Special Privilege

Tonight I talked with some dear friends whom I haven't seen in a few weeks.  Their father and father-in-law died recently, and I haven't seen them since the funeral.  He was an artist.  They explained to me that he was in the process of painting a picture of their daughter and left it unfinished when he died, and asked me if I'd finish the painting.

I told them yes, that I would be honored to do that.  What a very, very special privilege. All of life IS very special, isn't it.

Pepper Painting

The other day I was out in my winter garden picking peppers.  I'm getting a lot smarter picking peppers these days.  When we first moved here and I grew my first hot peppers, I happily picked them left and right.  Then I innocently pulled out a kleenex, blew my nose and rubbed my eyes.


Oh, the pain!  My nose ran and my eyes watered for a long time - then the burning took over my hands!  I was a mess, soaking my hands in ice water to relieve them, crying and snuffling all afternoon!  Now at least I'm initiated!  Every Southern pepper grower I've talked to has has that experience - ONLY ONCE.


But now, the Southern girl in me is taking over.  I picked these wearing surgical gloves and strung them onto a thread with a needle, careful not to let any of the hot oils from the peppers touch anything.  Getting a little smarter!


While picking, I took a dozen pictures - the peppers were so dazzling in the sunlight!  The pictures inspired me to do a painting.

Here's stage one.  I'm working with colored inks on YUPO here.  YUPO is not really paper, it's - well - plastic! Actually, polyurethane.  What that means is the surface is very slick and absolutely non-absorbent.  Any drying of paints is due to evaporation.



Okay, so here are the peppers.  I slapped them down pretty fast because I wanted it to look immediate and easy (it's always hard work making art look easy, isn't it?)  I've got umber, black and green going in the background to set the peppers off.  The odd white shapes will be plants in the background.



Now I've added some blue to indicate the sky.  As you can see, the ink really flows on the paper.  I always go into this type of work with an end in mind, but the paper helps determine the end result.

 Below I finally taped it down to a drawing board because I needed to be able to tip the paper to manipulate the paint flow.  I've got blues and greens painted on, leaving the strokes showing and using minimal blending.  After that, I tipped it and moved the paint around.  You can see there are only two sides taped down - that's because I have to 'paint' some of the extra inks right off to the side because it pools.

After I laid down the blues and greens, I splattered orange and 'Hot Momma Red' (love that name) over them.  This has the effect of moving the first layer and makes some really cool effects.

I know you're wondering about the weird fingers of white - hold that thought.  Once this all dries, I'm going to do another layer of blues and greens, and then do some negative painting to turn those and a goodly portion of the bottom right corner into plants in the background behind the peppers.

That may be a little while - I'm in the Sound of Music orchestra and our shows are coming up fast!  Tomorrow - orchestra practice for 4 1/2 hours, Saturday for six hours, Sunday for four hours, and every night next week, four hours a night.  My flute and I are going for a RIDE. Six shows next weekend.  Come out and see us for a wonderfully entertaining show!  Check out  http://www.cythouston.org/ for tickets.  After that, we have two sets of out of state company... you get the message!  If I don't respond too quickly, I'll be back SOON! :)

Cancer Free!

Last week was time for me to go get poked and prodded.  By this I mean it was time for them to take blood to be tested; however, I have no veins so they have to do imaginative things to get the stuff out of my arm.  This time it was poking me in four different places and going exploring.

You see, last time this year I was dealing with a very aggressive melanoma on my left forearm which had permeated down to the muscle layer before we even knew what it was.  Then there was surgery to remove the cancer and lymph nodes. 

This week the call was welcome.  I heard some of the most beautiful words in the English language - 'Cancer free.'  Thank you, Lord - for healing me and sustaining me.  My feet are standing upon you, my Rock.

I have a big hunk out of my arm with a long red scar, but I don't mind.  When I see it, I remember all my friends that prayed for me when I wasn't able to do so.  And when people ask me about it, I'm glad to tell them about my Friend, the Giver of life.  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

National CYT Blog Features My Work

The National CYT (Christian Youth Theater) Blog featured my sets work again.  Go to http://cytglobal.com/cytblog/?m=201012 find December 22, and there it is!  Awesome!

