It’s been one of those weeks… and I feel like I’ve had one foot in the twilight zone.  There’s been such a surreal aura around me – weird synchronicities and strange happenings, but somehow I have managed to hold on to my calm center.

Perhaps all the turmoil has stirred up some creativity, because I’ve started a new painting that I hope to finish by the end of the weekend.  The story is evolving… two friends, a secret, who knows?  I guess I’ll have some idea by the time it’s all finished.  I’ll simply let instinct and intuition guide the way.

Here’s what’s I’ve been hearing in my head as I’ve been painting:

Make new friends but keep the old,

One is silver and the other is gold.

 

– from the Girl Scout song 

 

2/21 – here’s some progress on the painting, which I worked on yesterday.

 

 

 

I still need to do the background and finish up the detail work on the figures and the foreground, both of which are still rough.  The flowers in the foreground are collaged from paper napkins, a technique I first learned about from my friend Lenna Andrews and more recently was reminded of by Sharon Tomlinson’s  article in Cloth Paper Scissors. I’m going to need to paint them in, but I really love the fine layer they add!

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2/22

I did a bit more today… I layered on some decorative papers for background texture, and then painted over them.  I also did some more detail work on the figures. Now it’s time to let it sit while I ponder the rest of the background.

 

To the Moon

Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing Heaven, and gazing on the earth,

Wandering companionless

Among the stars that have a different birth,–

And ever changing, like a joyless eye

That finds no object worth its constancy?

 

– Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)

Climbing, climbing, always wanting more, or something just beyond reach… living for the future… believing in “if only”… not stopping to breathe and see and touch and understand that everything in this moment is perfect and as it should be…

 

Sunrise

 

You can

die for it-

an idea,

or the world. People

have done so,

brilliantly,

letting

their small bodies be bound

to the stake,

creating

an unforgettable

fury of light. But

this morning,

climbing the familiar hills

in the familiar

fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,

and India

and Europe, and I thought

how the sun

blazes

for everyone just

so joyfully

as it rises

under the lashes

of my own eyes, and I thought

I am so many!

What is my name?

What is the name

of the deep breath I would take

over and over

for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is

happiness, it is another one

of the ways to enter

fire.

– Mary Oliver (1935 – )