Random but true, that in my life as an artist it is not constant rewards but occasional perks.
The Bread and Puppet Theater is coming to my town.
The entire text of Kandinsky's On the Spiritual in Art is online.
A few days ago I got a chance to spend my day painting while still doing my job. I was a semi-student in an amazingly productive and fascinating one day workshop with Sydney Licht who is more than a simple still life painter. Funny how I was able to be in the same place I am every day but in a much much different place. I was able to paint all day (save for the moments I was listening to the other painters and soaking up the color).



Here's hoping it is percolating in your world, too,
Rachael

It's been a few days off work and I am still tremendously inspired. My friend and fellow painter, Karen, and I wandered and wondered and helped each other sort some things out simply by talking and listening and eating. She's hunting down a good MFA program that will keep her painting for a couple more years, build her skills more, and let her be her. I'm wondering how I do and will keep balancing making and learning, teaching and working, and anything else life sends.
Karen and I didn't take a camera with us as we left for our roadtrip last Thursday. We packed our sketchbooks, a slew of apples, a bunch of sweaters and with our eyes open and our watches back at home, we discovered the greens and oranges and reds and yellows and white streaked bluish light grey skies of miles of road between Rochester and Ithaca and New Haven, Connecticut.

The road itself was mad inspiring, although I'm a bit guilty still that I didn't drive.
I had a chance to hear The Avett Brothers
We started with a few hours in Ithaca where we randomly and wonderfully discovered The Plunger Press which seems the natural heir to a legacy of social protest printmaking and clever critical/commercial enterprises like Oldenburg's Store. Below is just one of the magic heads available for purchase and perusal at Plunger...

We had more experiences in Ithaca and New Haven but they're stories not to be told today. Except I will share the Martin Johnson Heade I looked at in the Yale art museum (though the dirty rats wouldn't let us in to see the rest of the museum because it's closed for renvovations though it just seemed closed for big-wigs until December 10.) It's OK, this smart Heade was the only thing I really needed to see.


OK, then, I'm back to being busy and Karen's back to the paint and the applications and Georgia...
take good care,
Rachael

Attempted and not quite:
Sunday, we were going to day trip. A late start, a grey day, a chance to talk about things we never discuss and just like those volkswagen commercials, as casually as we talked, we collided with another vehicle. We were all shaken for sure but no one was hurt. We walked away with bruised cars and one bruised elbow.


Forthcoming:
Karen comes tommorrow and we plan to hit the road. We are in search of a good grad school for her, a bunch of visual and idea soup for both uf us, and me, I want to send some postcards and buy a new sweater and not think about work. We're planning on surprise and I'll share when we get back.

And it is Hockney's images of his homeland that have me thinking of this roadtrip, travel, space and place. Check this review for a smattering. If I had more time, I'd paint but if I had even more time I'd find more road related images...
life is short but the road is long. I long for a little adventure and a few days off. Soon, enough.
Rachael

Just when I think I know something. Just when I think I have a plan. That thing changes, that plan shifts, I get it that there's just too much out there to know and the truth is truly surprising. Nothing all that new but newly and truly learned every single day of the past couple of weeks. It's leaf-under-your-feet-crunching time, and then Buffalo got snow dumped. Though, that's never much a surprise.

The mere fact that I'm tossing words into this bottle is a surprise. That I'm giving myself more time to paint, to draw, to dream and to relax is surprising. In my working and waking life I'm surrounded by yoga instructors and stress so the yogi are kindly helping me breathe. It's the same lesson my mom taught me what feels like a billion years ago.

More surprises, if you want 'em. A magic song about want by Rufus analyzed and written so even a musically clueless could learn from here. This poem by T.S. Eliot which I found by accicent:
surprises...

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). Prufrock and Other Observations. 1917.


Cousin Nancy

MISS NANCY ELLICOTT

Strode across the hills and broke them,

Rode across the hills and broke them—

The barren New England hills—

Riding to hounds

Over the cow-pasture.



Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked

And danced all the modern dances;

And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it,

But they knew that it was modern.




Upon the glazen shelves kept watch

Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,

The army of unalterable law.

 
More soon when you least expect it. Surprise, surprise...
Rachael

It's been overwhelmingly paced in my life recently. Work has swallowed me whole and with the small bit of my self left over I've been trying to paint, teach and grow. I talk to a lot of people on a daily basis who want to make art or want to begin learning something daunting.
Some of my recent growth has been behind the wheel. I have a big fear of driving and am proud to announce that I've been driving around a good bit and haven't hurt anyone. I simply worked up the courage to start and with some support, I did. I've tried this before and have driven for spurts or with lessons or in extreme circumstances but I am tackling this project head on I tell you. I will make concerted efforts to get in my car and go somewhere a few times a week. This can only widen my world and with a small investment in a guardian angel and a supprtive group of friends and family I oughtta be able to do what almost every other American does. Guzzle gas and get to where I need to be when I need to be there without transfering.
Not that I won't be a bus rider, friend, I do still have a love for public transportation, even as it is a challenge at times.
I had the pleasure of spending a recent morning with my dad at our neighborhood garage sale and spending the next morning listening to Rachel Naomi Remen on the radio talking to Krista Tippet.
My paintings are starting to populate the attic studio and I'm been happily staring at Romanesque cathedrals and Renaissance paintings as I work to put art in front of folks who are new to looking.
We're all new at something.
The bold yellows of the trees in my neighborhood makes me sing.
All this is to say, thanks and see ya soon... take care, Rachael