Dumb, but I keep putting along, anyway...

Homage to the neighbor's very strange guinea hens.  He has a whole flock of them, really strange looking birds that have an equally strange call, and can make quite a racket when they want to.  I was getting my mail the other day and they followed me home.  Chicken Master came out, yelled "get out of the street!", and they all hustled back onto the lawn.  Honestly, it's a circus around our neighborhood these days.  Or maybe Old MacDonald Farm time, as there are chickens (and a frenetic little rooster) all around me.  Couple of goats, too.  And then there are the turkeys who stroll by regularly.  Sweet.

The daily double...

Some things are just easy, like this.  I spent about an hour from start to finish, now think this is all she wrote, done.  I think it is about being in the zone.  Don't know how I got there, just really happy when it happens.  And I got pretty much what I envisioned, though a couple of little accidents did something really special as I went along.  Portraits of animals are just so engaging for me.  I fall in love with every one of them, even the ones that don't succeed.  Every one teaches me something valuable.  Here I learned to look more deeply into my subject, but not complicate the work.  Simple, but not flat.  Sweet but not cute.  Exaggerated in some places, understated in others, and that was pretty much about being on automatic pilot.  HP guided my hand, for sure.  Love it.  Now.  That could change after further perusal.  I am nothing if not fickle.

One pissed off Pickle and one pesky Punkin...

Pickle is peeved.  Even though we dodged this bullet for a long, long time, we got FLEAS.  Nuts.  And Pickle ate the fur off her rump, so off we went to the vet for a buttload of medications, for both the poopies.  Pickle is not the trooper her big brother was.  Boo would have worn that blasted collar for the rest of his life if I asked him to.  But Pickle moped.  I picked her up and put her outside.  Half hour later, she was still sitting where I set her down.  Sigh.  And Punkin is so worried, he makes all kind of really obnoxious noises, sort of like the kind the smoke detector makes when its battery is dying, little supersonic bleeps that sear the eardrums.  And he did this the whole first night of this ordeal, too.  Really, he is just worried about his big sister. He sits by her and whines a lot, too.  Keeping him in the bedroom with me just meant he could only bother ME.  So, I let him sleep out in the general population last night so I could get some rest.  Owies do heal, and the collar will go back into the closet for the next time.  Just hoping it will be the Punk when it happens.  Life would be a lot quieter.  Meanwhile, major milestone, Pickle got herself, collar and all, out the dog door, and back in again.   Small miracle, that.

My mess du jour...

I started out to do something esoteric and spare.  It just got away from me!  Is anyone surprised to know I absolutely LOVED fingerpainting as a kindergartener?  Now, I pick up a palette knife, and it's off to the races.  I don't worry any more whether it is art or not.  It is if I say it is.  And this is actually on canvas.  I picked up a pad of canvas sheets, triple gessoed, at Blick to see if I liked it.  And I do!  I do!

Returning to Pepperwood...

It has been kind of a time of inertia here.  Low physically, not going many places unless I am expected to show up there.  Okay, Target, Costco and Trader Joe's do not expect me, but, gee, that is shopping.  Ditto the art supply store.  Need so many things you know.  But, I digress.  I signed up for a "sketching on the trail" at Pepperwood, my old stomping ground, this Sunday.  Excited to get out the watercolor pencils again.  Excited to be out in nature again.  Excited to have even taken the step to sign up.  I worry, you see.  Am I good enough?  Will I get something ARTFUL from this endeavor?  Will someone curl his/her lip at me in artistic comtempt?  Getting over myself even as we speak.  It is what it is.  There will always be SOMEONE who will think it is art, even if that someone is not me.  And how can I improve unless I keep trying stuff?  Okay.  Off to try some stuff.

When I don't know what to do, I just do SOMETHING...

