twisted influences

I took my sorry body to an acupuncturist. I've done acupuncture before without much effect.  This time I'm hopeful.  There was a lot of talking involved.  I described my art to her,  food paintings, and yes clearly, looking at my body, I've had issues with food.  When I told her about my Asian Influence series, I could not pinpoint when my fascination with Asia began.  As far as I could recall the only link was my mother.  My parents went to Japan and Thailand when I was young.  Connie Francis had a hit song called "Mamma" at the time and I cried copiously each time it was played on the radio. About ten times a day for two weeks.  My parents returned with wonderful pieces.  I told her I also paint a lot of sailboats.  She asked if I like to sail.  I answered, no, I spent my childhood summers becalmed, run aground or lost in a fog bank.  She said, "So you paint things that have had negative resonance."   It was a startling thought.
 So there you go, Psychotherapy and unblocked qi in one fell swoop.

I gimp I can, I gimp I can...

This pastel from my statues series is called, "Ah, Youth..."
I'm using it for this blog because I'm feeling old and cranky.  I always get this way when my body decides it has had enough.  Various sections are shutting down.  It's not fair.  I eat too much, but it's always healthy, five-a-day, fiber-licious food.  No fried foods, a minimum of red meat.  A soupcon of vodka.  I exercise a minimum of 30 minutes a day.  And I think good thoughts.  Really.
So why am I limping, unable to climb stairs without pain, and dealing with two tears in my rotator cuffs.  It isn't as if, as my husband pointed out, I just pitched a no-hitter.
Life is a bowl of mole.

Aunt Edna's Ass

I was going through family photos and came upon this one of my mother and brothers.  She looks almost feral.  Children can do that to you.  When I had my two, I remember thinking, all I have to do is get them to the age of eighteen safe and sound and then I'll be done.  It seemed a tremendous task, and I needed to know there was a finish line.  I didn't come to that assumption on my own.  It is the fairy tale we spin to give parents the heart and the energy  to carry on.  But, as anyone with grown children knows, the fun is just beginning at eighteen.  Many of my friends' adult children are suddenly lost, or sick or bankrupt or heartbroken.  This pretty much means the parents are back where they started, and scared to boot.  The hopes you had for them as children are featherless and on the ground.  I am reminded of a line in the movie Parenthood.  Jason Robards says this of parenting: "It's like Aunt Edna's ass.  It goes on forever and is just as terrifying."

The One Horse Shay

Is there any more dispiriting a conversation than the one with your financial planner? My husband made me take part in this year's conversation because he wants to retire.  And I want him not to retire.  First, he showed me a graph of our financial future. Three lines that took in the vicissitudes of the market, the vagaries of the world situation, and for all I know, cricket futures (what an article in the New Yorker dubbed, "the other green meat").  It was not encouraging.  Two lines dribbled along with all the enthusiasm of a sulking dog.  The other dropped off the page after a few inches.  This I gathered was what happened if the fates did not align.  When checking the options from his pension policy, my husband asked me, in all seriousness, which of us would die first.

 One would think, with all my ailments and emergency surgeries, I would be the first one to go.  Not so.  My healthy husband was built like the one horse shay, each piece as strong as the next, never breaking down until one day it "went to pieces all at once, and nothing first, — just as bubbles do when they burst."

Actually, it's a race to the finish to see which of us can leave the other holding the bag. Ah, love....

Oh say, can I see?

"You're not looking!" I hear my art teacher's voice in my head daily, chiding me to look closer.  I have recently realized that 'looking' isn't the problem.  Seeing, is where I fail. When painting,  I see what I expect to see, ie., the light is warm, the shadow will be cool.  This is not always the case. My new year's resolution was to 'see' with greater accuracy.
Apparently, this will be harder than my standard 'lose weight' resolution.  The other night I was brushing my teeth with an electric toothbrush and went to check my email.  (Don't ask.)  There was something of interest online.  I put down my toothbrush, and with a mouth full of minty foam, read the email. When I closed down my computer, I looked for my toothbrush.  It was not there.  I had not moved from my seat.  Where could it have gone? I rinsed my mouth and came back to search anew.  Still no toothbrush.  I enlisted my husband.  He found it readily, eighteen inches from my computer. (This from the man who suffers from Male Refrigerator Blindness.)  The next day I could not find my asthma inhaler which was right in front of me.  I am beginning to panic.

more wretched excess

The new Dick Blick catalog arrived yesterday, thick with possibilities. The above is a photo of my first home studio.  Even then I had too many art supplies, and that was two mediums ago.  I had a legitimate excuse to collect the first thousand pastels, the more colors you have the better color range you can achieve.  As I said, the first thousand were warranted.  Not so much the next thousand.  Some day, I may go back to painting with pastels, though I doubt it very much.

My acrylic phase was mercifully brief, though expensive.  Then, I fell hard for oils.  Unlike pastels, oils can be mixed to achieve color range. Theoretically, you can make every color imaginable with 24 basic colors.  Theoretically....  I operate on the pastel mindset of 'the more colors the better.'  I used to surf the internet late at night.  My husband started referring to my horde as 'the midnight oils.'  I don't wear furs, jewelry or Manolo Blaniks, but I see his point.

Did I mention that I have worked in an art store for ten years?

Past Interiors

I saw this painting by Carl Holsoe (19th century Danish painter) online and was blown away.  I have done a few interiors.  Currently, I'm working on one of the Vineyard house.  I have lots of photos of that house.  But Holsoe's piece made me think of my Connecticut home.  We moved in when I was two months old.  I even got married there.  Sadly, the only photographs I have of rooms are full of people.  I love these people but they are blocking architectural details.  Had I known when the house was sold in the mid-nineties, that I would become an artist and want to plunder its riches, I would have taken better photos.  I do have a video of the house which I watched yesterday. Seeing the house again made me desperate to paint it.   I spent hours trying to capture still images from the video.  I was not successful.  The video is old and grainy.  Then again, so am I.