don't know if it is a "she" or not, but if I say so, she is}, but I do know that whenever I feel all surly and sure that this life is just not worth the effort, I like to look at pictures of baby animals.  So full of hope and promise.  Cannot wait for Ian's appraisal.  The lion is going to therapy, too.  Much more indicative of my nature at the moment.  Quiet for the moment, with prospects of big outburst of power in the future.

Healthy pride, coming up...

After learning to be all humble, like, God does the art, not ME, my therapist thinks I should now take pride in the art.  Well, I did this in about 20 minutes yesterday (black paper, it's a real time-saver), just because I had the time, and I was tired of diddling with another image, and, as usual, I was sure I would not be able to get my conception on the paper, but, lo and behold, there it is.  Art is so elusive for me.  I get lazy, don't want to lay a palette or drag out the boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff, it all just seems so overwhelming, and then, there's THIS.  I did it to be a companion piece to my tiger, and these, I will never sell.  They are to absolute epitome of the divine process.  I am thinking now of doing a wolf, too.  Such nobility in our wild creatures.  I just want to honor their beauty, and love my own gift, the one HP gave me, and honoring it, honors Her, too.

Long time, no post, no paint, no nothing...

Okay, rousing myself out of the lethargy that is intensive psychotherapy, hoping that writing will be cathartic and light a fire under my admittedly rather heavy ass and get me working, again.  Very cathartic, therapy, however not so hot for my creative juices.  This go-round is all about shame, my emotion of choice, liberally spread by my parents, the Catholic church, teachers, employers, ex-husbands, yep, the list goes on and on.  And of course, at the head of the list is ME.  Now working on moving from the intellectual to the emotional level, and have I mentioned how PAINFUL this is?  Well, it is.  I have this baby therapist, in his last year of his doctorate, who has to peddle pretty fast to keep up with moi, as I have three times the life experience he has, and some pretty effective methods of deflecting the focus away from the real stuff and onto the fluff on top.  I gave him the imprimatur to call me on my shit, and he is getting really good at it, so much so that I didn't want to go last week.  That means it's working.  There doesn't seem to be any growth in my life without a significant amount of pain.  Wonderful teacher, pain.  I always move faster whenever that happens, like sitting down on a hot stove.  And the image today is one of my iconic cow paintings, this one a quick little pastel, that just found its forever home with a friend who bought her.  I admit that I miss my paintings when they leave the little yellow house, like I miss my children.  And I am feeling that it may be time to do another retrospective of the bovine kind.  This is, after all, my signature here in this strange little blog.  Cowwoman, over and out.