I spent my happiest hours of my youth on my grandparent's chicken ranch.  There were five hen houses, one dedicated to the brooders that Gramps set up every spring for the new chicks.  I didn't get to handle them nearly as much as I wanted, but I got to look at them a lot.  So, shades of my childhood rose up and painted this little thingy, which is, of course, not done, but, gee, when are they ever?  For the moment, I had a lot of fun and am now about to go back to do some abstracts, and, after perusing it some more, decide what still needs work on these little guys.  This process, it is really tricky, you know.  And how lucky am I to spend hours and hours doing it.

The paint has a mind of its own...

I reworked this piece, actually, something I hardly ever do.  Body was too long, legs too short, some muddiness in the feathers, now all tidied up.  And cannot decide if this is all okay or not.  Definitely, this is not what I had in mind when I started.  It just got all tight and kind of designy. Probably it is the acrylic paint.  It waits for no one, not even the artist.  I think I will stop thinking about this and just let it sit there, where it is what it is.  Meanwhile, feeling really grateful for my two healthy fur persons while a dear friend is nursing her puppy back from parvo.  Sometimes I feel that I should not be grateful because I am not suffering.  Nuts to that.  And I get to start another painting today. 

Done. Really.

I got an idea from the paintings I saw at the Center for the Arts last night, when my cow made its premiere on a foreign wall, to let my paintings be more primitive, less finished looking.  So, I dippy-dabbed away and then quit.  Some parts of this are as they were when I first put brush to canvas.  Some have been refined, but only minimally.  Don't know if that is okay, just know I like the looks of the finished product, kind of edgy and less sentimental.  And these horses are not beautiful, though they have these windblown manes.  I think they are elegant though, with those long, long noses.  Some non-local color here and there, it all just seems to work in a less futzy, more artful way.  I think.  Oh, hell, I just like it.

The process, it's a bitch...

There is a moment in the creation of a painting when it is fresh, virginal, and to go beyond that moment is to turn it into just another old painted whore.  This one is not at its virginal prime yet.  I managed to stop for now, so I can look at what needs more explanation or refining, without marring the looseness and elan I want to leave on the canvas.  Yes, working on canvas again.  It's a new world here in the little yellow house, one where there is a real artist in residence.  Convinced that this is really my calling, and, with persistence, I will improve and become a minor but evident force in our local art world.  Uh huh.  Now off the the opening reception of the Salon Show, where the purple cow is gracing the wall.  Oh, just get over myself!

A busy day for the artist...

The horse went north, the cow went west, both to be hung on public walls where erstwhile connoisseurs of our little community can mull over them, and maybe take them home to love them on THEIR wall.  I stood in line with the other artists, just like I belonged there, both times.  Said hello to a few I already know, got excited about the reception Friday night, and the big Art for Life event on Saturday.  Gee, guess I am one of the guys, after all.  And this weekend, a friend and I sojourned up the coast to Sea Ranch, where the affluent retire to this lovely community on the coast, to do their open studio event, and I saw a bunch of abstracts not unlike the ones I have been slapping away at lately.  Maybe I am on to something?  Like, frame them in shadowboxes and put a hefty price on them?  I actually like mine a lot better than most that I saw, and got some dandy ideas, too.  What a way to live this is.  What grace.

Hit me with your best shot...

Not only did I step WAY outside my comfort zone and join a local Center for the Arts (in my hometown, actually), where the artists are all de riguer and ever so edgy, but I am entering a show they are having next week.  It is a Salon event, and they will be covering the walls floor to ceiling with paintings in a great mosaic of art.  Members hang first, so we get the prime eye-level locations, and I will be there bright and early to hand my Cow Love piece which I created especially for this event.  You see, I worried that my pastels would fade and get lost in the melee, so I wanted something you couldn't miss in the crowd.  And now, I am worried that you can't miss it, and it is not up to snuff, and what was I thinking anyway?  Ah, tender little artist ego.  Frankly, no one went tsk tsk when I filled out my form and handed over my check to join this prestigious group of artists in a tiny podunk town in Northern California.  I am a real artist, as far as THEY are concerned.  Now to begin to believe it myself.  Ready to sign it and send it forth hoping someone will fall in love with it.  Of course, it is not exactly what I had in mind when I started it.  Paintings often have their own ideas, you know.  Love it when that happens.

