“Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous – ‘I don’t know.’” -Wislawa Szymborska

The above piece is mixed media on birch panel, sanded, more paints, scraped, sanded and finished with a layer of beeswax and then scraped again and finished with some oil paints. Lots of fun to make! I’ve surprised myself. I truly thought I would experience a lot of regret in selling my wheel when actually it feels like I’ve laid down a burden. Painting feels so much more natural. I think I’ve always wanted to paint but never thought I could. I love Eric Carle’s new book, The Artist Who Painted A Blue Horse. It’s the story of a boy who starts out saying he’s an artist – but by the end of the book he says he’s a ‘good’ artist.

That’s my journey right now. For me to think of myself as good - for me to feel at peace with what I do. Right now I sing with the knowledge that nothing is expected of me except what I expect of myself. I don’t want to impose any limitations on myself or from the outside world – but to say ‘I am an artist’ – even to write it it makes me uneasy. I think that’s because we have the definition of ‘an artist’ wrong. To me an artist has no choice. They have a need to spin their work out of themselves. It’s not about good or bad. It’s about expressing a passion – not everyone has that need. And it’s only our human condition of always wanting ‘to please’ that keeps us from be able to work from a true place – always thinking we’re not good enough or looking at what others do in order ‘to judge’ ourselves. Am I a good artist? It can’t be about that or we won’t be able to work from our own spirits. We would just fall prey to being what others want us to be.

Well with all that being said, it’s still fun and inspiring to see what others are doing with their passions.

photo: Judy Shreve

I finally joined Pinterest. I’m not sure what’s going on there yet or how to participate, but I’ve been able to create a couple of boards and follow a few people. I’m stumbling though and hope to get caught up soon.  I’ve tried – but not succeeded – to spend less time online. This morning I was reading a blog I love and in her post today she listed links to what she participates in and encouraged folks to connect. I would love to do that and go a step further. I’d like you to post your links in the comments. That way we will be able to connect and support each other. I love my blog list, but I’d love to see what else you are doing. (Let me know if some of these links don’t work.)

Here’s my list:

1. Tumblr
2. Flickr
3. Facebook
4. Pinterest

“Our beliefs about what we are and we can be precisely determine what we can be.” Anthony Robbins

Mixed media – acrylics, water color, collage elements.

“Make for yourself a world you can believe in. It sounds simple, I know, but it’s not. Listen. There are a million worlds you could make for yourself. Everyone you know has a completely different one. Sure there are overlaps, but only in the details. Some people make their worlds around what they think reality is like. They convince themselves that they had nothing to do with their worlds’ creations and continuations. Some make their worlds without knowing it.” -Jonathon Safran Foer

I did get a chance to start my work in my newest online class on color. I took all of my acrylics and painted a swatch on transparent sheets. (There is white paper behind the transparency for photographing.)

I have labeled each color. Now today I will take each of these colors and on card stock, blend them with other colors to see all the possibilities. I want to know my paints so well so that I will be able to reach for what I need more intuitively. When I paint I like to move my head out of the way – it has to come from my heart.

 “No one else but you can make your marks. Listen to your bones. Speak with your spirit. Edit with your head. Live with your heart.” -S. Holland

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive and it is only by this meeting that the new world is born.” -Anais Nin

I picked up my new car on Thursday and what do you need to do when you get a new car? Take a road trip – of course. Bob, Watson & I went to visit some friends of ours in Augusta who I’ve been friends with for 45 years! It’s hard to imagine being that old – let alone having friends for so long. These two women have seen the best of me – and the worst of me. We share so many stories together that our husbands don’t even ask what we’re talking about anymore. The couple we stayed with have two Great Danes and this weekend her son’s dog was there – Tonka – who is part wolf. Poor Watson – when we first got there, he tried so hard to be invisible – but you know dogs have to sniff so by the end of the weekend Watson was doing his puppy thing – jumping and batting at their tails.

“Contrast is everything. Color doesn’t read until you put another color next to it. For example, when you place what you think is true red on a neutral background, the red looks warmer when you put crimson next to it. When you put red-orange next to the red, the red appears cooler. But if you put green beside red, both colors seem more intense. Every time you add a color to a composition, you change all the relationships.” -Nita Leland.

I am starting my new online acrylic class: Color – Beyond the Basics. I registered weeks ago, but today will be the first time I’ll have a chance for uninterrupted time in my studio. And I can’t wait! In this class, I will take all of my acrylic colors and paint a small swatch on transparencies – label them and from that know what is in my color library. Since it is done on transparent sheets, I can use them on top of a painting in progress to see what color I want to use. I will also take each color and make blend sheets on card stock. I will mix my colors 1:1 with white, tan, black, metallics, and each other, so I can learn just how many colors I have available and how best to use them. I will also make color wheels with my existing paints. These lessons are part of the first few classes – and we will do all of these exercises before going on to painting.

