You Can Lead a Horse to Water

... but you can't make it drink.

As you may recall, I had a happy little patch going at a trot in Core Values a number of days ago.

Led it to water.

It ran away.

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Took a happy little sister patch out for a run two days ago. Led it to water yesterday.

Same thing.

It took off! 

Not too far, but it wanted no part of taking a drink.

So I took a long drink of water as well as a long deep breath; will have to see what I can sort out.

patch in progress

Decluttering

I'm pressing pause in the development of my current Core Values patch to tell a side story.

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Earlier this year, I went through an internal tug-of-war with decisions related to clearing my house of items I no longer need or use, often feeling emotional pangs that were at odds with practical wishes to lighten the load and make space. What to do with the aerial photo of our house that I purchased for Dave 27 years ago, the 1000s of Lego pieces, the archives of a former entrepreneurial business of mine, the delightful lid to the now-broken-and-long-gone sugar bowl that was part of our wedding china?

Concurrent with my decluttering, I happened to be reading the historical novel This Road We Traveled by Jane Kirkpatrick about an extended family that sets out on the Oregon Trail during westward expansion in the United States in the 1800s to travel roughly 2000 miles in covered wagons pulled by oxen. I was particularly attentive to the many decisions this family has to make.

While loading their wagons before departure: What to bring? What to leave behind? Far along the trail, with scarce food and declining strength in both humans and animals, and miles and mountains yet to traverse: What to continue conveying? What to leave beside the trail? Something as small as a Bible, or smaller, might need to be discarded because the cumulative weight of even thimbles and sentimentally-cherished letter openers exceeds the ability to transport.

This story comes to mind again as one of my friends prepares to put her house on the market this summer and move to a smaller home. What might I give her for her birthday that won't feel like one more thing to pack, one more thing that will take up space in her new place?

Two answers:
• the gift of a beach walk and cup of coffee on a sunny blue-skied spring morning in May, and
• two handpainted bookmarks : )

Whistlings, Warblings, Wildness, and Joy
5x1.75"; acrylics, ink, and oil pastel on card stock
abstract
2018
[gift]

Pull at the Quill Pen, Tip the Ink Bottle
5x1.75"; acrylics, ink, and watercolor pastel on card stock
abstract
2018
[gift]

Furnishing

I recently read an exquisitely written memoir by David Giffels entitled Furnishing Eternity.

When I paint, I think I furnish not eternity but right-now. At least sometimes. Often enough, in any case, to bring me back to my studio day after day.

Giffels, telling the story of using a router outfitted with a tongue-in-groove bit to shape the edge of a long pine board, gives words to what I think of as the now of painting: An hour passed, then another. Eventually, I became one with the process, a transformation I've always savored. First one enters the work, then the work enters oneself.

First I enter the work, then the work enters me. I am grateful each and every time the work enters me.

There has already been much back and forth with my patch in progress below. I enter the work, the work enters me, I enter the work, the work enters me.

Gonna let it "chill" overnight and see what I think tomorrow.

 

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History thus far:

    


     

        

          

Attunement

I attune to an inner whisper today that keeps saying, mpjkenyon.

Jane Kenyon is a Canadian artist whose work I discovered through Instagram @mpjkenyon some months ago.

mpj, thank you for knocking on my door with mark making that is all-in carefree, careless, reckless, uninhibited, haphazard, playful, intuitive, childlike, and uncensored. Every time I see your art, I feel resonance.

Well, that would be the tame way of putting it.

Let's get down to brass tacks.

Every time I see your art, you smack me upside the head and bark in my face, This is what you yearn to do. DO IT. Crack open your safe shell.

OK, OK!

And, thank you.

I played with this kind of mark making a few days ago but then lost it to subsequent layers. Today I wanted to stay immersed in—and stop while still immersed in—pure mark making, mark making from—to use your words—somewhere inside my body other than my conscious self.

√.

newest patch

detail

new patch in the bigger picture;
working title: Core Values

To the En's o' the Earth

Whew! Went to the ends of the earth and back with this painting. Not an easy ride, I'll tell ya that much.

But, lookie—kinda fun, don'tcha think, even though early in the process I wrecked lost a bit that I loved?

I had few bearings for most of the ride. Didn't know where I was in the process and had little idea how many miles I might still have to go, but then Jen Walls's mention of the concept/practice of enso surfaced (thank you, Jen). Bingo!

In Zen, ensō (円相, "circle") is a circle that is hand-drawn in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create. 

Had to dig deep to find my inner brave spot to commit to what I had in mind, but a few practice runs with a dry brush freed my mind, and I let my body go in with paint.

newest patch, a 3-patch

detail

detail

new 3-patch in the bigger picture,
working title: Core Values

My Village

I am deeply grateful for my painting village—for the new friends I've made in the past four years through Leslie Saeta's Thirty Paintings in Thirty Days challenges, through Instagram, through my blog, and through the internet at large; and for my family and longtime friends—all of whom support, cheer, encourage, ask questions, give feedback, make suggestions, point me in directions, share links of interest, purchase my paintings, follow my blog, laugh with me, give me hugs, help me solve problems, and act as patrons of my art with various gifts.

They are my teachers.

I draw nourishment from them again and again.

Hard to imagine where I'd be without them—and why try? I know where I am with them and I am grateful day after day after day.

Especially when my internal world feels like a crazy wilderness.

Here's where my current tri-patch went today:

rotated my canvas, painted over yesterday

did some therapeutic journaling

let Hans Christian Anderson put in his 2¢ via collage

Riding Roughshod

Oh my gosh, it's been one of those days where something deep inside wants out. Don't know what it is. It may not know what it is. Just know it hasn't shown up yet on my canvas.

I gessoed over the patch I'd been working on the past two days, expanded to three contiguous patches, and then turned my energy to not getting bucked by the reckless horse that's running roughshod with me on its back.