The title of this painting is ‘And Never Leave…’ I’m glad to say that it has found its forever home with one of my favorite collectors!
Dawn off my back porch (there’s a new one every day but few look as good as this one). The poem written for this painting and painted into it is:
To step into a place and just belong
to stand within a sky and to believe
to raise your head, look up and to behold
and never leave, and never leave, and never leave.
I recently submitted a painting to Grey Cube gallery art contest ‘Animals‘. No, I don’t usually paint animals, but I chose the cover, and one of the internal illustrations from my recent book ‘The Alphabet Clan‘ and the cover was accepted!
It’s always my pleasure to pass along the Cloud Appreciation Society Newsletter. I’m looking forward to viewing some of the presentations available on their website about clouds! Hope you’ll enjoy them too.
I love seeing paintings in their ‘Foreverhome’ – brings closure to having sent your children out into the void, to see where they landed. One of my recent sales goes to a collector who now has a brood of five of my little ones, and he graced me with pictures of their new residence. His face really isn’t like that but as he ended up in one of the photos too, I gave him a little more anonymity!
I’ve missed posting the last couple newsletters….something to do with having been on a mental hiatus from normal art life for half a year… but here’s one I couldn’t resist. The time lapses of the storms are especially spectacular. I’ve been more inspired my clouds since we’ve had actual ‘weather’ here recently instead of the plain cerulean dome. The California low desert needs a bigger share of the rain from the storms now sweeping in (just not on weekends as there is the occasional art fair back in existence now…..).
Always have fun reading the Cloud Appreciation Society newsletter but this one is extra special – the Cloud of the Month for August is amazing. Check it out!
It’s my pleasure to announce that one of my paintings was accepted into the 4th Annual Skies Exhibition with Fusion Arts. I guess I have been working with Fusion for quite a while as I was accepted in the 3rd Annual also. And further joy, as they’re local to me, I was able to meet them a couple years ago – back when we met people IRL!
Anyway, enjoy the virtual exhibition HERE.
The other day I responded to a question on Facebook by Renee Phillips of Manhattan Arts International. She asked artists to comment on the post “Dear Artist, What’s a favorite art supply, material or medium you love to use most and why.” People mentioned the richness of certain watercolors, the quick drying advantages of acrylics, the feel of wet clay among others.
I was in the process of designing a piece of art in response to the Collage Artists of America’s themed online show ‘It’s about Time’. We had been asked to interpret the phrase any way we chose. Bearing in mind the timeline on which this show was announced, I anticipated they expected may entries about the timeliness of the recent changes brought on by the #BLM movement. My thoughts however went to the words of a friend who is currently on a journey with cancer. She has progress and setbacks. Some things held in check, new things popping up. Extraneous issues like being self employed so ineligible for disability, annual changes in carrier by her spouse’s employer, who provides the health insurance, and of course the threat of covid.
The artwork incorporates some of her steps in the numbers on a handless clock, the extraneous issues in surrounding teardrops, and on the rods of the pendulums, her quote that inspired me: “I know that the cancer will take me, I just want some more time.”
So back to the question on Facebook. My response was that my favorite material was my imagination, it allowed me to create art in response to such inspirations and challenges as the one mentioned. Serendipitously in today’s reading from 365 Tao (Deng Ming Dao) is the paragraph: “Why concern yourself exclusively with the mechanics of a situation? That is like seeking an artist’s genius in the brushes; it is the mind of the artist, not the tools, that is responsible for the beauty of a painting.”
When I went back to find whether anyone else had posted an answer similar to mine, I found my comment had been removed.
I guess I think a little too far outside the box.
Aside from the fact that I’m slowly putting a lot of art up on my Etsy site (it’s amazing how much time it takes to pull everything out, photograph it in various poses and edit the results) I’ve been working on a fun book-length poem about hognose snakes, with illustrations. I can complete this amount of work because, it may not surprise you to learn, everything else is cancelled.
I loved this quote from the beginning of the Cloud Appreciation Society’s Newsletter.
“You have to regard yourself as a cloud because, you see, clouds never make mistakes. Did you ever see a cloud that was misshapen? Did you ever see a badly designed wave? No, they always do the right thing… But if you will treat yourself for a while as a cloud or wave, and realize that you can’t make a mistake whatever you do. Because even if you do something that seems to be totally disastrous it’ll all come out in the wash somehow or other. Then, through this capacity you will develop a kind of confidence, and through confidence you will be able to trust your own intuition.”
From the lecture ‘Way Beyond Seeking’ by Alan Watts (1915-1973).
