thankful for.... FRIENDS:)

This has been an interesting and eventful year that has flown by, but in all of that I am most grateful for all the friends who populate my days... both in the flesh and via phone, email, and comments to this blog. Some of you drop in at the studio, some of you send cards and postcards, and some are there with supportive words and understanding natures. For all of that I am grateful.

I wish all that I know and love wonderful time with family and friends, and warm thoughts of people who are Dear and Precious. You all are very special in my life.

thankful for.... POWER

We lost power in the middle of the night last night, not once but twice. All the detectors beeped when the power went out, dragging me away from dreams to see a very dark house. Virginia was already up and moving around, using a blackberry to navigate to a flashlight...... both so much safer than candles..... and then replacing the flashlight batteries when they quit almost immediately after she lit the lamp. We both chuckled at that. Thank goodness Virginia is always prepared and she had fresh D batteries on hand.

She smelled smoke, which always harks back to the two Christmas fires we suffered a few years apart in this complex and as I was hurriedly dressing and finding my glasses I fought to quell the panic that immediately rose to the surface. I went out in the rain and only smelled gentle fireplace smoke wafting on the breeze and then Virginia walked all the way around our building to be sure that all seemed well. We will never entirely heal from the effect of those fires. Virginia called the power company and we settled back in to the darkness. A couple of hours later the power came back on, only to go off once again for a time.... a night of disturbed sleep.

Our lives are so tied to electricity, to run all the functions of our homes and to chill our food, our sources of communication and entertainment, and our ability to get to and from our place of work. It is hard to imagine a time when there were no power outlets, and the light of the stars was good enough to travel by on horseback. Even farther back those cave dwellers had only the fire they built to ward of the inky darkness and anything (with big teeth or sharp sticks) hiding there..... and the thought gives me a little shiver as I have been a bit afraid of the dark since childhood. On rising this morning I was grateful to see the blinking of the unset clock, and as I walked through the heated house and looked out the windows I was glad to see light in the windows of other early-rising neighbors.

I am very thankful for the power that keeps us warm and lights the darkness and am so aware that there are still people living without power, and some without shelter - in this country and in other countries - as we move toward a time of celebration and gratefulness...... and even in my very simple life I know that I am lucky beyond measure.

a day in a sunny studio

I spent the day in the studio yesterday working on the mixed media journals and enjoying the company of Dear Ones with lunch out at a restaurant and sweet tea on my studio table (you can take the girl out of the south but you cannot take the south out of the ~formerly VERY northern~ girl).... and it was a good day.

I am going to put my new filing cabinet to work and get all my art business files organized in one place... that sounds like heaven to me... and I will get the reference pictures printed out to start on the poinsettia commissioned piece. I am debating whether to do a squishy watercolor study first to play with the composition a bit, and may do that just for fun.

An artist friend mentioned a while back that she had heard a painting instructor say that using photographic references was like "cheating" because you were using an already two-dimensional reference to create a two-dimensional painting. I was really surprised to hear that an instructor would say that, but I went on to explain that not everyone can work from "live" references due to the time of year or accessibility issues.... and that my photographic references help to be sure that the subject I see in my head is correctly rendered and as true to life as I want it to be.

Although there are certainly times that I draw without references, and I would prefer to work from a live model or an actual bowl of lemons, a reference photo is a good jumping off point for what I do. A reference photo cannot help an artist with no skills to sketch, or a painter with no talent to paint a beautiful picture..... but it does make sure that the details honor the original subject.

Even better that I capture my own reference photos for the most part because then I have had even more time to study the subject. If I am unable to get my own reference image I pull from a variety of images to get details. For that "Mother Nature" painting that I am planning I will not probably have reference photos of my own for a polar bear or a grizzly bear, but reference images will allow me to honor the spirit of the bear in my own creative way.

Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, Virginia

I am finally getting the chance to edit the photos I took on our birthday weekend trip to the Lorton Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, Virginia. It was a fantastic day to network with other artists and to see how they run an art center that is very different from our art center, VisArts at Rockville. The art center is housed on the grounds of a former prison with a tremendous history. I was so impressed with this place and the artists who populate the grounds.

focus on beginnings

I am working on art journals in the studio at the moment and nothing could be better in my current mood for figuring out some feelings. I worked quietly all day yesterday splitting time between two journal books and the quiet contemplative time was good. The journals will serve as samples for upcoming classes and workshops, but I will continue to work on them over time and they will be available for viewing in the studio.

The clients have now had time to browse the poinsettia reference images and we have narrowed down color and composition and I will be getting to work with two easels up and running in the studio as I continue work on the shorebirds in tandem.

older but I don't know about wiser

This birthday has been a mile marker of sorts for me and I have been doing a lot of thinking. Not one of those birthdays that end neatly in a five or a zero, this is a bit surprising. Suddenly (for some reason) aware that I am moving in the direction of fifty in a few more years' time I have been contemplating friendships and those people who always seem to be there no matter what. I have heard from some people who are always close, and some people that I don't hear from as often, a few people that totally surprised me, and old friends who have found ways to let me know that I matter to them.

Some brief disturbances in the form of missives from dysfunction junction (my family of origin) which I am doing my best to ignore, and some recent lessons learned about people and motivations where once I thought I had a close friend. It is always good to know who you can trust and sometimes I have just been......... wrong..... in placing my faith in certain people. I am fortunate that those experiences have been few and far-between and my trusting nature, in which I look for the best from everyone, usually proves true.

I think we are all here, doing the best we can on any given day or week or month or year, and sometimes we fail each other...... sometimes spectacularly. It is never good to be on the receiving end of those failures, but it happens to everyone and I know that in my lifetime I have failed people as well. To find out that someone is not who you thought they were is tremendously painful. What matters I guess, in the balance, is that we do our best to not fail each other... to honor commitments and friendships and those bonds of love that matter each moment of every day - giving our best.

The older I get, the less I know that I know.

birthday celebrational

Every year as a part of my birthday celebration I choose an artsy outing.... normally a visit to the Torpedo Factory or museums in DC..... this year I decided to break out of the mold and do something different, and we made the trip to a relatively new art center that I had not yet visited.

Our visit to the Workhouse Art Center at Lorton (a former prison) on Saturday was wonderful and inspiring, and I will be writing more about the facility and the artists I met there. As always I found some new inspiration and some great ideas put into practice..... one of which was bookmarks!!! So I promptly came home and Sunday morning I designed my own version which is on its way for printing and will be available in the studio soon. My bookmark will measure 2 x 8 and will feature the Koi fish painting. More to come on Workhouse!

Last night Virginia surprised me with a cake and funky striped candles, and after a wonderful quiet day spent working on the pages of an artsy journal in the studio, it was great to come home and celebrate the turning of another year. I am surrounded by good and faithful friends and people I can count on, and I am a lucky one.

sssshhhhhhhh... it's a secret

We spent the weekend in celebrational fashion as today is my birthday (now officially older than dirt) and we did all sorts of fun things! I took three hundred photos of poinsettias for that new commissioned painting I'll be starting, visited the Workhouse Art Center at Lorton for the first time (and met as many artists as I could), went to dinner at Bugaboo Creek Saturday night.... and then Sunday we went to Great Falls to be near water, took a Sunday drive, and came home to relax for the evening. So much more detail to come but I have a birthday to celebrate today:)

This past year has flown and when I look at all that has happened in that time span I am truly humbled. Hard work and focus have been, and will continue to be, the name of the game..... with time to re-charge batteries and keep creative juices flowing. Life is very good.