A Salute to Old Age

This Christmas I took a picture of my mother with our cat, Calypso, on her lap. The contrast of her beautiful, wrinkly old hands and the silky young cat are striking, as well as the contrast between lights and darks.  But more than the visual contrasts, it makes me think of youth and old age, and how thankful I am for my aging parents.  We had a lovely Christmas together.  It was made all the sweeter because I don't know how many more Christmases we will have with them.  These are the hands that loved and cared for me all my life.  These are the hands that gave me a beautiful childhood.  These are the hands that gave me a home filled with solid Christian values.  Now it's my turn.  Now I will use my hands for them.

Metal Embossing, Peony Final

As I promised in my Metal Embossing post, here is the finished piece.  Scroll down to the one entitled 'Metal Embossing' to see how I did this before adding color.

I chose a nice neutral brown, two reds, an opalescent pink and two greens for the color.  These are liquid acrylics - very heavily pigmented.

Because the gesso is super absorbent, I worked one small area at a time, the size of, say, half a peony.

With the inks, I would paint or pour them on, one or two colors at a time, and work them into the crevices with a rag.  I wanted to go for an antiqued, old look, so I rubbed the paint off in
varying degrees.  Some spots I left more pigmented, and some I rubbed harder.  In most of the highly embossed places, I rubbed hard enough so that the shine of the metal glistened through.
The second picture shows  detail so you can see how I treated the outside edges.  Some I rubbed down to the gesso, letting the white peek through.  In some parts I layered colors and rubbed one or the other off to varying degrees to get that ancient look.  I've always liked pinks and greens together, they give me a nice, peaceful feeling.

By the way, the complex leaves surrounding the flowers are rose geraniums.  If you aren't familiar with them, seek them out.  The flowers are insignificant, but the leaves smell like fresh roses.  I use them in bouquets always.  They're also great when you toss a couple leaves into your iced tea glass - how can iced tea not be good when it smells like roses?  They're also a wonderful flavor enhancer for homemade apple jelly.  Just imagine light pink sweet rose-scented apple jelly on your toast.  Oh, heaven!  And of course my signature is down by all those rich, textured browns.  Let me know what you think.  AND... merry Christmas.

Impressionist Art Colony - Exploring!

When we were in New England this November we went to the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Connecticut. 

 Outside the museum was this - structure - which beckoned us over before we even entered the museum.  It begged us to explore and play.  This is my son looking at it.  Here's a little video -

It was built by a man named Patrick Dougherty, who travels worldwide building these artistic structures from the materials at hand.  It really was remarkable, and overlooked pretty much the whole of the museum property, and the unbelievably beautiful and fast-moving Lieutenant River.

 When we first came into the museum parking lot, there was a from what I understand rare and very beautiful crab apple tree. We took full advantage of it and Noah and I had a dandy crabapple fight. :)  Here's the tree:

 

It was so beautiful.  And the day was perfect, too - can you imagine Connecticut the week before Thanksgiving in the 50s and sunny?!  Great traveling for us thin-blooded Texans!  The pic below shows me with the last of my ammunition.  (of course, a squished one turned up in my hair later, so I guess Noah won!)

You can see the Lieutenant River in the background.  One of the things that made this place special is the fact that Childe Hassam resided there for some time.  His Impressionist art influenced the other artists, as you can see if you check out their works.

Below is the entrance to the museum, uh, as you can see it says 'Museum Entrance...' and, Yours Truly in paint jeans.  Oh, yeah... how could I forget?  ALL of my jeans are paint jeans! 

Below is a picture of the museum building.  Can you believe I somehow didn't get a shot of the house?  Oh, brother!  I know why - they maintain a garden between museum and house that was beautiful even in its dormancy.  Because I'm a gardener, it distracted me!  To this day, they maintain the gardens in the same way that they were maintained in its artistic heyday, same plants, same layout.  It was pretty easy to figure that out just by looking at the artists' paintings!

As I said before, the foilage was really breathtaking.

 My last shot for you is one of my favorites - my son facing the Lieutenant River in an Adirondack chair. Great way to end our museum tour.