“I know now that I must keep working. It’s not only the work, but the time alone in the studio that refuels me.” -Judy Shreve

This is my first attempt at a larger canvas. I have one piece that was 18×10, but the majority of my two dimensional work up to this point has been 8×8 – 12×12. This one is 24×24. It was hard to photograph because it doesn’t fit in my photo cube.

I enjoy making folk art but sometimes it feels like it comes from my head and not my heart. My husband says that it comes from a deep place – deeper than my heart – a deeply buried whimsical spot that I missed in my childhood. My childhood was overstrained by too much responsibility from an alcoholic father – an air force pilot/officer – who ordered us around like little soldiers and sadly my mom was unable to fill our house with the joy and laughter needed to make up for his overbearingness.

I am still finding my voice with paints. I know I lose myself in my abstract work. That work for me is like writing a poem – it’s what makes me feel as if I am digging deep. All I really know is through my painting and writing I hope to discover how to see myself from a perspective that would allow me to see myself whole – integrated in my own eyes. It is about digging deep and telling my story from my place – my heart.

I shouldn’t be so serious or think so hard about any of this but just work from the joy of getting out a new panel and my paints and starting all over again on a fresh canvas!

“When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.” -Buddha

Love’s Measure

Our gifts of attention show where our

hearts belong

in that first moment

in quiet stillness

 transcendence is always possible

in any living moment

we can know love

the secret lies in listening with your heart

and discovering

our hearts belong to the world

only in this measure

do we find true peace

When I first started blogging in 2003, I only worked in clay, so most of my readers were potters. I am happy to know a lot of these people still visit even though I haven’t touched clay in almost a year. Because blogging isn’t just about the medium you work in – it’s also about life, family, struggles and successes – and developing friendships. What’s great about the blogging format is it offers an opportunity to explore all the things that interest us as artists – with others. Blogging seems to strengthen that sense of being part of both something personal and something universal. It takes the journaling idea and expands it through visitor’s comments creating a valuable dialog that connects us to each other no matter where we live.

Being awarded this Versatile Blogger thing means I should also award it to 6 other bloggers and tell you 7 things about me you might not know. I will share a few of my secrets but I’m not passing the award along because most of the folks I would choose have already received the award.

As a way to share more of who I am, here are 7 pictures of things that bring me happiness and a few silly facts too.

I love where I live. We had lived in Florida for almost twelve years before moving to GA seven years ago. We are about 25 miles north of Atlanta. All through high school and college I worked in garden shops. I have a ficus tree that is about 18 feet tall that I have had for 28 years.

I love folk art and have quite a number of pieces throughout my house.

My son Luke who is adopted (I was in the room when he was born) turns 21 next month. Nothing has brought me more joy than the 21 years of being his mom!

I was born in Tokyo Japan – my dad was a pilot in the Air Force.

My mom was engaged to another man – met my dad, married him 3 months later and celebrated 57 years together before my dad passed away.

I am the middle daughter of three girls. That was hard – lol.

Since I didn’t pass this along to other folks – I will at least encourage everyone to share a little about themselves on their blogs today.

“Listen to your life – see it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness; touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it – because in the last analysis – all moments are key moments and life itself is grace.” -Frederick Beuchner

“In the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.” -Rachel Naomi Remen

I started working on my large folk art piece. This is a 24″x 24″ birch panel – the beginning of the background. I will sand and reapply paints until I feel it’s ready for my artwork. I hope to show this piece in steps – if I remember to take my camera to my studio which is a mess -

I have my acrylics scattered everywhere. I’ve also begun a new online acrylic’s class, ‘Color‘ with Julie Pritchard and Chris Cozen. The class requires that I create swatches of all my paint colors on transparencies and then use the colors on top of book pages in an organized fashion to begin mixing colors for opaqueness and then blends. This is something I really need to do. Then we will make color wheels before we actually begin painting.

Being so busy in my studio has brought me lots of joy lately and it made me wonder why being busy in my studio brings joy while being busy cleaning house doesn’t. When I’m in my studio, I’m seeing everything through my heart first. I believe it’s in those first moments of looking that you truly see – before your thinking mind can label or judge. When I’m hurrying through housework or grocery shopping, errands, I’m motivated only from the urge to get things done. It’s this impatience that keeps me from really seeing.

