Splash

Non-objective. Abstract. Acrylic painting.Tribute to Art Under the Umbrellas in Old Town, La Quinta. The season of art shows wrapped up last Sat. and I finally felt good enough to attend the last one, well, the last ones held in La Quinta. click here. Next month there will be an art festival in Indian Wells. Quinta is pronounced more like keynta than Quinn, in case anyone is interested. On my monitor the colors need to be darker . . . isn't that always the way?

quote: Why won't you run in the rain and play, let the tears
splash all over you? 
   Dave Matthews Band

Fractured Grid #2

 Lines. Portals. Splashes of color. Windows. Doors. Fences. Fractured moments in ones life.

Detail of Fractured Grid #2. (wish I could get the colors on the monitor correct . . .)

Rather than mourn the loss of my father, thirteen years ago today, I'm celebrating his birth. He loved to paint, so I'm spending the day doing that for him.

Fractured Grid #1

I've always been drawn to lines and grids and how they can frame areas of a painting or photograph.   While grids are usually uniform I like the idea of fractured/broken grids.  Acrylic on wood.

quote: I'm actually an untidy person. I'm not ordered at all. In some senses
I have to use grids to bring some order to the chaos that's whirring around in my head.
HAMISH MUIR

Release #2

Sometimes, more often than I care for, life hits a road bump along the way. Nothing major happened this week, but health-wise it wasn't a good week. Isn't there a stronger word for fatigue? Even exhaustion isn't strong enough of a word. Seems that the immune system wasn't happy this week and while I tried to figure out why it seems that perhaps the best thing to do is to surrender/accept what is rather than pester the glitch/bump to death. Pestering only makes something fester more. I like to fix things things so it's not easy to accept something as being a bump rather than a road-block and give it time to  . . . well, do whatever it needs to do. Maybe in this case I need to slow-down?
    This 5x7 piece started out life completely different than it ended up. I didn't photograph the layers underneath but suffice it say they were graphic in nature. Perhaps I needed to release anger over the mind-numbing fatigue by throwing paint at something and this tiny canvas was an easy target. The turmoil I felt this week was a reminder to "Release." The painting I did last month with the word-of-the-year written on it was soothing. March is never a soothing month as I remember those who passed on in March. It's time to celebrate their lives. Grieving is part of my past history. Creating a new history is about celebration and gratitude.

Speaking of gratitude; I'm always blown away by the first leaves to appear on the grape vines on what appears to be dead wood. Six leaves and counting. Actually, five leaves after I ate one. They are sort of peppery so I wouldn't want too many of them raw in a salad or green smoothie but they could liven up a dish. Plus, they're organic on the vines in the yard. Click here. and here.

Quote: "The more one hurries, the less time they have. Got that from an accelerated learning course I once took." www.tut.come

Celebration

I can't remember the last time I picked up a paint brush. Most likely it was back in 2011. Anyway, it's been far too long and I feared that I wouldn't remember how to even hold a paintbrush. Quite a few bottles of pain had dried up giving me the perfect excuse to stop by Michaels Craft store on the way home from an appointment to see the surgeon. He was blown away by how well I've healed from radiation. Nice to blow a doctor away. The next day after stepping on the scale in the oncologist office and learning that another 5lbs had vanished I was told that not only were my labs great but that the cancer markers that had been extremely abnormal in May were normal. RELIEF and time to celebrate!

This is a tiny painting, 6x6 inches, that had been slathered with gesso and textured last year when I had visions of painting. There is a lot of be said for having prepped substrates ready; one never knows when the time to paint will strike. I thought I'd start with primary colors and see where that led me.

It's time to prep more canvasses and get on with life.

"Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong.

The amount of the work is the same."

Francesca Reigler