A Little Visitor

Lizard peaking in the kitchen window

The other day while I was chopping vegetables in the kitchen I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.  When I turned around my breath caught as I saw the cutest little lizard peaking through the kitchen window at me.  I spoke sweetly and said hello and the lizard pulled its head down into the flower pot a little.  I said a little verbal prayer that the lizard would stay and ran upstairs to grab my camera.  She/he stayed quite a while actually and allowed me to snap away and even took a little cat nap closing its eyes every now and then (it was the cutest thing ever) and just resting. 

I am always so thankful for the little visits I get from lizards and frogs, from birds and butterflies and dragon flies, and from the rare sitings of the elusive praying mantis or roaming turtle.  I feel like the visits are fortuitous omens.

Have you had any unusual visitors lately?

Seahorses~Framed

Seahorses framed

I finally finished framing the Seahorses and hung them yesterday afternoon.  I just love walking into the bedroom and seeing them, especially since the wall above our bed had been empty after I painted the walls and decided the last painting no longer fit. 

The framing technique is likely unconventional but thankfully with my husbands engineering mind and talent with a razor blade combined with my ingenuity this came together.  Basically these are standard frames purchased with matting.  The back of the frame was cut out to insert the canvas and then I bought foam board and used double sided mounting tape to secure the foam to the back of the frame and create a lip to hold in the canvas.  I then covered the entire back with brown craft paper using thin double sided tape.  Here are a few pictures.

Back of frame showing foam stabilizers 

Back of frame with paper

Female framed

The verdict is out as to whether or not the paint will go funky (not sure of the proper term) because of being enclosed in glass but I did cut a triangle in the backing paper so the canvas could breath.  I did a lot of research on the internet and there were mixed results as to whether or not an acrylic painting should or can be covered in glass.

Has anyone else framed their acrylic canvas paintings and have tips they want to share?

A Must Read on Creativity

I just read this and had to share.  There is such brilliance in these 4 truths.  This is a REPOST from Bryan Franklin's blog.

I was talking with a man who is responsible for envisioning the future of how we will light our world (He’s a VP in the marketing department of Philip’s LED division, Lumileds, who is reducing the power needed to generate light by up to 85%) and he was sharing with me his ideas. I can’t tell you what they are because I’ve signed an NDA, but suffice it to say they are REALLY cool.

Is Creativity A Trait Or A Condition?

He wanted to know from me how he could get the rest of his team to think as creatively as he does. Maybe they just aren’t as creative as he is? I think they are.
As a thoroughly mundane attribute of being human, each of us has a connection to what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, and it is my experience that moments of heightened creativity have more to do with tapping into a universal creative archetype than any unique attribute of a specific person.
Performers, athletes, writers, computer programmers and professionals of all stripes attribute their most creative acts to being in a state of ‘the zone’. While in the zone, parts of themselves seem to disappear, and creativity moves through them, from a universal source, out into our world.

Where Is The Zone And How Do I Get There?

Creativity is an emergent property that arises from specific conditions, and if those conditions are present and are not at risk of degrading, every person will be able to tap into creative genius. People who are considered to be more creative are those that are more able to self-generate these specific conditions. The ‘zone’ is a byproduct of these four conditions.
1) Spaciousness
Give your self mental time and space. Allow time for the habitual thought patterns to dissipate. My friend at Lumileds does all his thinking on Airplanes, because there he has time and space that he literally can’t do anything else with. Drive time and shower time are great for this. Take a walk. Designate an area of your workspace for creativity and keep it absolutely clear of debris. Do what ever it takes to give your mind the experience of spaciousness.
2) Constraints
The reason most sequels are not as good as the originals isn’t that the filmmakers run out of ideas, its because they usually have significantly more time, money, and latitude from the studio for the 2nd movie. The first one was a huge success, so budgets and egos expand. Then, as the constraints decrease, the quality of creativity decreases as well. The beauty of human creativity is born of the constraints of being human. From arbitrary deadlines to iambic pentameter – find constraints that inspire your creative mind.
3) Model Of Inspiration
Inspiration basically comes in two forms. The first is: I want to be like you. Writers emulate writers. Musicians emulate musicians. Businesses emulate businesses. Choose someone that inspires you and study how they do everything they do. Neither compete nor idolize your inspiration. Just observe.
The second form of inspiration is: I want to express what its like to know you. Ravel’s “Une Barque Sur L’ocean” is a musical expression of what its like to be at sea. Write like Monet. Work like a gladiator. Love like Bobby Fisher. Take any idea in one context and express it in a non-compatible context. Be explicit about your inspiration and hold he/she/it in your mind as you create.
4) Love Your Ideas Into Existence
Each idea fragment that spills from your mind must be met by a resounding “YES”. The more you love the seedlings that sprout in your mind, the more fertile the mind itself becomes. Your objective is to open the channel between you and the universal archetype of creativity (creation), not to evaluate how the fruit will taste from the tree that might grow from the seed you see. Each “YES” loves the channel more open. Each “NO” closes it. Put your ideas in a context where they will be loved into existence by you and met with a “YES” both by you and by others. Once each idea begins to develop and mature, then step back and evaluate it. There will be a point when your channel is so open that trashing your ideas cannot close it – and that’s when you will experience brilliance.
Until that point, your job is not to come up with good ideas, but to love every idea that you come up with. 

