Crows In The Belfry

Crows everywhere this morning! A group of crows descended on our oak tree this morning, squawking and making such a ruckus they woke me up.

As I peaked out our kitchen window I saw two squirrels making a run for it over our neighbors rooftop. I didn’t see anything else out of the ordinary, so I went back to bed.

Later I met a friend for coffee and we spent some time catching up on whats going on.

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

“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend.”

–Robert Louis Stevenson

In the Studio

Spent the morning working on a painting and I’m almost finished! Hallelujah!

Later I played around with a couple of new ideas I wanted to try.  As with all things, especially related to art, there are no guarantees.

After a couple of hours I finally had one painting which kind of worked for me. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but I had fun creating it

“Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the Phoenix.” – Christina Baldwin

“It’s best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix Bird in you so you can rise from the ashes.” – Anne Baxter

Creative Play

Creative playtime is often one of the most important activities we can engage in as artists. I believe taking the time to play with new ideas, new mediums and color palettes, keeps us in touch with our creative child. After all, our child just wants to have some fun. Taking risks and experimenting is key to our growth and makes us feel alive, and rejuvenated.

We all know that it’s fun to create and make things, and yet we tend to go straight from the idea to the finished painting, without giving ourselves some precious creative goofing around time in the studio.

You know what I mean, maybe your a water-colorist or oil painter, and those pastels you bought way back when, has never been opened . The time for trying something new is now, for later seems to never come.

Go ahead, give yourself permission to goof around with something you have always wanted to try, but never did.

Just Breathe, let go, and flow!

 

 

Edge Dwellers

A couple of years ago while we were flying back from visiting my dad in the Midwest, we were enjoying our flight and took some wonderful aerial shots with our camera.

While sitting in my  window seat watching the landscape below change and shift, cities became tiny islands of humanity in the midst of large expanses of land. The roads appeared as a multitude of tiny web like strands crisscrossing across the land like a giant spider web.

It reminds us that no matter how evolved and technological we become, each of us are only ever a few paces away from the edges of the wild forest and the living storied land.

I wondered what stories would this land  be telling about humanity if the earth could speak, and what would our ancient ancestors make of our world. What kind of stories, art, songs and myths would they create about us.

Edge Dwellers – Combined Media – 5 X 7 inches

Myth Makers

“Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world”. – Joseph Campbell

“The job of the storyteller is to speak the truth. But what we feel most deeply can’t be spoken in words alone. At this level, only images connect. And here, story becomes symbol; symbol is myth. And myth is truth.”  – Alan Garner