wishing you

many blessings...

. . .

i've been gluing and writing a lot, and swimming in books of an esoteric nature. and sleeping.


i put my old collages in a new, BIG book (just taped one on each page), and started some new ones. more ripping and less cutting will be involved. more painting and it looks like more writing. feeling the need to get down closer to the nitty gritty.

i'm leaving tomorrow to spend thanksgiving with friends... i'll be back early next week.


thank you for your visits and comments these last months... i am grateful...

XO

slowing down...

i feel like a set of gears that turns more slowly every day. every day a little less sun, every day digging in a little deeper. every day one day closer to the day i love most, the winter solstice. when the veils are thin and magic is just... right... there. i wonder about blogging this next month as each day feels quieter and quieter, but tell myself to take one day at time and BE with it. whatever...


our son was home for a visit on sunday, and we walked up to a place called kelly springs together. the forest service has put a concrete tank here to fill up with water for the animals. i love that humans have put a water tank in the middle of the forest for animals.




you could almost touch the quiet.


this is what the creek looks like now. the cairn has fallen, but most of the other rocks are still in place. and the water's cold! every fall i take out my most cherished rocks so they won't get washed away in winter's high water. i made sure i did this before i left for virginia while the water was still somewhat friendly to bare feet. now i get to wait and see what rocks are with me in the spring. everything will be washed flat. i love this...

the sun is so low it's shining directly in the art room windows -- everything is illuminated...

and

quieter

and quieter

and quieter...

a week of women

one of the first things that i did last week was paint over a face that i'd torn out of a magazine. i'd read about the exercise in randi feuerhelm-watts' "wide open" and was anxious to start...



this is randi's example -- doesn't it just make you wanna give it a whirl?! the idea is to separate the face into sections of light and dark, painting the lighter areas first, paying attention to shades and shadows. right then. i marked the sections off with a permanent marker and had at it... not!! all i can say is that the process resembled (something like) patting my stomach and rubbing my head at the same time. i could NOT get it -- the model looked like she'd contracted a weird but very colorful skin disease. after a half hour or so i decided that i could either a.) paint the entire page white and do something else, or b.) forget about what i was supposed to be doing and intuitively pick up colors and paint. i went with 'b' and within seconds i couldn't stop painting -- i KNEW where i wanted everything to go.

i learned a lot about acrylics and layering doing this. it's hard to describe, but somehow it gave me a sense of how bottom layers peek through even though you don't intend it to happen when you're painting later layers. which sounds really elementary, but somehow doing this really made me get it.


then i went back to a page that i started in virginia but never finished. i gave it a couple of coats of paint and started over. yeah, she was wearing that hat and feather in the magazine "W" -- irresistible! i'm not quite happy with the page but not feeling like i want to hang around and fuss with it either.


then i painted the page opposite 'the dreamer'. half of this journal is made with st. armand watercolor paper, and half with arches 140# rough watercolor paper. this is a st. armand page... i can hardly resist painting with watercolors on this paper because it's a dream to paint on.


what? who's she and what's she doing here?!


it's ms. le reux... i have a feeling she was sent by virgo incorporated (or some such agency) to keep an eye on those crazy colorful women... what's that you say? lynne used colors with names like 'wine and roses', 'bolivian blue', and 'english lavender' for your skin alone? pfffft. you're not so virgo, ms. le reux...

about the paper ms. le reux is painted on... roxanne gave me two pieces of heavy beige watercolor paper that originally belonged to her mother. it was was pure joy to paint on and had the sweetest energy... thank you, roxanne!

acts of love and beauty

sometime in september jacky wrote and asked if i'd be interested in swapping tree flags with dneese (aka grrl) and her. yes! of course! i sent mine off before i left for virginia... what i received from each of these incredible women floored me.


dneese's arrived first... the stamps alone sent me into paroxysms of joy...


inside was far more than a tree flag. a bundle of fabric,


guerilla art tags and stickers (many),

and a big, GORGEOUS tree flag. there was tremendous love and power in this package. the one thing i kept thinking about (for days) was the power of love and generosity. it can move mountains.


jacky's arrived next... there was such attention to detail in jacky's package, the photos don't begin to convey this... the care and love was palpable.


there were stamps, echidna quills (these i think i love more than bones), an art gallery guide (full of cool art), a porcelain doll's head from germany, and native grasses.