Playing with Words

I decided to incorporate words into the Sun Painting (that I am still working on).  I gathered the words and placed them on a black foam board I bought for the frame work of the Seahorses (they should be framed by the end of today!)  The other evening I decided to group the words together in preparation to adding them to my painting and the words started revealing the most beautiful imagery.  I would scoot a word here and a word there and form these stories and even mosaic pictures from the word shapes.  Now I am am having a hard time finishing the sun painting because I am attached to these words.  The thing with creativity is you never know where it will take you.....words for my painting became a poem of their own, the opening for lines for a novel (perhaps), and the inspiration to begin a project that has been in the dark long enough.

Strolling down the geranium bathed sidewalks
I find kindess water offered at the
corner of incarnation and fiction.

What an adventure in solace
this heirloom light
awakens.

I dance across pools
of wild cosmos
lingering under the mosaic moon
while you write suitcase poetry
from the Shangri-La gardens.

On Journal Keeping

 

 The above picture captures the books and journals that I am currently reading, re-reading, generally refering to and/or writing in.  I often choose books just for their titles and the  The Elegance of the Hedgehog intrigued me for that very reason.  Choosing books like this is similiar to choosing a wine for the beauty of the bottle which I have also been known to do.  One thing for sure with this method is you never know what you might get.

While reading this book I have come across so many words and lines that I have circled or underlined that had an eloquence to them that I wanted to remember.  While reading last week I came across these words and they reminded me of this post that I had done earlier:

The lines gradually become their their own demiurges and, like some witless yet miraculous participant, I witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of me on the sheet, teaching me something that I neither knew nor thought I might want to know.  The painless birth, like an unsolicited proof, gives me untold pleasure, and with neither toil nor certaintiy but the joy of frank astonishment I follow the pen that is guiding and supporting me.
~The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

I have not kept to journaling as much these past few weeks and this was a nice reminder of what I am missing.

Saturday





On being outside

Backyard

I just came back inside from mowing the back yard.  This morning as I was having my cup of tea and going through my usual routine of opening the blinds and opening the front door for Butters to look outdoors the morning birdsong was interrupted by the hum of lawn mowers being started across the fields and backyards in our neighborhood.  I smiled at the sound and at the sunshine that came to greet us creating a spring in every one's step. Prior to yesterday we have had about a week of non-stop rain.

After I painted a few strokes on my sunshine painting and on another small painting I started I decided it was time for me to head outdoors and join the chorus.  As I was mowing and smelling honeysuckle that is still in bloom and an unusual cotton candy like smell coming from through the trees from the neighbors yard (what was that smell) I thought "I love mowing".  Then I thought how my Dad would laugh at this as he always complains that I never mowed when I lived there.  In between stopping to pull a weed from a flower bed I was passing or stopping and rescuing a little hoppy toad, I still continued to think of how I love mowing and pondered where had this desire come from.  I have long wanted a yard full of clover for the bees and so we would not have to mow the yard.  Having a lawn means sowing the lawn every season and fertilizing it and weeding it so it seems contradictory to want a lawn and to want all the little creatures in my yard safe too. 

There is an allure to the mowing though, to creating straight or even curved lines and seeing the beautiful pattern that you are creating.  There is an awareness of each inch of your space as you go back and forth across the lawn looking at how much a tree you planted has filled out or spotting the season's first bursting bud from the day lilly or saving a hoppy toad and taking the moment to smile and thank the hoppy toad for visiting.  And this morning I was reminded of childhood as well.  There was something sentimental about having the door open and hearing the start of those mowers that took me all they way back to pig tails and halter tops.

I may have a different post about mowing when the mercury hits 85 plus and the humidity matches it, but today I feel joyful just being outside and feeling the sun against my skin as I mow one careful row after another.

What is bringing you joy today?