Just be good.

I went to church today.

I finally felt inspired to paint again. It felt good to get the art journal out and a couple of tubes of paint.

I had just gotten out of the habit. Like going to church.

But it's what inspired me. I felt contemplative and sensitive to everything around me. The music was beautiful and the babies, sweeter. The stain glass shown more brilliantly and my little town showed up in their finest to celebrate and worship something beyond ourselves and our stuff.

I was raised to be good- to be good to myself, other people, animals and the environment. I'm one of those people that have to work at being good. Sweet Farmer was born that way and it comes more natural. But me, I have a natural naughtiness that takes some work to overcome. I get out of the habit.

The Man above reminds me of who I am and who I want to be. He's very real to me. Not like a good-luck charm or a spiritual Santa. He was a real man whose feelings, thoughts and realities were recorded by real men. I believe in his reality of the world. I believe that he gave us a glimpse of who God is and how much he wants to be re-united with us and how much he wants us to have great lives until we all get together again.

I'm glad I have a Center (besides me). A Person to go to that grounds me (besides Sweet Farmer). A place that speaks of community and rising above the mundane.

Today reminded me to be good.

Favorite Things

I've been so remiss in posting lately. I feel like a person who is not returning letters to dear friends as I have continued to visit your blogs quickly between all my happenings. I've missed our connection here. I thought I would share some of my favorite things at Christmas time.






Sweet Farmer loves, loves a decorated home so I fussy everything up for him and me because we have time to sit cozy around the wood stove and admire this pretty place he built with his own hands and I decorate with lots of love.




My penguin family is one of my favorite things so I placed them in a winter wonderland atop my entertainment center.
This is fantastically intricate cross-stitch my Mom made for us in 2003. I'll never forget the day that Sweet Farmer realized that each of those tiny little x's represent stitches that were made by my mother's tragically beautiful arthritic hands and crippled fingers.











This village of Santas were all hand-carved by my very talented father. He's done so many and I gathered them up like treasures when he first started when nobody cared so much about them. Now, everyone is scrabbling to get the next one he carves. I'll probably never see another one now that they're wildly popular and so many grandkids, but I'm so happy to have this collection.



This is Gus, my oldest grandson, preparing for his part in the live nativity. He took it as seriously as this expression illustrates.

And this is Cash who says, "DEAR SANTA, I WAS FRAMED".

Just a few of my favorite things!!

MAGIC CARPET RIDE

Today was a good art day for me. I woke up with nowhere I had to go, no chore I had to do (but bottle feed 2 little kittens), and no lunch to cook for Sweet Farmer! I've learned to cherish days like this and so, of course, I got my paints out. I painted this from a boring old photo of my tom-cat. YOU CAN'T IMAGINE HOW MUCH FUN I'VE HAD! I had my music going, bubble gum to chew and fat little kittens running around my feet. And I just took off -on that magic carpet ride of absolute abandon. WHAT A RIDE!

Then I played with what I played with.

I love to add words to my paintings.

Sweet Farmer hates it when I add words to my paintings.

Cropping can be so dramatic!

I asked Sweet Farmer while I was giving him a morning neck rub- "Where would you be today if you could be anywhere you wanted to be?"

He said, "Right here."

whuuu baby- I totally agree. It was so nice to take a ride and stay right here.

Searching for Sophistication

I've been doing what I love to do on the side:looking at art magazines, looking at art books, watching art videos, until I get my work done and I can paint myself.

This is a new watercolor. I'm still trying to paint without drawing, without a composition in mind, and letting the paint and the process take me along.

But I'm a little discouraged with my art these days. I know I must keep working it out. I wish I had a good mentor besides my own self-exploration.

For instance, why I do I like this version better (digitally altered)? The composition and design elements are much more interesting to me. Am I crazy? The other seems so elemental.

How do I get from there to here? I won't be satisfied until I can paint with a brush dynamic and sophisticated images. But how do you gain sophisticated images when you have an elemental artist's mind? That's my dilemma. Well, back to the art magazines, books, videos, classes, etc. And I'll take any suggestions.

One of those days when I just let the mind paint with no expectation. Today I used watercolor, inks and charcoals.
I always wonder when I finish what was the mind wondering, or rather, what was it expressing? I'm sure the white tree stands for aging or wisdom, possibly? Everything else is up for grabs. It reminds me of those kinetic images you see on the inside of your eye-lids when you close your eyes. I love those images. If you've never paid attention to them -you should, it's like your own little art gallery or built in kaleidoscope.

I got see Thing One and Thing Two, otherwise known as my grandsons, this weekend. They have gotten to a goofy, silly stage where they crack themselves up all the time. Of course, they crack me up too- and I take pictures. I'm not sure anyone else gets our sense of humor.

We did get a chance to go to the San Angelo Art Museum which had an indoor exhibit on YARD ART of all things, and then the curator gave us directions to see one of the actual yards that was featured. It was a fantastical altar-ish, Mayan-ish, Day of the DEADish, garish, but whimsical structure which captured the artist's soul, an aging Mexican vaquero with very black (possibly Grecian dyed) hair and a dark mustache. Thing One saw for the first time that art can be expressed by more than paper and paint. So we drove around and looked for other yard "art" after that and I could tell that he got it. Thing Two just slept.

Sweet And Pretty

This is my beautiful Joli. She turned 30 today and I am very nostalgic, have been for days actually. Someone asked me if her turning 30 made me feel old. I haven't really felt old as much as I've felt amazed.

You see Joli came nine months after I lost a little boy who only lived 8 days. I hoped for the best, but prepared for the worst. She weighed 9 pounds and was perfectly healthy, and I truly understood the miracle of a healthy birth even though I was just 20.