I don't know what I'm doing...

...I'm just doing something.  Channeling Jackson Pollack.  This piece looked kind of angry in the beginning, and then I softened it a little.  It is a reflection of my inner landscape, where I am still an artist in the bud, hoping to bloom soon.  Please.

Automatic painting...

Still in the what-the-hell-who-gives-a-hoot mode here in the little yellow house, where the yards languish and the dogs lay at my feet quizzically wondering if I will remember to feed them that day.  This morning, I made the decision to not go anywhere, hence I am currently clothed in my favorite paint-splatted jeans and one of my thrift store shirts, thinking about my next move.  I could go out and rake.  Raking is not all that horrid; it is picking up the piles that is a bitch.  I have finally devised a system; I take an old wastepaper basket that lost its pop-up lid, lay it on its side and scoop it full of leaves to dump in the yard waste bin.  The whole operation takes about an hour, and gets me all sweaty even on cool days, so it is a good thing to be in my grubs, because I can be impulsive and wind up ruining some garment I actually liked.  You can see from my current oeuvre that I am mellowing a little, colors getting a little softer, some direction to the piece, at least.  This is so much fun, not having any investment in the outcome, just worshiping the process.  Of course, for every one I put up for the world to see, there are three or four languishing in obscurity.  That's okay.  I learn something from every piece that comes up off the paper.  Most of all, I am learning how to spend the energy generated by my grief in a way that does not hurt anyone, even me.  Art therapy rocks.

What it feels like to be me, today...

It is one year from the day I walked with the Boo into the emergency vet, only to have to put him down four hours later.  I am sad and angry and kind of all over the place at the moment, as you can see.  Need more black pigment.  Crazy world.  Someone, at the art supply store for God's sake, nailed it.  Boo was my "soul dog".  Punk and the Pickle are sweet and marvelous company, but they will never fill the vacancy left in my heart when Boo died.  So I will keep slapping paint around, wailing a little every so often, and just being all prickly, for a while.

I can do THAT!

Everyday, I get AnArtistADay on my iGoogle homepage, and they do the most kookie stuff, messy, often rather dismal stuff.  And as the anniversary of Boo's death approaches, I put away my pastels, which were getting picky and not any fun, and got out the acrylics and Bristol paper, and started slapping.  If I get really audacious, I will frame these little messes, put a hefty pricetag on them, and run 'em up the flagpole, see if they fly.  Why the hell not?  So, voila!  The anniversary series begins!

The greeting card imperative...

I have been singularly unhappy with my pastel ability lately  In fact, I put them away for a while.  But not before doodling up this little ditty, the first one created specifically for a card.  Dear friend is having her first baby, so I perused my body of work for a suitable image to print on her card (I seldom buy greeting cards any more, preferring my own images).  Well, there were some that I could have used, but none that spun my beany.  So here is the effort, not too coy or sugary, she is not that kind of person, but still full of that motherlove that I think all mothers share.  Fathers, they are a different story, for sure.  Anyhoo, now have the acrylics on the drawing board, slapping away at paper like I did a year ago, when Boo died so suddenly.  Feeling like I need to get even more heavy-handed than usual.  It's about catharsis.  Changing.  Again.

Aw, gee, cut it out!

I seem to be the victim of a vengeful HP.  First, I was scrupulous in putting out my trash bins (I just paid that freakiin' garbage company their exorbitant fee, which other old folks, who live the CITY, get for 1/3 the cost), and they skipped my yard waste can.  Really indignant here.  I need it empty!  I am planning on major yard work this week!  Then, my new phone, the one I just love and adore, locked itself up and refuses to unlock.  This means a trip to Best Buy to bother those sweet guys in the cellphone area, again.  Nuts.  And, after enduring many months of very irritating reminders that popped up EVERYWHERE, I finally renewed my RegCure license (they had a sale of RegCure Pro, real deal), and it refuses to load on my computer.  Now have to call them and trudge through a plethora of steps so I can correct all those errors on my disk that the now defunct program said I had.  Give me a break.  And my new camera, a Samsung, like my phone, came with the manual on a disk, and needs Adobe Reader to decode, and that is not working, either.  I think the technology fairy has taken a dump here in the little yellow house.  So I said hell with it, and painted for a while.  Not sure I like him, but he was fun to diddle with for an afternoon.  He will wind up in the pile soon, the one I keep for paintings that I need to review before I finish them.  My mentor calls that the "second easel".  I just call it the pile.  Tomorrow will be another day.  Maybe I will get my phone back.  Maybe the bin will be emptied.  I don't know.  It's always a surprise.

