Here I am, driving towards my walking destination early when I don’t report for duty at school. The morning light through the branches – dazzling. Honeycombs through the windshield. Our nearest, dearest star is rising later. I can spend more minutes in bed tuning into cat frequencies and possibly picking up transmissions from the other wild things that live just outside the open windows.
The sycamores lean towards me as I walk. I’m not breaking any land speed records, but then I don’t need to. I have no appointments to keep and no one I’m meeting, except for Otto & Iris back at the cottage later. Which is when I’ll paint a quick sketch of my morning drive from a photo. Street lights and signs sprouting from right out of the middle of the road! Passengerless cars driving themselves! ALL TRUE!
Sister and I zoomed today and painted bottles on black paper. It was fun so that’s what we’ll be doing in the Zoom next Sunday. It’s hard to beat making messes with matte acrylic paint on black paper. One of my bottles looks like a guitar. I accept it just the way it is. A paintbrush can’t be strong-armed into following the directions my eyes are sending it.
This time of year, when the new school year has just begun, I’m taken over by school-mind. Sitting down with the sketchbook happens less. I keep puttering along and moving towards art-mind. Some days I get there, other days I don’t. How’s your art pulse? Have you checked it lately? Even if it’s whisper-soft and barely there it can come roaring back just like a river. For me it just takes a good tidy-up of my art table. A sit down with a stack of sketchbooks so I can see where I’ve been. I taped up my mini seascapes from last month. I like seeing them on the wall above my table.
I am sure enjoying Patti Smith’s Substack. Just wanted to mention it in case, like me, you’re in the market for good listens and reads over there. Start with Abstract Nothingness. It’s a good sampling of what Patti is offering. I’ve gradually been adding more to my library over there. Here’s another one worth mentioning: Yarn Storm. I rarely put links in my posts anymore because they break and then yours truly has to fix them on the backend and that’s a serious pain in my tuchus. Use your favorite search engine to find if interested. If you haven’t mentioned it before, let me know if you’re reading anything worthwhile over there.
Otto, Iris, and I send our smoke signals from the hills of Northeast LA to wherever you might be. Keep your eyes looking up. You might not see a big flock of parrots like I saw last evening when I was pruning the runaway bougainvillea in the driveway, but you might see something else. You never know.