Joli means sweet and pretty in French. I thought that would label her the chic and beautiful creature I saw before me. But she wasn't into chic. She was an authentic country girl who loved to wear strange, unusual outfits, talk and sing and create joyful drama with wild abandon through every day. She amazed me then.

But she amazes now. She works a high-powered corporate job with a hard hat on most days. She an excellent mother to my 2 grandsons. She's a good wife. An incredible friend - she has a host of loyal and committed friendships. And she has been a good, good daughter -all that I could ever ask for . She makes me very proud to be her mother. She is delightful. And Chic.

I'm amazed that I'm her mother- that's all there is to it. I was too young, married to the wrong man, uneducated at the time, struggling to hold my own head above water and yet, somehow, God made up all the difference and gifted me. When your young, you live half scared that you will get the important stuff all wrong. Joli is my proof that love covers a multitude of sins.

Digressing

My art may be digressing a bit I'll admit, but I think I missed or skipped over a crucial period of just pure playfulness. This month of scary, daring stuff has been good for me.

After I struggled over the church painting, a good blogger friend, who must have recognized that I was agonizing too much over my art (actually many of my friends saw that in me and suggested I let go)suggested I read, "Life, Paint and Passion". Thank you so much Anetka for taking me there. It has been a great reminder that the process is as important, or more so, than the product.
If you didn't care what anyone thought about what you wrote, painted, dreamed- what would you dare to do? We were taught very early to live in our square bland boxes of no imagination. Many can no longer respond to the gift of creating. It's like it went to sleep or was buried deep in the recesses of doing it "right" and doing it "this certain way" by "certain rules". This month for me is about taking back the joy of simply putting words to paper, paint to canvas and let that white void be a playground of wild abandon. I've got to dare myself and scare myself, and climb out of my box, and question everything. There is NO ONE to impress, if you really think about it.

Thank goodness I've reached the age of digression.

P. S. Linda at Vulture Peak Muse gave me a beautiful award that honors our sister-hood in this blogging community. She knows I don't like chain-letter type awards - but this one is special because I truly do feel that the people I've met through blogging have been a very special group of ladies that have encouraged me and thrilled me with their endeavors and everyday lives.

Thank you to all those "regulars" that add their sweet comments and enrich my life by small little affirmations. Thank you for taking the time to stop at my front blogging porch to smell my flowers and wish me well.

The Real Me

It is rare that you will ever see an actual photograph of me on this site. Not because I don't think I'm pretty. I'm very pretty on the inside (little known fact that I won Miss Congeniality at the Miss Fort Stockton pageant), but photographs always show the outside and that can be quite ghoulish.

But since it is my month for scary, daring things- I thought I would share my pic for October.

No, actually this is a very fun little photo site called picnic where you can download your own photographs and art and add fun Halloween effects to them. It can be quite liberating for those who have a ghoulish side that never shows up in photographs.

No, actually this is the real me -just ask Sweet Farmer on one of my bad, evil days. But then, he likes me bad and scary sometimes.

Psycho - delic bat friend

I hope you can see my little bat friend in this art. I have really been into bats lately- maybe because things are a little batty around here. Two or three more weeks of "EXTREME Farming- The Reality Show" and we'll be back to a slower normal.

But anyway, little time for my art so recently I painted this bat in my journal. I swear to you it was the ugliest painting I had ever done. I thought about putting it up on a post because after all I'm doing scary things. They say that painting a really ugly painting can be very liberating. It was. I said, "So there, I don't give a rip - I just wanted to paint when I was too tired, too frazzled, and with little time. But honestly, the little bat kept calling to me over the next few days and saying, "come back and play with me".

So, I couldn't fix the painting because he was done with gouche watercolors in blacks and greens and oranges. So I took him a messed with him digitally and I like the little fellow all psycho-delic.

I've said before that art is one of those things in my life that I can change the reality at any given time and it is quite empowering. So I can go from Yuck to Yeah with a few quick tricks.

A Very Scarey, Very Bad Day

Okay I like being scared. But I don't like nightmares.

I had one yesterday.


Regulars here know how much I love driving my Caterpillar Challenger winnower (cuts hay and small grains). Well, this is what happens when you leave an $80,000 machine sitting on the edge of a circular field with a large pivot sprinkler worth $100,000 going around the field.

This is after they stood the large sprinkler back up because it crawled up the side of my winnower and then toppled over. Breaking the last section. Sweet Farmer found it first and called me. Now this is a man that has not ever (I'm not exaggerating) been angry with me for 11 years. He was very angry! I could tell by the way he just kept asking me, "WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?""

I cried until we couldn't talk anymore. He came home completely over it while I cried every time I thought about it. Then we spent the rest of the evening talking about what's really important, telling me stories of how many other people in this valley have made the same mistake, and thanking God we have insurance on everything!!

It turned out not to be as bad as first thought -less than a $1000 mistake. (GAG) And you know what is funny (like sad, boo-hoo, ha-ha crazy funny). Just 10 minutes BEFORE Sweet Farmer called me with the nightmare call, he had called me to tell me that he had been paid on some odd jobs and gotten some checks out of nowhere. Then he said," I'm just going to give them to you so that you can have - what do you call it, ""guilt-free"" (luxury items) money to spend for Christmas or whatever you want to do with it. I told him I didn't really need it, but he insisted that I should have this nice little sum just for non-discretionary spending, which I do anyway, but sometimes with a little guilt. (I can hear my father grinning)

Later that night - I said, "I sure am glad you gave me that "guilt-free" money and we both just laughed and hugged.

Yes, Sweet Farmer still loves me after all this. And I can still call him Sweet after scolding me like a child when it was just an accident.

"No blood was flowing, no flesh was burning" as I heard King Henry VIII tell his last wife on my IPOD today while I cut hay again in my sadly, dented Catepillar winnower and spoke with insurance adjusters from my cell phone.