Moving on into the new year

Thank you for following me on this journey- through this blog. A way to check my pulse in times of dire straits and compare vital signs with far flung friends, this blog has held the thoughts that would not fit any longer in my mind.
Right now I am going to continue blogging...but only through my main blog- Showing up for the Muse- and let this one go. I haven't the time to have two blogs!
My focus is on finding my way in the Miami art scene and sharing my thoughts on teaching kids art, while occasionally painting something worth a few words.
Please know that I am truly grateful for your input and insights over the last few years. Stop by my other blog and say hi- or, even better, click on the follow me button and stay in touch!

Hi

Just writing to let you know that I am adjusting to my new surroundings, which include the dawn of new beginnings and the mourning of old endings. I have physically moved away from family, friends, support systems, and home, and found myself with out internet or phone for the last month. There has been plenty to do with a good job, wonderful students and stacks of syllabi. But above all I try to digest a new found and mostly awkward silence and, when I start to panic, I make room for stillness.
I bought canvases last week!

You can hide

multiple sins with a paintbrush....

Trying to get the house in shape to rent out.

8 x 6 inches mixed media- acrylic with metallic leaf on wood

HOUSE STILL AVAILABLE FOR RENT

birthday burn up

moving into menopause.

Fun, fun, fun

Hestia the virgin Goddess of the hearth is symbolic of how small repetitive tasks are all I can do to center myself! I'm burning the stuff I do not need any more...

SOLD

Living room shot

acrylic on panel
9 x 17 inches

I am doing a visual inventory before undertaking to pack everything up, put the house up for rent, and move.

Past time

Paintings about hands, bones, change, choice, birth and death, white and black

Uprooted from the garden of love

Summer painting!
This is about challenges, change, choices, and travel...
acrylic on wood panel
15 x 22 inches
$500

I have to, I have to, I have to...

I have to go down to Florida and attend a trust meeting where we vote on suspending the gift giving for at least a year. So sad, but we are out of money. And where I will run into my ex-husband and that always seems to make me sick. In fact, I feel quiet nauseous today. And I will see my mother and that carries some baggage too. I feel like Persephone traveling between worlds. Which is hell and which is heaven? It's not so easily labeled. I will also get a chance to catch up with my 15 year old son, and meet his school advisor. It could be heavy. I also have to attend an art opening that my Bed Song painting is in! Isn't it crazy how the timing worked out? I am in a juried group show in my mom's hometown that opens while I am visiting! So... its all about riches. But even riches are part of our luggage.
This collage painting is called- like the text in it says- A Cry For Help. When I made it it really helped me get through what I was in the midst of... (which ironically, to put it simply, was too much family). It's just under 6 x 9 inches and I've priced it at $75.
Though instead of buying it, if you should find yourself of similar mind, you should make your own and see what happens.
I have to go paint now!

14 days to Valentines

Sometimes I can say it with a rooster and a hen.
They (usually) fall out of my paint brush easy and with personality.
This Valentine has been in the works for years. See the postcards I made of it in 2005, the year of the Rooster. The original is made sewn layers of paper... a collage... of two hearts. Of course, there are issues here, and I recently shifted the value range with paint to lend it some extreme passages of light and shade. Still not sure. The chickens don't look committed as of yet... they appear to be waiting for me, or you, or someone to tell them where to go next. Do you see what I mean?

Hibernation Workshop

Exploring challenges, change, choice, roots and wishes last Sunday.










In the first of our Studio-to-stove experiences, we had a gathering of 7 to delve into bread making and play in new collage media techniques.



























Our next workshop is February 13th, Sunday from 1-4 (must arrive ahead of that) where we will create heart shrines and bake aphrodisiac sweets and spells. Let me know if you are interested soon because space has to be limited.

As a Hen stands balanced

...On the edge of her milk crate-turned-nest, I contemplate my own off-kilter existence. I am not at all balanced... in any realm!
I can't get all my picky lists done. There doesn't seem to be enough of me to please everybody. Could it be, in fact there doesn't seem to be enough of me for me? The inner judgement is an exhausting voice that tells me I am fat and lazy and should be calling so-and-so and getting those letters written and looking for that job and... I feel so empty yet my body seems a fragile thing with murmurs, eruptions, aches and so aside from balancing the outer world with all it's fast paced to-do-lists, there is an inner world that seems out of balance as well.
I am hoping this daily practice of painting again will help center me and gain me some... down home balance!
Sewn painted paper, 4.5 x 3 inches $35 plus shipping

