Tree Silhouette
“Sometimes a tree can tell you more than can be read in a book.” -Carl Jung
(I concur.)
Sunday River, Sunday Driver
A fancy little iphone app called tiltshiftgen (or something like that) made this picture last summer of my favorite place to go to in the mornings on my solitude-seeking coffee-drinking country-drives.. I find a lot of inspiration out there. Only, I haven’t had one of those drives since I moved in August. One of these days.. I’ve had that river on my mind a lot lately..
Grandparents
Looking through old photos.. this is one of my faves. Bob, b. 1914, d. 2001. Elaine, b. 1924 and still gracing the world with her presence.
Home
I prefer taking old highways and gravel roads to get there. It’s out there in the less traveled countryside that feels most like home.
Getting Started – by Richard Condie (1979)
Anytime I have a weekend show, and especially one that involves lengthy drives, it takes me awhile to wake up and get back into the groove.. I’m totally relating to this video right now. Today, I’m doing spec work for a possible (really awesome) illustration job plus finishing up that wedding commission I’ve talked about before. I also have a phone meeting with a gallery interested in representing me.. So, busy day, and I’ve been slow to start and this is my admission to that, so now I shall go forth, with triple espresso in my hand, and get my fanny working, because after these things, there’s lots more things I’m excited to work on and show-and-tell..
Life is Sweet
Sweeten Your Tea - 2008
Hello internet world– pardon the sparse posting for the last week. The build-up to the Plaza Art Fair and subsequently the Oktoberfest the weekend after plus lots of other activities led to my own crash for the last week. I’ve been pretty much ignoring technology as much as I can.. I’m sitting here enjoying a cup of hot tea on a rainy morning preparing to dig into a ton of work that probably should have been done last week.. This Friday, I’m co-teaching a workshop at the Lawrence Arts Center for 1st – 5th graders on Henri Matisse’s Cut Paper Art and Shadow Puppetry. Planning in progress.. I think it will be fun. I love interacting with kids. They’re so honest and deliberate.. And it makes me happy to get to share knowledge of something I love with them.
I’m also finishing up a wedding commission and preparing for the Maple Leaf Festival in Baldwin City this weekend. I also received word that my artwork is going to be featured in a rather large German style magazine, for which I’m totally honored, so I’ve been trying to get some images organized for that. Next week I’m driving by my lonesome down to Nashville for Artclectic, which was a ton of fun last year, and will surely be again this year. That also puts a ton of to-do’s on my list.. like getting an overdue oil change, etc..
This past week, I got to spend a little time with a person who mysteriously drifted into my life one night several years ago and whose presence and energy was so profound to me that he inspired me to work hard (harder than I’ve ever worked at anything in my life!) at being the whole person that I am and to start making my artwork with an intensity, and he has, by following his intensity and example of doing what he loves, continually inspired me over the years to keep working toward exactly what I want. I know I’m incredibly fortunate to be doing what I do and I’m indelibly thankful for those opportunities to have him close. I sometimes wonder if I had walked the other direction, where would I be at this instant.. Being awake and open to experiences can change your life in amazing ways.
Autumn Inspiration
This past weekend was the Oktoberfest in my Kansas hometown. It was a success once again and I thank everyone who came out! Now that I’m a mid-sized city dweller, I took advantage of the evening previous to the festival to hit the country roads with my camera. Autumn is my favorite time of year and is especially good for photo opportunities. There’s something about the way the sunlight and moonlight falls on things that pulls me in and makes everything look and feel a little more magical…
Quote
“One instant of total awareness is one instant of perfect freedom and enlightenment.” -The Wisdom Deity, Manjusri
[I read this earlier as I was sitting in the sunshine with a book listening to the birds and crickets in the backyard. Seemed good enough to share.]
Walter Henry Williams, painter and printmaker
Walter Henry Williams is one of my all-time favorite artists, and his work has inspired my own in many ways. He was born in 1920 in Brooklyn, NY, and died in 1998 in Copenhagen, Denmark. There’s not a ton of information about him that I’ve found so far, but here’s a bio that I found (from http://www.dropbears.com/a/art/biography/Walter_Williams.html). I love the last line and quote about his work:
Walter Williams, painter, print-maker, and sculptor, was born in Brooklyn, New York where he attended the public schools. He studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School for four years (1951-1955) where he came into contact with Ben Shahn, Reuben Tam, Victor Candell, and Gregorio Prestopino. The latter’s rich velvety blacks undershot with deep reds and greens strongly influenced Williams’ own work. In 1953 Williams won a summer scholarship to the art school at Skowhegan, Maine, and there won first prize for painting. He began to exhibit his work in 1954 and in 1955 won a Whitney Fellowship that permitted him to travel and work in Mexico. He won the National Institute of Arts and Letters grant in 1960 and the Silvermine Award in 1963, among others. Williams went to Europe in 1960, spent some time in Amsterdam and London and then settled in Copenhagen for four years. He then moved to Rome, remained until 1966 when he became artist-in-residence at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. He has had many one-man shows and participated in a great many group exhibitions, showing paintings and prints, drawings and sculpture. Many of his works are in important museums; among these are The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The word that comes to mind when this artist’s name is mentioned is “nature,” for Williams, although born and brought up in the largest city in the world, can still remember when part of that city was a flowering tree-lined area in which children could escape the hard pavements and enjoy the pleasures of the sights and sounds that most of us delight in: birds, soft summer evenings, green landscapes; The Chairman of the Department of Art at Fisk University wrote of him: “Paintings and prints echo more than childhood memories, but also a dream world where the mind is at peace with nature and self. . .one of the rays of light so often needed in a so often light-deprived world.”
From Kansas Country Roads in July
This crazy summer heat is getting to us all. The last image is a bonus image, possibly stomach turning for some, from my driveway of a dead male Dobson Fly. I’ve never seen nor heard of these and found out through my Golden Nature Guide that it was not, in fact, extraterrestrial.