So that makes me think it must take a conscious shift to see joy – and I think learning to see with joy is the beginning of creativity. For me to do my best work, I need to know that I won’t be interrupted – I need to create an ‘oasis’ from the frenzy in my life. My studio is my place of refuge and I know I can achieve that boundary of space and time there – but can I achieve that creative state in everything I do? Is that even possible? Don’t you agree that creativity comes from our subconscious? And can we teach it to be more receptive or does it take a certain mood? – a training that comes from creating a ‘start and finish’ time to play for that to occur? Am I training my mind by going into my studio everyday whether I feel creative or not? What do you think? As an artist, I think we get the best from ourselves by pretending nothing we do is actually work.

Here’s one of my daily interruptions. Watson always finds a treasure when he goes out. Sometimes he tries to hide whatever it is in his mouth so he can bring it in. I physically check him every time. It’s a big clue when I try and give him a treat and he won’t open his mouth. You can tell from this expression – he’s not going to get this pine cone through the door:

” . . .and above all watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” -Roald Dahl

I’ve taken some new work to Galerie Matilda in Roswell (GA). Matilda’s is a fabulous folk art gallery on Canton Street – right in the middle of lots of wonderful restaurants and shops. I am so happy to be in this gallery because Canton Street is always busy. Mary Potter and her husband Mark opened a folk art gallery in Alpharetta in the late 1990′s but when a store front opened on Canton Street a year or so ago, they moved their gallery to Roswell. They maintain the Alpharetta location and it still has a small gallery but their main focus there is bluegrass/folk music.

But I digress. I had a chance to talk about my work with Mary yesterday. I value her opinion because she has been involved with folk artists for a very long time. I won’t bore you with all the details – but she has encouraged me to work big! The pieces above are 12×12 and can actually hang together, but Mary felt I could sell more if my paintings were larger. I am nervous about starting something so large. I already have a few panels made 24×30. They’ve been in my studio for months. Why does approaching a large canvas feel so intimidating?

I’m also torn between working with abstract painting and my folk art. I certainly can do both but each requires such a different mind-set. Here’s a couple of other pieces I took to Matilda’s. The barn painting is done on plaster and the cube is earthenware clay.

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” -Edgar Degas

“With each painting I create, I come closer to a subconscious ideal. Yet, this is a fleeting gesture – I no sooner finish a painting than I want to move on – forward in my yearning for the ideal. No one can help us through it – or to it; it must be discovered for ourselves and by ourselves.” -Diane McGregor

I think I’ve already mentioned many times how much I am enjoying this acrylics class. It’s somewhat amazing to be able to take an online painting class and still get the level of instruction and encouragement that I’ve gotten in this class.

The View From Here

It’s lovely growing older

meeting each moment

with everything that has shaped us

now more our own true self

we’ve learned

through sadness and happiness

and with great courage

to fully live

 all soul and mind

our hearts opened – examined

and the wisdom of knowing

the joys of life have nothing to do with age.

“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.” -Thoreau

I’m so excited. I ordered a new mini this weekend. This will be my third Mini. First I had a British green Mini Cooper S and next – which I currently drive – is a Chocolate Cooper S Clubman. Well now I’m upgrading to the new Countryman – still a Mini S.

The Countryman actually has a real backseat and four doors and a proper cargo area. I looked at Hondas, Nissans, Mazdas and the Volkswagen – all the small crossover SUV’s – but I’m just in love with the Minis. Right now this one is on a ship – ‘The Florida Highway’ – heading from Germany and should dock in Brunswick GA on February 9 which means I will probably be driving this baby on Valentines Day! Can’t wait. A fun thing about this car is I can get a (free) app for my iPhone that interfaces with my Mini called ‘MiniConnected.’ It has a Facebook and Twitter interface which pops up on the navigation screen. I can watch videos and listen to Pandora radio, read my incoming emails, news or RSS feeds – and I can even google specific places and get the address to load in the nav system. How cool is that? Above is the actual picture of my car – that I built on the mini website. It’s fun to build your own mini – go try it! Mine has the sports package, premium package, and the technology package. Fun fun fun!

I did finish my next lesson in my acrylics class. This class has two instructors: Julie Pritchard and Chris Cozen. Both are working Golden (acrylics) artists. It’s nice to have two different styles of painting shown in each of the class lessons. My last piece was from the video from Julie’s lesson and the above piece is from Chris’ video – both on embedding objects into our artwork. Chris’ work is organic and Julie’s much more abstract. I’ve completed nine lessons so far and already I’m much more comfortable blending colors.

I have an appointment Wednesday with one of my galleries to take in some new two-dimensional work. Hope I can start selling more – I need more supplies!

It’s Monday morning – again. I’ll do a little yoga and then head to my studio. These days I stop late afternoons to take a long walk along the river with Watson. Hope everyone has a great week!