A hardware success story...

Okay, this is embarrassing.  The chain broke off my closet light about a year ago.  I fumed a little, then began screwing and unscrewing the light bulb to see into the darkness and preclude any faux-pas like arriving with two different shoes on, which has happened to me and no one bought the story that it was the latest from New York.  And the other day, when I was trying to unscrew the light bulb, this thing popped out of the socket.  I looked at it and thought, Holy filament, Batman!  I could probably get a new one of these at OSH!  So today I put the whole thing into my purse.  This saves me from trying to describe what I need.  I just hold it up and say "I need a new one of these".  Once, I managed to fix my toilet that way.  Well, the first aisle I was directed to was not the one I needed.  And, after perusing the infinity of items that come under the label of "lighting", I asked someone else.  What I needed was around the corner.  I am always proud of myself when I solve one of these little life dilemmas.  I was going to pay a handyman to come in and do this for me, along with some other little repairs, but gee, I fixed this one for under $4.  Oh, wait, I have yet to screw it in and try it out.  That is another chapter in the never-ending uphill battle with this cruel, cruel world.

Love on leaf-blower day...

Absolute cacophony happening here.  Punkin is laying at my feet, and we are both blown away by the noisiness of Thursday afternoon in the neighborhood.  I already did my compliment of whining and sniveling earlier, so I just have to suck it up, I guess.  Last night, a friend shared with me that she was pooch-sitting the daddy of a new litter, and that soon, when she was grown-up enough, one of the pups would be her very own.  And she was amazed by how much sweetness this little guy brought into her otherwise solitary life.  And I thought surprise, surprise, surprise.  Non-pet owners have no idea what they are missing.  These small (or medium, or large, or gigantic) sweet creatures provide warmth and laughter and just plain company for we solitaires who have given up on a life partner (or, like me, have tried on a variety and decided phooey, I'd rather just be myself for the rest of this existence).  Sadly, our companions will probably leave us too soon, but for the time they are here, they are totally present.  I went out for a little while this morning, about two hours altogether, and the joy at the front door on my return was a celebration, for sure.  And, burdened as I was with my huge Costco bag, and my ultra-large purse (gave up on the hella-cute teensy one, I need much more STUFF than that one can handle), I was still touched by the love that poured out even before I put the key in the lock.  Oh, and here is the 13th white horse.  Thinking of moving on to dark horses now, having explored all the vicissitudes of white ones.  Plus, white pastels pretty chewed up here.  Another trip to Blick is in the near future.  Yay.

Portrait of my youth...

It is interesting to me that so many people do not believe in God.  I look at all the wondrous creatures that share our little podunk planet, and think we are so blessed.  This is one creature that made us what we are today.  Without the horse, we would have been stuck in the hunter-gatherer stage a whole hell of a lot longer, for sure.  And they are such gentle things, so strong and powerful, yet fragile, too.  This one reminds me of Bridget (named after Bardot, herself), a palomino my steady's Mom got for herself when I had usurped her big gelding on the weekend romps around our lovely countyside.  Bridget came from the glue factory, literally.  Rescue horse.  And she was just fine, that little filly, even if she did pronate rather alarmingly, and occasionally, just run in the opposite direction.  My mount, Big Fella (lack of imagination has never been my problem, but I didn't name him), a strawberry roan about 70 feet high, loved going up hills and often took them in amazingly big leaps.  However, downhill scared him, so we were always in the rear of the parade.  Ah, the teenaged days of being saddle sore.  I remember them well.