If you click on the image you will be taken to my Etsy Shop where this little 6×6 inch goodie is for sale.

Acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas. Proceeds benefit animal rescue work as always.

Thanks for stopping by……

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But that has taken all my time (aside from working) and so my easel’ s been gathering dust and the only painting I’ve done is when I’ve babysat the grandkids and we’ve had one of our painting parties. GREAT fun! I’ll have to remember to post some of their pix here soon.

In the last few weeks have been feeling the NEED to paint, the hunger to spread color on a board, to mix hues….so am playing around today getting my creative juices going again. I built my Etsy Shop to put my feet to the fire and plan to be more proactive about building my pet portrait business.  The customers I have had had been pleased so I think I’m over the fear of really putting myself out there.

So that’s about it for an update. You probably thought I’d fallen in a hole it’s been so long!

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Buddha Statue from Afghanistan

With the tragedies in Haiti, Mongolia, Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq…..well, the list is endless really, one begins to wonder if it really can ever end. The Buddha teaches that it can, but must begin with our own ending of hatred within our own hearts. This was sent to me today and so beautiful I thought to share it with you.
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This poem by Thich Nhat Hanh embodies the essence of what he calls “interbeing,” the innerconnectedness of all things.

Call Me by My True Names
by Thich Nhat Hanh

From: Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh

In Plum Village, where I live in France, we receive many letters from the refugee camps in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, hundreds each week. It is very painful to read them, but we have to do it, we have to be in contact. We try our best to help, but the suffering is enormous, and sometimes we are discouraged. It is said that half the boat people die in the ocean. Only half arrive at the shores in Southeast Asia, and even then they may not be safe.

There are many young girls, boat people, who are raped by sea pirates. Even though the United Nations and many countries try to help the government of Thailand prevent that kind of piracy, sea pirates continue to inflict much suffering on the refugees. One day we received a letter telling us about a young girl on a small boat who was raped by a Thai pirate. She was only twelve, and she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself.

When you first learn of something like that, you get angry at the pirate. You naturally take the side of the girl. As you look more deeply you will see it differently. If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy. You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate. But we cannot do that. In my meditation I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, there is a great likelihood that I would become a pirate. I saw that many babies are born along the Gulf of Siam, hundreds every day, and if we educators, social workers, politicians, and others do not do something about the situation, in twenty-five years a number of them will become sea pirates. That is certain. If you or I were born today in those fishing villages, we may become sea pirates in twenty-five years. If you take a gun and shoot the pirate, all of us are to some extent responsible for this state of affairs.

After a long meditation, I wrote this poem. In it, there are three people: the twelve-year-old girl, the pirate, and me. Can we look at each other and recognize ourselves in each other? The tide of the poem is “Please Call Me by My True Names,” because I have so many names. When I hear one of the of these names, I have to say, “Yes.”

Call Me by My True Names

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh

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After Christmas I plan to really promote my pet portrait business as well as build some pet related websites with a big chunk of proceeds donated to Tara’s Babies and Garuda Aviary. I know they are struggling in this economy to care for the dogs and parrots. I also have prints and cards available of my German Shepherd painting, and 100% of all of those proceeds go to the Mid-Atlantic German Shepherd Rescue.

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Will post some paintings this weekend and update you on how our budding business is going. I read recently that Benetton started over a kitchen table with one knitting loom and now they own two airports not to mention a multi-billion dollar business! Small steps, big dreams. Never too late, I say.

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Landscape a la Whistlers limited palette

Making art is such a great lesson in how to live life. On about.com:painting, the October project was to use a limited palette, mixing neutral grays and in the style of Whistler create a landscape, urban scene, whatever. It was an interesting project to work on because in the Legacy painting tutorials I am also working on mixing grayscales, color value charts, complementary value charts, etc. and so translating those skills into an actual painting, I thought, would be fun. Fun does not describe it. It got darker and darker and I couldn’t seem to mix the proper gradations of value to maintain some semblance of a scene that I could see in my mind, but was unable to translate to the canvas.  “Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em” kept going through my mind until, AT LAST, the deadline came (today) and I had to force myself to fold ‘em on this one. But I did like the practice it gave me and plan to try again at some point. I learned that sometimes the simplest looking paintings are actually very difficult to execute! More importantly I am learning how many value jumps happen within a small space that translates through our eyes to our mind to discriminate ‘form’. I now understand why we must observe nature directly, not just photographs. So many gradations are lost in photographs.

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This arrived in my inbox this AM from Michael’s Art Supply (along with a 40% discount coupon! That’ll lower stress!). No wonder I love to paint and to meditate. I’m a high strung Virgo/Scorpio/Aries type (Sun/Ascendant/Moon) and the only thing I really need to do much more of is exercise and meditation.  I know so many people who are so stressed these days for so many reasons, but have not recognized or given themselves ways to de-stress. (Oh, I don’t have time for that: THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO). I am reminded of Anwar Sadat’s approach: “I have so much to do today I’d better spend an extra hour in prayer” (paraphrased). I think he had the right idea. Time is more fluid than we think and actually slowing down the mind, de-stressing, allows space for more to get done in the same amount of time.

Even if we don’t want to become a great painter, simply sketching, especially outdoors, focuses the mind and relaxes it. As long as you don’t judge yourself for your drawing, that is! Writing, creative cooking, dancing, listening to or making music all do it as well. I can’t speak about the “runner’s zone” I’ve heard of, unfortunately, but it sounds the same. The left brain finally shuts up.

I’m watching Lesson 10 of the Legacy course and it is a couple of hours long of color theory, value and chroma studies, and am simultaneously watching a voice in my mind tapping its nails on a formica countertop and wondering when we get to the painting the masterpiece part? For me, this is where stress comes in: not being able to be in the moment, wanting the desired result without doing the foundational work. Once I DO it, this voice shuts up and I do get into the artist’s zone, relaxed and loving the colors just as they are; so I guess the lesson is, yes, read about it, listen about it, but the benefits only come when you do it.

Like meditation.

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