A dark meditation in a safe place.
Romanticism

A dark meditation in a safe place.
I’ve been hanging onto this wily one for months.
My late husband took this photograph in Oaxaca in 2006. I marked it up.
My favorite topic.
My favorite abecedarian. It has lots of cheats.
Or Danger
There goes sleep: I’ll take that train.
Seeing red wings sprout
Limbs strewn like branches from a tree after a storm.
For AD.
I painted at home today. I ordered a collapsible easel on Amazon yesterday on overnight. I set up in the utility room. I painted over most of the second canvas from class. I left only the teapot. I got the first layer on today. I like how it’s already textured since I’m painting over. I […]
I have been learning to paint in oils. It is still not finished. Class is over for the summer. Will I paint at home?
I am taking a beginning oil painting class at the Smithsonian. The first night I painted a wooden apple.
To cut away the background and even lop off an arm, I contrast my self against the white space that I am not because, really, I am everything I am not. These ties are so intricate they form and unform as I move through space and time. These ties keep me animated and tethered at […]
A Burial Shroud | 3 deaths in 3 days made me reflect on Mortality | Making this was Cathartic | Hope & Faith |
The first in the series gives some background on what I’m trying to do. When I run, the three parts of me interact very loudly. These are photographs taken by me and edited with Enlight and WordSwag. They are a two dimensional way to capture one second of my three parts loudly interacting.
Alaska’s blinding cold devolves evenly forging golden hues, insolence. January knows long might, night’s occupancy, pulse’s questions. Rest, solitude. Quiet rivers steal torrents. Unearthed valiance wields (e)xoneration, yellow zinnias. This is an Abecedarian sequence built around the word Alaska. The featured image is a photograph of a flower (not a zinnia) taken by me and […]
I read something by Rumi once: “Don’t be satisfied with stories . . . How things have gone for others . . . Unfold your own.” Live life without an outside reference. In Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes that she found God inside herself as herself. Aristotle says consciousness is the process […]
Where ability does not meet art drowns Something . Lungs burst to live on land, to have Grown something good, a hard green grassy ground to Roll around in. For her to uninhabit Me, is all I ask. As well as why she’s Moved back in. She takes the water and the Food and sleep and […]
I recently watched The Paradise, a BBC series based on Emile Zola’s novel about a department store in the late 1880’s. It is delightful, all two seasons of it before it was cancelled. There are so many things I could write about it: its cinematography, its characters, the dialogue. The moments when the heroine, a […]
I’ve been struggling with creativity lately. Something is blocking not the ideas but the execution. Self-doubt. I wrote a poem about index cards last month. One of its lines: when the index cards come out my unease loses a little bit of its doubt Last week I wrote about art (poetry). For the 17 years […]
I got a new app Color Splash and I made these. The woman is the “Seer,” a character in a graphic novelesque something I have brewing in the mind. She is the fourth character, the first supporting, to be created. I’ve not written a word. It is all heavily edited photography using Perfect 365, Word […]
I am on vacation visiting elderly and near elderly relatives. I have been listening intently to their manner of speech. It is delightful and familiar while also strange. I overheard the following snippet during lunch today and did the ink sketches (my first) after lunch while they were resting. My 84 year old relative […]
Tales from the WagginMaster inspired another oil pastel with his beautiful photographs of a sunrise in my once hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas.
I paint an animal and motion for the first time. When I was shaping its snout, I felt my own head transform into a buffalo head. Just for one second. The creative process is weird. The pastel is based on a photograph by Ian Nichols of a buffalo in Yellowstone Park posted by Nat Geo […]
One of my favorite bloggers, Stock Research 52, posted another inspiring photograph of a sunrise in his home of Bangalore, India earlier in March. I tried to paint it in pastels last week.
Photo 101 has helped me understand colors a little bit more; to know things I only knew in theory before. I am growing into the name of the blog. The Impressionists were also known as the painters of light since they preferred painting outside and catching the light as opposed to sketching outside and painting […]
I have issues with the telephone. It feels very intrusive to me. I have tried different ring tones on my work line, including a man saying “Are you there?” I thought a human voice would help. It did not help. When today’s Photo 101 prompt suggested: “Intrigue us with uncertainty,” I knew I wasn’t advanced […]
Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon. – Emily Dickinson I read this the other day for the first time. A big part of my life was explained in this short sentence! I am new to writing prose, writing poetry, painting with pastels, drawing and making mosaics. In […]
I discovered a new blog – Colors 52 – with beautiful photographs. The Colors 52 blogger lives in India and posted this photograph of a sunset on his related site earlier this week. I tried to paint it with pastels. It did not do it justice but it was fun.
The Blacklight Candelabra challenges us to re-imagine a box of chocolates in writing form. A collection of unique and separate [writing] forms a greater whole. One rarely finds a single small piece of [writing] that ascends to the heights that the variety provides. I had been thinking for some time of putting the Abecedarian Sequences into a visual art form. […]
After doing my first interview as a practice in long form writing, I was inspired to make a mosaic of my subject. I first started this blog to practice writing, thinking I would focus on the personal essay. Over the past couple of months, though, I have been experimenting with other things, like writing on […]
I recently interviewed the wife of the first millennial. The featured image is a quick crayon drawing I made of her. I’m also working on a mosaic of her cameo to make a pair of it. I like doing interviews from a generational perspective. I may have to shake it up and interview a Baby […]
A few weeks ago, I interviewed a Millennial. I wanted to explore who he was from a generational perspective. He represents the American Dream, still alive today, I think. He talks about baseball and the Blues, of family and God, and his wife, of loving small town America, of the big and bright New York […]