Cycle Of Life - Round and Round We Go

Boy it's been a long long long week of "take another shot". Started with my PC crapping out completely and when I got it to repair fairies and letting them know it was imperative that it be fixed by day's end because, you see, I have to arrange for the bleeding thing to be delivered and picked up from said shop in next city over 1 1/2 hrs away - and being assurred no problem.....well you can guess where this is going. Meanwhile a phone call from my bro in Van letting me know aged parent was in hospital after bad fall and things not looking good so I packed hurredly and caught bus out for a days travel to get there. When there finding out the aged parent was going into surgery for pacemaker (at 89?!?) but within 3 hrs he was sitting up and eating and complaining about not having his teeth and flirting with the nurses......what a guy. But he's very confused and rambling...it's distressing to see your parent failing before your eyes.
So I'm thinking a lot about life and it's journey for each of us......and how in our society getting old really sucks. We are so removed from what the end game is like, aren't we? I think that is what is most terrifing for us - we remove our elderly away and just don't know what to do when they are nearing the end of their life. It must be a scary thing to be surrounded by strangers.
Quite depressing this.......
I sure hope each and every one of us takes every opportunity to tell our loved and cherished how much we care.

Artist Life - Coles Notes version

Wow - didn't realize it's been so long since I've posted here. Well, I do have excuses - artist kind. First it was Halloween. I've been asked to decorate the town hall pretty much every year since ,oh, 2001 maybe, so I have a lo-o-ong history doing this. The first few years it was a volunteer gig but turned into me pretty much doing it all...making props and setting up, so as of last year, when I completely ran it all by making the huge old town hall into Harry Potter Hogwarts with a Diagon Alley mock up, I started asking for a small recompense. (My time being valuable too and I think I provide a good money's worth of effort) That just about did me in and took 3 weeks of creating props in my tiny living room to accomplish but I did get BC Hydro's "Smart" award because I did it all from recycled materials...yay me.....anyway, the point being is I DO enjoy it but often wonder if I'll still be staple gunning bats and owls and what have you when I'm 80....are there really no other creative souls around here that could do just as - if not better - job of this? (by the by - that's my Dracula i made from old clothing and recycled fabrics plus a $7.00 mask)

And that leads me into the other thing I'm doing which has kept me occupied and not blogging lately; to whit: The Christmas Craft Fair which I've been organizing for 12 (?!) years now. And the one year I took off, the person who did take it on alienated most folks so I was requested to please do it again.

I like to be acknowledged for having an orginizational gift and I like to think that I'm good at what I do but every so often I really wish I could just...PAINT.

Ok - really this is just silly to complain about. In some ways I love the pulling together of people and things to make a cohesive whole but in other ways it's just so much chaos in my otherwise singular life.

Yes, well, maybe I'll someday get "Citizen of the Year" if not leave behind a veritable plethora of great props.

Hello, Hollywood...?

PS..I did also manage to paint a new painting....

FORTRESS - Rita Series # 5

Artist on a Seesaw

I'm waffling yet again, about that painting I just uploaded: "Catch of the Day".
I go through this every time I finish a painting. First, I LOVE the damn thing; take it to bed, stare at it endlessly until I HATE it....the face is wrong (the face is always wrong), the pose looks stilted, the this, the that...GAH! I make myself crazy.
Of course, you say, I'm looking too much and should just put it away immediately.
I would if I could......seems I'm cursed with this particular idiosyncrasy.
Witness the "face" saga from the first Rita Series. Now that was a real love/hate soap opera of the canvas, so to speak.
But even after all that roller coaster reaction to a painting, I have to say I'm glad that this particular silliness happens because it keeps me striving to be better, to paint with greater skill, to overcome the obstacles of the steep learning curves that are there. And that's got to be what this is all about.
So I guess I'll live with myself a while longer.

Catch Of The Day - Bathing Beauty Series #3

Fuzzy Around the Edges

Last night while I was lying in bed, looking at my newest painting, Jams was lying across my stomach as she does. I was idly stroking her and she was rumbling away - sort of like a vibrating bed effect - anyway, my mind drifted away and I stopped petting her. She then reached out her paw and gently patted me on the hand as if to say "Keep on doing that, please!" and I chuckled and commenced stroking again whereupon, she turned her head and licked my hand. At that moment I was suffused with the most powerful feeling of love.....astounding that a creature 1/10th my size and unable to speak should engender such a visceral emotion! And that got me to pondering the human trait of having pets.

'Cause when you think, really think, about what a "pet" is, it is a bizarre thing to do. We take on an animal that basically becomes dependant on us for everything. And because of us and this "collecting" as it were, they have changed from their original selves unutterably. I'm mainly speaking of dogs and cats now, but most "pets" probably fall into this category. Well, maybe not snakes or lizards or even fish so much as you don't really cuddle them do you? And they basically just keep on being "snakey" or "fishy" or "lizardy" in the wild or in a cage. (altho' there are some pretty strange folks out there and maybe they do cuddle their ..um...lizards...however let's try not to stray too much into the realm of freakish)

And what is the 'thing' that makes we humans want to have these creatures beside us? Yes, yes, I get the "companion, friend, love/child substitute,etc" bit, but I guess I'm wondering about the core desire to attach a non-human (golly, I'm struggling for the right word here!) 'pal' to ourselves. And we know they have such a short life span as compared to us and the grief we feel when they die is almost unbearable but we still do it.

All I know is that this small furry little cat means the world to me and she makes my life the easier for being there with me.

Maybe just in that I have answered my own question.

Like A Rainbow

Last night, during the seemingly endless insomnia I was experiencing, I was thinking about color. Partly due to the book I'm reading about this race of folk who turn blue if they tell a lie. Now wouldn't that just change our whole world if you turned a color due to speaking falsely.....there goes our politicians and our diplomats and our war mongers I dare say, not to mention all the little bits of every day life....the phrase "Does this make me look fat" takes on a whole new ambiance. Anyway, I was thinking about the human palette of colors and the sort of almost "unexciting" shades we sport. Don't take that the wrong way please. It's just that if we were more vibrant, like oh, gold or maybe electric blue or even a lovely lavender .....well, wouldn't you be uplifted? I wonder sometimes if this is why we lighter skinned folk are so into the astounding tattoos you see more and more. I have 5 of them; all uniquely designed by myself may I add. We are influenced in subtle ways by color - mood changes by what is predominate around us. We use color to describe our feelings too. Then again, maybe we would choose very dull clothing if our bodies were all sorts of wild colors. And, of course, we idiotic humans would attach some sort of judgement and racial thing to that in all probability. Honestly I do despair of us sometimes.

In any case, adding color to our lives generally makes for a new viewpoint, doesn't it.

I love color. I love using it extravagantly in painting. I love mixing wild combinations to see what evolves...good fun for artist eyes!

I DO think turning a color if you lie is cool though! Blushing when embarrassed seems just undignified but it has me wondering why embarrassment is genetically programed to do this in us and not lying.

MUCH more useful!