Hot Mess

So this morning I get to work and first thing I do is dump half my smoothie all over my desk.  Grr.  My stapler is in the trash now (the only working stapler I had), and I missed the mouse by [this] much.  After the blender incident the other day I am wondering if someone is sending me a message:  STAY AWAY FROM THE SMOOTHIES!

It occurred to me last night that since I paint and cook in essentially the same space, sometimes at the same time, I may inadvertently be creating scratch-and-sniff art.  If so, this hot mess is taco salad:

This one isn't actually a keeper; it really is a hot mess.  Started out as something else entirely, then became something quite cool, then it wasn't as cool when it dried, then I added something that totally wrecked it and when I wiped it off it left a blueish sheen.  All of which, of course, you can see in this lousy photograph, right?  But I bet it smells like taco salad.

Haiku

The rainy, cold weather here (I'm wearing fleece today -- in June) has sapped my desire to pursue anything even remotely creative.  This is sitting on the couch and reading a book weather.  And here is the silver lining:  it is a damn good thing I didn't have a bunch of paintings in the works because they would have been over on THAT side of my kitchen counter.  And yesterday morning there was a little incident involving the blender and a fork.  I won't go into any details (think spinach, chocolate protein powder, etc.); suffice it to say my cabinet doors are all shiny and clean now.

So today I give you this.  Self-portrait in haiku.

I travel through life
with watchful eyes yet silent;
birds cry look at me.

Think about that one.  It's deep.

Huh. That's Weird.

So I don't paint anything new for what, two weeks?  And this is what I get:

Neptune's Sunrise.  Weird, eh?  Then came this one:

I have NO idea what this is, but I call it Monarch Madness. Reminds me of butterflies.

I don't consider these to be the innermost workings of my soul, just interesting texture studies.  I can't tell you the technique I used, however, because that would be giving away all my good secrets.



Connecting the Dots

This is how the dots were connected yesterday:

I figured out what I want to give to my niece for her 8th grade graduation, and it was really a no-brainer.  That was the first thing.

Then, much later in the day, I was informed that I need to be more careful about what I write here, as my mother is now convinced I am about to jump off a bridge.  See "Pit. Of. Despair" below.

After that phone call Roxie and I went for a walk to check the Swan River, and suddenly I had one line on repeat in my head:

Always look on the bright side of life.

Over and over.  Just that one line.  Over and over.  Which had me thinking about Monty Python, of course.

And that took me to my nephew, Liam, the world's biggest Monty Python fan.

And then we were back full-circle, as it is Liam's sister Delaney who is graduating from the 8th grade.  She is getting Taffy Heart:



I painted this quite a while ago, but from day one it reminded me of Delaney.  So there we go.  Dots.  Fully connected.

Pit. Of. Despair.

Things suck in my head right now.  It's not a good place to be.  As a scientific experiment it would be interesting to paint a new self-portrait, but it would need to be larger than life and I don't have enough room.  And I'm not sure how to adequately portray situational hopelessness.  Would that be a special glaze?  A matte-finish varnish?

So here is something I drew a hundred million years ago.  It's not quite a self-portrait.  I call her my superhero alter ego.  Her name is Ping Pow.

I never decided what her super powers are, but for right now she is concentrating on perseverance.  There is some acceptance, but mostly perseverance.  And yes, both of those things are super powers.  Trust me.

Just a Few

I have a few thing that need to be framed....

Chocolate Cake

So today is my birthday.  And this is what happened.  Back on May 4th I got an email from my cousin Andrew.  He apologized for being a day late, and wished me a happy belated birthday.  I wrote back to say he may have been a day late but he was a month early.  There was still plenty of time to get me a big fat chocolate cake.  Now here we are, a month later, and guess what I had for lunch today.  A luscious piece of a surprise chocolate cake, thanks to Andrew.  He ordered it from my friend Viki, and it is d.e.c.a.d.e.n.t.  Yu-u-mmy.  I laughed so hard when Viki called I practically fell on the floor.  I love surprises like that -- they don't happen often enough.

Aside from the beautiful cake, it doesn't feel much like a birthday.  In fact, I have had to make a conscious effort to be positive today.  I don't know what's up with that nonsense -- maybe it is all the rain.  It is washing away all my happy birthday vibes.

I haven't painted anything in a couple of days, but here is the ginormous pear, sitting next to one of its little friends for scale.  The little one is seven inches tall.

Yes, no, maybe so.  Still can't decide.