Hello everybody!

I trust you all had a good week.  Mine was pretty okay.  I started a new job a couple of weeks ago that allows me to keep the lights on while I paint, my partner happy, and my cats fed.  That being said, I don’t have as much time to paint as I used to but I did manage to eek out a few postcard pieces and a new Goddess portrait in color pencils.

A dear friend of mine invited me to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, CA on the last day of the Klimt and Rodin exhibit.  It was a lot of fun as I got all gussied up #museumvamp style and strolled around the rooms acting like I knew what my friend was talking about when really all I was doing was eyeballing her butt.  It’s a nice butt.

 

 

 

But all joking aside, it was a great experience.  Klimt’s work, especially his landscapes were hypnotizing.  I dorked out over a tiny flower for about ten minutes.  The way he blended colors and textures almost makes it look like everything is hazy or misty when you look at it from afar–but up close there are very precise shapes he utilized.  I tried to imitate the flower that I was fascinated by and while it didn’t turn out quite how I hoped, it looks like candy so that’s good enough for me.

 

 

I am a bit of a pack rat when it comes to pieces of fabric or materials.  In an effort to justify my habit of keeping pretty flyers or bookmarks people hand me on the street, I’ve started rifling through my vintage hat storage box and incorporating it into my art.  Below is a postcard I made incorporating a bookmark-sized “flyer” given to me by a practitioner of Falun Gong.

 

Guardian

I loved how airy the design was.  I could not bare to cover up either the dragon or the woman (she reminds me of the Goddess Quan Yin but I’m not quite sure who she is) so I tried out a two-sided postcard concept.  I had the idea that the dragon would be like a protector for the woman.  Or to show the delicate side of the woman as well as her strong side.

 

 

I have been practicing meditation for the last five years.  I’m nowhere near as devoted as I could be.  Enlightenment is far beyond my reach, is basically what I’m saying.  In my visualization exercises, I’ve been told to imagine a bright golden light emanating from my heart chakra.  I’ve been having a hard time doing so.  My heart feels like it’s just floating in a dark sea.  The golden light I imagine is barely strong enough to venture beyond my left and right ventricles.  So since I can’t imagine it in me, I tried to depict it outside of myself.

 

 

Growing up, there was always a boat on the shore by my grandma’s beach.  One time it was my dad’s old boat from before I was born that was long out of commission, it’s overturned form now a home for hermit crabs and spiders.  Other times it’s an inflatable boat anchored a few yards from shore.  The last time I visited, it was a small dingy hooked to one of the overgrown mangroves and bobbing all by its lonesome in the murky water with flecks of gold in it.

I wonder who that boat is waiting for.

 

 

My second Goddess portrait.  Sekhmet is a mighty lion-headed goddess whose fiery energy and power is not to be taken lightly.  It is said that her breath created the desert.  I’ve drawn her here and written her known names in English.  She is thought to have had thousands of names but only about 200 that humanity recorded.  I’ve fit just a little over 100 in here.  This portrait is a special gift for a friend of mine that I wanted to have memorialized here.

So these pieces are what I have been up to since my last post.  I’ve been finding art to be very therapeutic and want to keep doing it especially now that I’ve started working.  I suffer from a lot of anxiety and depression, so I need a place to get the excess energy and sad thoughts out.

Take good care of yourselves, everyone.  Until next time!