Homework! My therapist gives homework!

Well, we did a sand tray.   Now, I am committed to the process with this psychologist, he knows what he is doing.  And yet, this was ever so uncomfortable, playing with action figures in an oversized catbox.  My first attempt was all about animals, and their relevance to my personna, like I love frog medicine, cleansing, and oh, eagle is one of my totems.  Whee.  Next, nitty gritty time, with people.  Me, of course, and I was Cinderella.  Mother stood in front of me, her back toward me, the Queen, arms extended to protect her two little princes, and her dog.  No King in sight.  Really sad.  Yet, Ian said Cinderella did get the glass slipper, so go home and paint one.  Here it is.  This is my third attempt.  It was like I just couldn't get the proportions of the shoe correctly drawn on the paper.  This is a mixed media effort.  I forgot how fuzzy charcoal gets, so I sharpened it up with 6B graphite and a little Conte, too.  It became more of a tongue-between-the-teeth art project rather than an expression of my existential angst.  Though, maybe that is it.  If I get it just right, my prince will come and ride off with me into that eternal sunset of bliss.  Not happening at the moment.  No, not at all.  But I have this nifty glass slipper.

A bird for the new year...

I hadn't painted in so long, I doubted my ability to do it.  Old paintings looked so very complicated, like, how the hell did I do THAT?  So I chose my favorite subject, tiny bird, and sort of diddled for a few moments.  This is an arctic bird, really tiny.  Imagine, little things like this living in that hellishly cold place.  HP has such interesting ideas.  So, goodbye 2012, year of the anti-depressant, year of therapy, 23rd year of sobriety.  I have cut back, leaving behind one sponsee that wasn't working out for me, and ending a service commitment.  Now committed to healing, which is a longer process now that I am so very, very old.  I find it hard to get excited about very much at this age, though my recent automobile drama kind of tweaked me for a while.  I bent a wheel hitting a curb, in Oakland, land of the most convoluted freeways in the known universe, in the dark, in the rain, and thought, after a perusal, that all was fine.  So I drove home, while the shocks were ever so merrily eating my front tire.  The dogs were with me, it poured in Biblical proportions, and we arrived home, all safe and with a minimum of fuss, considering.  It wasn't until I looked at it the next day that I noticed that, instead of a 90 degree angle with the ground, the wheel was canted at about 85 degrees.  That looked expensive.  After a lot of logistics, and about $1,200 it is fixed.  I think that HP does not think I can handle money, since it just seems to melt away.  Sigh.  Could have been much worse.  Grateful, and planning on paying much better attention.  In the New Year.

Love on the hoof...

Here is my daughter and son-in-law's new poopie, Roux.  It is such fun watching them loving this dog.  They just got their first house, you know.  Nesting so sweetly.  Ah, I remember those days.  Except there were already four kids, one of mine and three of his, and the quiet nesting never happened.  Well, now it is.  I am happily nested here with the Pickle and the Punkin, and no one to ask "what's for dinner" or "where are you going" and "when will you get back".  Just the little yellow house, with its resident mice scurrying around in the night time, and furry barking machines, currently on their daily patrol of the fence in the backyard.   I think a cup of candy cane tea is in order.  Yes.

Wainting for that call from the MOMA...

Hell, if Joan Mitchell can hang there, why not I?  Going in circles, figuratively and literally, it would seem.  A long, long time ago, a friend recommended art therapy.  All painting classes were filled, so I wound up in Low Fat Fiction, a writing class centered around economy of words, very fun, but also very cerebral, left brained as it were.  This is all right brain, this messing around with paint.  And it is best when there is no seminal idea associated with it.  It is best when it just emerges from the action of palette knife and paint with the paper.  You might notice that there is often more than one pigment on the knife at any given moment.  This comes from the impatience of the painter, not wanting to stop to wipe off the knife before picking up that next pigment that just seems to belong right THERE.  Wild and crazy woman, here, pushing my comfort zone, wanting to experience flying free of all the conventional art out there.  I think this one is about rising out of the murk.  At least its orientation at the moment suggests that.  I think I actually painted it upside down.  Ah, that is the beauty of abstraction, isn't it?  Wouldn't it be heaven if I could view my life from the same perspective, better upside down than right side up? 

Long time, no blog...

What can I say?  Turmoil, very little of anything happening at this moment.  Still in PJs, it is 12:30 PM, bed not made, laundry languishing in dryer, dogs wondering if they will be eating today.  Oh, and camera not uploading photos.  Where is that damned disc, anyway?  Looks like an opportunity to dust the bookshelf over the computer desk.  Piano is looking pretty fuzzy, too.  Depression sucks, in case you didn't know that.  Therapy is OK, though not fond of beating the couch with a tennis racket.  Cannot seem to discipline myself in any aspect of life at the moment.  Now on the hook for a dessert this holiday.  Really.  Me, bake?  Well, it may happen.  I could get out recipe for lemon bars.  Those are easy and always come out just fine.  Sounds like a plan to me.  A plan is always a good thing.  Painting here displayed had no plan, just came up all by itself, and it is a depiction of the hole I feel in the middle of my being.  Funny, I am not lonely.  Just kind of lost.  Ian, my shrink, thinks I have misplaced my power.  Did I ever have any? 

New normal, sigh...

Struggling to return to center, which seems a long way away at the moment.  Antidepressant has ceased its side-effect mode, now is up to snuff and the cowwoman is feeling okay.  Different, but okay.  Meanwhile, life has been sort of like this painting, chaotic.  Punkin got a foxtail in his tear duct, had to be sedated to get it removed.  It was 1 1/2 inches long.  Don't know how he does it, but if there is trouble, Punk will find it.  Cowwoman had a tooth pulled yesterday.  Ouch.  And I ordered another humane mousetrap to replace the one I wore out after catching 13 mice in it, and strangely, caught 7 mice in the little cubes that have sat there for months.  Dogs caught one in the wastepaper basket under the computer desk, too.  That brings total to 23 so far.  We have been a regular mouse motel here in the little yellow house.  Now looking for strong body to move the stove so I can clean under it.  Just hoping that is all of those little suckers.  Cute, dirty little suckers.  So, taking this painting to therapy tomorrow, part of a chronology of expression for the past year.  Kind of interesting, really. Looking for health in the midst of this turmoil.  It's in there.  Somewhere.

Reimagined Punkin, reimagined life, sigh...

Well, it was time.  Punk got shorn because I noticed little mats balling up here and there that no amount of brushing were going to eliminate.  And cowwoman got antidepressants for the same reason.  Have not even been painting, much less cleaning up the yard of shame or decluttering the house.  Inert, that's me.  Oh, and THERAPY, too.  No use just covering up the mess.  And what a delight that is.  First question:  what exactly is being covered up?  Well, let's just cut to the chase, guy.  The road to happiness is full of detours and pitfalls.  Punkin was here to be my guardrail.  When he was little, life was all about the PUPPY.  It rained a lot.  The routine was take the puppy out, dry the puppy off, feed the puppy, repeat.  In between it was WHERE'S THE PUPPY!  Now he goes in and out and eats whenever all by his little self.  And he is still worth watching, especially if I want to know where my other shoe could be, which is usually on the back psuedo-lawn.  So, a new journey for the cowwoman.  This has been a recurring theme in my life, probably because I have great coping skills as well as a high threshold for pain of any kind.  I can suffer along just magnificently.  NOT. ANY. MORE.

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.