LIVING CREATIVELY
The Guarded Heart
My heart cools to gardening tasks before the weather does. At some point I start calculating the cost to profit ratio of weeding and choose slacking off. It’s not that I don’t love my garden, it’s more that tending to it becomes less about growing and more about maintaining.
And maintenance ain’t particularly sexy.
I do take advantage of the situation, however. I pillage and plunder its bounty. Bouquets abound throughout the house and bits and flecks of herbs bring life to my cooking.
And...
Playing Hooky
I’ve been playing hooky this summer.
Instead of painting, I indulged myself and did a lot of tinkering in the garden. My time there was rewarded with zinnias and dahlias taller than me, and weeds that strived to be the same. I battled yellow jackets, mosquitos and biting flies and came out relatively unscathed.
The past few years, various obstacles have stymied my annual plan to get myself out there so this year I made it a priority. I had longed for a summer of leisure, of getting my hands...
On the Dock
I have only grainy black and white photographs of my sisters and I with some of our cousins. I was too young to have memories of my own as we stopped seeing many of them shortly thereafter. It wasn’t until I was an adult that we started anew.
Summers at the lake will certainly be firm in the minds of these five cousins: days floating on the lake, boat rides and barbecues. Mosquito bites and pajama parties.
Days near the water make for lovely memories. I have my own, whether on the water...
Looking For the Dawn
With new eyes (or at least new lenses in them) I approached this painting with new vigor. Determined to get it done quickly (that’s a relative concept in my studio) I dug in and got it done in time to hopefully get it showing in at least one of the spring shows that are coming down the pike.
For inspiration I returned to my late summer garden when the nasturtiums take over, crawling over pathways and through tall stalks of zinnias. Their brilliant flowers and pea green foliage brightened my...
Reflections
I always hoped to capture my grandkids’ lives on canvas as they were lived. It was easy to find moments when they were little, but I as they grew, I worried that so too would their reticence to be willing victims.
Apparently, my fears were unfounded.
* * *
My eldest grandson’s texts are brief and to the point. A representative selection:
Send pic of you for profile on contacts
Hi
Spider-Man PS5 controller that is $80 or less
R u picking me up
The demise of punctuation...
Full House
This painting has taken ridiculously long to complete. Yes, there was lots to it but then again not. It’s been something of a Zen experience, repeating petals but with variations. Each one different. What, at first glance looked like a simple coral zinnia turns out to be, instead, a zinnia of many colors. I started it on September 8. I finished it this morning. Sheesh.
But that’s not what delayed my work.
I’ve been sifting through my possessions, tossing, keeping and reorganizing. I’ve painted...
A Happy Little Flower
There have been many people and places in my life that have made me happy.
I’m so grateful to have been born into a loving, stable family and have been granted so many gifts flowing out of that simple event that I’m embarrassed to recount them all. I did absolutely nothing, just flopped out of my mother’s belly one day and there it was.
Over my many years of my life I have had the pleasure to meet people along that the way that have brought joy into my life. That's not to say there haven’t...
Girls
There has been no shortage of girls in my life. Afterall, I was born a girl and am now a woman, a rather older woman hoping to continue getting older for at least a while.
I had a mother and I’ll take a wild guess and say that you have or had one as well. But I was also born into a family with three girls, me being the fourth (and no brothers). And, at one time seven aunts (though two died in childhood). I had 10 female cousins but only two lone male cousins. Already there’s a surplus of females...
Stargazer
I had the great good fortune to have spent a month near Jackson Hole in my last two summers before teen-hood. My parents dropped me off at Union Station with some fellow campers from Southern California and waved us goodbye.
On the trip north we saw the back alleys and rear entrances of businesses in cities and towns big and small. We roamed the train as it lumbered through dunes and chaparral, annoying the porters and buying tuna sandwiches in the club car. As we ventured further, we snuck...
Flowers for Mother
It was an inevitability.
The Hallmark cards never captured the experience. Every year they asked me what I wanted for Mother’s Day. And every day I said the same thing...I wanted nothing except for a day without conflict. No breakfast in bed. No reservations at a local restaurant. No fancy jewelry or clothes. No crying, no arguments, no tattling.
Just a nice day with those I loved best, my children. Ah, a mother can dream.
It started with some cards and devolved from there. I think it...