Ruby Sunset, Fishing Village

The Sum of Small Efforts  Some days working in the studio is like one step forward and two steps back.  Any progress is imperceptible.  And yet, as an old boss used to say: "If you don't show up on Sunday, don't bother showing up on Monday!"  Painting is kind of like that.  If you don't at least try today, tomorrow you'll show up and wonder "Now, which end of the brush do I start with again?" So when it seems like today's work was a lot of time with very little to show for it, let's remember a comment by Robert Collier.  "Success", he mused, " is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out". Day in. Day out.

This was a lot of fun.  Acrylic inks on 300-lb rough paper, paint, and collage papers I made, over. 

Ruby Sunset is 15x19" Acrylic media and Collage on paper.

Village Seafront

 

Like Pulling a Piano Out of a Swamp! In the famous  literary publication Southwest  Airlines Magazine (April 2011) actress, singer and musician Zoey Deschanel  talks about creating something where nothing existed before.  "Sometimes being creative" she says, " is like pulling a piano out of a swamp. "  That girl knows what she's talking about. 

Village Seafront is 15x20" Acrylic Media and Collage on paper.

Dubrovnik, Sunday Morning

Devotions:  "You too can be carved anew by the details of your devotions."  In "Long Life, " Mary Oliver continues,  "The patterns of our lives reveal us.  Our habits measure us.  The different and the novel are sweet, but regularity and repetition are also teachers.  Divine attentiveness cannot be kept casually, or visited only in season, like Venice or Switzerland."  Just as you cannot visit painting "in season".  It has to be all the time, doesn't it? Thank goodness it's so much fun!

We were in Dubrovnik in the morning and walked atop the wall that surrounds it.  Then a noodle cake for breakfast!

Dubrovnik, Sunday Morning is 15x20" Acrylic media and Collage on paper.