Ever since my marriage started failing and good friends started dying

I have made a commitment to do things differently. I paint every single day. I love my chickens. Through these two realms I have found a voice for my sadness, my courage, and my faith. Within my daily practice I recall memories and visualize evocative tones that distill symbols into paintable vignettes. My work blends text and image in humorous, dissonant, and melding ways to explore security, panic, and the mortal experience. Because I feel transient as a species, the perpetual conflict between leaving and being is evident everywhere in my work. This duplicity is also captured in the whimsical palette, the playful brushwork and lightness of imagery that lay bare the anxieties of our time. Brushstrokes, text, and nature are strategies I explore in transforming the material to be spiritual and harvesting the spiritual to material.

Here is an installation of work at the MountainCow Cafe in pine Plains, NY, up until March.

I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from college with a BFA and a BA in painting, printmaking and art history from Colorado University in 1984. Born into a family of artists, curators, and spiritualists, I spent the first 20 years as a world traveler. I am the mother of two sons. The last two decades of my life I have lived in rural Dutchess county and been blessed with a network of artists that inspire my great love for roots with wings.

Hibernate with friends!

One day only! Rosemary and I are hosting a ONE day course from 10am-5pm, January 23rd, 2011, exploring winter's opportunity for healing and creativity, settling into and exploring our dreams from the oven to the studio.

Bake your own braided loaf of 100% whole wheat bread: big, beautiful and delicious. Share stories including the contributions of Tasahara monks while combining ingredients such as deliberate intention, faith, and fresh air(after punching the bread).

At the same time you will be guided to craft your personal book using collage,text,and imagery that explores the idea of hibernation and the effects of this on our families, friends and self. Discussion will touch on the cover and inner "page" contents we create for ourselves in terms of obligations, avoidance, time and permission to rest.

At the midday break, We will have a large pot of homemade root soup to share with each other. You are welcome to bring along your own lunch.

It is Rosemary and Tilly's hope that through expressions of bookmaking, food, and story, each participant will share unique viewpoints with inspired tips for gracefully living through this season. We promise that you will enjoy lots of laughs, and take home your own bread, a book, and memories of a good time.

This is for men and women. Space is limited to 8, so confirm quickly. $50.

Resolution in the works

Along with things like exercise and consuming less salt, there is the practice of keeping a daily journal. My history in all three has been a complete failure. I used to have to hide my words. No convincing, through arguments or begging, kept them private. So I snuck pages in the backs of books, in random hidden notebooks, in letters written and never sent. It's pretty insane. Recently, as I start to organize my life, I come across excerpts of pain and risk scattered in the oddest places. Safely hid under barely worn gym gear, or even in the basement freezer. I have started to gather these loose missives and sew them all together so that I can dispose them in one final shape. Everything is out of cyclical order, but there is a spiral repetition to the theme of time and question. So
Now... should I start a real journal? I could do it with a new freedom to be authentic and open.

Cutting paintings in half

It's easier than you think. This evening the county legislators will hold a public hearing on their budget cuts. As of this moment there is no money allocated to the arts. No money for artists to work with school children, no money for 40% of the local theaters' operating budgets, no money for the hospital's healing arts programs, no money for the stadiums music concerts... As a board member of the county arts council and a working artist and teacher I have a passionate interest in things being resolved differently. It would cost each taxpayer 67 cents a year to keep the arts funding level to what it was this year (which was hugely cut from previous years). Imagine if people spoke up and said they thought they could afford to spend that 67 cents!
Lack of imagination may be a poverty of society, but soon we may have a whole generation lacking exposure to anything other than their TV and their cell phone.
Imagine what we would be missing. Is anyone interested in a show of paintings only half there, a concert of music only 1/3 played, a film without editing or ending...?

Divorce series in a book

It looks so good! 20 pages- 40 paintings!
On the path to accepting change, this nice little package arrived today...

Stepping forward, maybe back

I didn't want to get out of bed

In the fiction of my painted stories, I create lurid and exploitative tales featuring myself as heroic character.

In that vein, the bed is a place to safely destroy the past, mourn it with the salt of tears, nest until blue and broody, and then create new relationships...
How fantastic is that?

Before words...

Because the internet was down I didn't get sucked into my emails and I was able to paint first thing in the morning... painted from 7 a.m. to 1:30 pm!

a new painting

is in the works. You can see the stumbling and the inspiration. Still have layers of maps to add. After all she looks a little lost.