these grasses moved me to tears. when someone 'gets' you, the world shifts a little. each of the grasses was lovingly wrapped in brown paper and stuck between the pages of the gallery guide. the gallery guide protected them on their trip across the ocean.


and her beautiful tree flag. soon i'll go to mt. shasta and hang both of these flags... i want this aussie tree love flying from the most powerful place i know.

dneese and jacky, thank you...


so happy to know such brilliant poets.

art, travel...

and more peter beard...


saturday our art group got together in ashland, oregon. i drove to roxanne's home near klamath falls and she drove from there. the light was stunning until klamath falls... from there it was foggy, then rainy, then snowy. these are my favorite pics, taken while driving north on highway 139.

this mint green house is not far from here... i even like mint green in this light.


just left of center, that highest bump of clouds is mount shasta.


yes, i've shown you this mound/hill/mesa before, but i can't help myself from showing you this latest version. that shape, the sky, the grass in the foreground...


this area is one big field -- everything from mint and garlic, to potatoes and grains. storage silos beside a railroad track...


train cars near the silos.


blue, blue outbuildings... i could eat these! they could be dessert after i finish off that mound above! after this i drove into fog, and that was the end of picture taking...


this is roxanne's art card, traded for the one of mine. she has a most lovely post up with photos of the cards in it. i also have a card from anna, but can't find it anywhere as i write this...


thank you, roxanne...


i started this


and this
in my art group journal while we were together in ashland, and finished them at home later that night. much scraping, digging, and wiping was involved -- i was a woman possessed!


still possessed, this page had to go.


this is its current state... still not done, but i can live with it while i work on the opposite page.

and now...

more pics from the peter beard books. i left all of the images large so you can see some detail if you click on them.


many, many diaries...






i left this image very large so you can get a good look at the diaries here. that's peter leaning over them... and these aren't even all of them. his home in montauk, new york burned to the ground in 1977 and twenty years worth of diaries were burned then. and still, there are all of these...


a close-up. amazing, huh?

.
.
.

on another note, beadedlilly has given me the butterfly award for coolness -- thank you for your kind words, beadedlily -- they mean a lot!


and finally, this is the page with the printed out version of me on it... i don't know if it's done yet, but close. the words are from the book 'oneness', by rasha.

the scent of juniper

and the new peter beard books

but first...



yesterday was an exceptional day... when i stepped outside the usual mix of pine/cedar/juniper/wet earth did not greet my nose. no, it was only the scent of juniper -- a heady scent so strong that it felt like someone'd stuck a sprig of juniper under my nose. i walked around outside -- sniffing and investigating to see whether the phenomenon was all over or in just one spot. it was all over. i went out a little later... still the same juniper saturated air. and two hours after that, still the same. so delicious...


mmmmmm.... can you smell it? finally when i got home from the post office at about 3 p.m., the air had reverted back to it's usual mixture. but what a glorious few hours they were!


this week i've been working on art cards to exchange with our art group. what a challenge to work so small.


they all started out the same -- st. armand paper with a little something glued on, then covered with beige-y shades of acrylic paint.


each one ended up being very different than the others. i'm still working on the fourth one -- gak, it's a good thing i started at the beginning of the week!


taken on the way home from the p.o. yesterday after picking up the peter beard books. yep, that warranted an extra trip to the p.o.


i made sure i took my camera -- with fresh batteries. earlier in the week on our weekly trip to alturas, my camera batteries died before i could capture some of the most brilliant light i've ever seen. fresh camera batteries will accompany me henceforth and herewith!

the peter beard books (preordered in september)... how to describe a set of books that chronicles the life and art of a brilliant diarist and photographer. i've just begun to delve into them.



p.b.'s art with the poetry of stevie smith. carried around in his back pocket for six months - 'the erosion technique'.


a quote by van gogh:

real artists do not depict things as they are after a dry and learned analysis. they portray them as they feel them to be. my great wish is to change and remake reality. I want my works to be inaccurate and anomalous in such a way that they become lies if you like but lies that are more truthful than literal truth.
my mind lights up at all of this...

his photographs make me look even closer... this is amelia drying herself this morning after her morning wander. the camera captured that barely visible pink tongue -- yes!

and looking up from taking pics of the p.b. books on the floor -- my coffee cup, etc.. i think that prior to this morning i would have taken the tissue off the table before i snapped the pic. but my thoughts have shifted after perusing these great, new books. do i want a 'nice' picture or an honest one? an honest one for sure. well, for today anyway... ; )