So, here I am posting about learning, once again, how I came to accept the limits of my control and learning to be OK with it. It was a troubling and traumatizing time, but, yes, I am painting.

Here is the first painting I have done since returning to the studio

Slow Down You Move to fast

Some tips on how to handle criticism with grace or Don't Take it Personally

A couple of weeks ago I read some advice to artists suggesting that they should identify and write about what attracted them to the subject/object of their work. It advised that in the process they would come to understand what they are trying to communicate through their work. The following day a friend, herself and artist, writer and educator, was looking over my “painting a day” collection and recommended that I write about this process - how working within constraints both self imposed and externally imposed had resulted in this practice, and what this practice was teaching me. I had received the same message two days in a row from different sources, and concluded I better pay attention.

Since then I’ve been pondering what to write and how to approach the subject. Part of the reason this has taken so long to write is because this is such a large topic. I have therefore decided to write a series of blogs.

To become mindfully aware of our surroundings is to bring our thinking back to our present moment reality and to the possibility of some semblance of serenity in the face of circumstances outside our ability to control.

Jeff Kober

Writing on the first day of November and thinking back to the last week of July I recall one benefit to being couch-bound was that I was totally in the “now”. I couldn’t do anything or go anywhere so there was no point in planning. The tyranny of the clock was completely obliterated. The only time I needed to keep track of, was when could I take my meds, and I did that by writing the time down when I took my last dosage. There was no need for grocery lists I couldn’t go shopping, I was totally reliant on food that people brought me (and my gratitude to the people who fed me grew daily.)

The only appointment in my calendar was the follow up visit with the doctor, scheduled for July 31. The physician had told me to go home and lie down and do nothing until I came back at the end of July. I understood him to promise that I’d be healed by then. And so I hoped. I was painting these paintings and slowly increasing the time and distance of walking in my house using a cane, not relying on the walker, I was hopeful. (Spoiler alert, it did not work out the way I hoped but I’ll write about that in the next blog).

Gladys

Painting Faces: Am interview with Janet Boltax

April 15 to May 31, 2015

If you want to work on your art, work on your life.

— Anton Chekov

We seem to be always on the brink of one disaster or another in these recent weeks and months. Listening to the news has been terrifying. It is all too easy to succumb to fear and anxiety. These difficult days, it is hard to not let anger, bitterness and even hate rise and reside within us. I know my response must be one of love. It is not easy to respond with love, but in my heart I know that my commitment to my journey requires me to keep faith and respond with respect and belief in the interconnectedness of all beings.

“Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity…It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.” ~ Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

Note: It has been a long time since I posted a blog, What follows was mostly written late March. In April my brother died. This caused me to look with new eyes at my life and everything around me. Someday I will write about grief and living with absence, but for now here is a blog about an experience I had as an artist that is common to all of us when we attach our definition of happiness to some extrinsic occurrence.

I have been meditating for over three decades now, and I am here to say that this has not resulted in walking around in a steady state of joy and happiness. However I do notice pretty quickly when I am creating stories in my head that are contributing to my own sadness and suffering. Then it is up to me to adjust my thinking and release that suffering.

Funny thing, sometimes it takes me a while to give up those thoughts that are causing me grief.

Expectations are resentments under construction.

Anne Lamott

I think all of us seek happiness and wish happiness to those we love. Yet we persist in pinning happiness to achievements and often these achievements are beyond our control. If someone came to us and told us they wanted some achievement so that they could be happy, we would be hard pressed to keep ourselves from pointing out the folly of that plan.

And yet.... we make this deal with ourselves all the time.

I did this, recently.

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.

(Hal Borland)

Opening a show, is sort of like throwing a big party except there is even more work and coordination and showing your work often evokes a certain level of excitement as well as anxiety and insecurity. The day following the opening, the artist often has to try to discover ways to forestall the postpartum blues (opening of show variety) Then as the show continues your interaction continues. You meet people there, you chat, you answer questions... Then you take it all down. Today I took down the show. I uninstalled. I brought the work home. So in an effort to distract myself and forestall the postpartum blues (end of show variety) I am blogging. I am going to answer that question I am so often asked.... how do I know when a painting is finished? Unfortunately, my honest answer is probably less than informative. The answer is, when I have said everything I can say in that particular painting- when there is resolution, and the painting is not over worked (there is still some entry point for viewers to wander around and find their own meaning, some breathing space). And how do I know that? Well...

“There’s nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.” James Lee Burke

A really cool thing happened this week. A submission I made to a juried exhibit was rejected .

note #1 I very nearly wrote I was rejected

note #2 I am quite serious, in the end this was a cool thing, read on...

Let’s s start at the beginning.

The artist's association I belong to (http://studiomontclair.org/)put out a call for a show of works honoring the Fauves.

The Fauves, as explained in the website, The Art story (http://www.theartstory.org/movement-fauvism.htm) were a loosely affiliated group of French painters inspired by the paintings of Vincent vanGogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Paul Cézanne.

Melody Beattie

Gratitude is more than counting your blessings. Incorporating gratitude into your life, or practicing grateful living, leads to a sense of well being and improved health. When we practice both meditation and grateful living, we become aware of the abundance in our lives. Focusing our attention away from negative and stressful thoughts, increases heart health and triggers positive changes in your brain.

I am not making this up, there is a lot of scientific evidence of these physiological benefits. I am providing a link to a blog on Grateful living practices, that asks us to notice all that is already fully present and abundant in our lives – from the tiniest things of beauty to the grandest of our blessings. In this essay Brother David Steindl-Rast, OSB, urges us to be awake to the surprising world we live in, be aware of the opportunities offered us to simply enjoy our life and lastly to respond to these opportunities alertly.

I discovered and became a devotee of Medardo Rosso (1858-1928) when in graduate school, studying Painting and Sculpture. Last night I attended the closing reception of his works at the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA). What a great opportunity this exhibit provided seeing one of his sculptures in person is uncommon, here were 12! Even more enlightening to me, were the 30 drawings and 55 photographs. I am fascinated with his painterly approach to sculpture. Here is an artist who was attempting to ‘dematerialise’ (his term) the sculptures he was making. Light and shade become tools as he manipulated the distinctive characteristics of cast plaster and cast wax (as well as bronze). He chose his materials with this intention that light should combine with the surface to create the form. The play of light on the surface, used to produce an effect of color, is a key element in the finished piece. His aim was to integrate the object with the atmosphere.

Because we are creatures of our society which prizes productivity so highly, we can come to judge ourselves by measuring our output and expecting that output to be consistent and constant. Such self judgement does not acknowledge the rhythm of the creative life. There are times when we draw from the well and there are times when we must refill the well. There are natural rhythms to creativity. Periods of flourish follow periods of incubation, and sometimes one must rest to allow the creative energies to resurge. We must go where we find delight and drink it into our souls, refreshing ourselves. I first learned of the concept of filling the well in Julia Cameron's book, “The Artist's Way” a book that outlines a program to overcome creative blocks.

" Art is an image-using system. In order to create, we draw from our inner well. This inner well, an artistic reservoir, is ideally like a well-stocked trout pond. We’ve got big fish, little fish, fat fish, skinny fish – an abundance of artistic fish to fry. As artists, we must realize that we have to maintain this artistic ecosystem. If we don’t give some attention to upkeep, our well is apt to become depleted, stagnant, or blocked. Any extended period of piece of work draws heavily on our artistic well... As artists we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them – to restock the trout pond, so to speak. I call this process filling the well. Filling the well involves the active pursuit of images to refresh our artistic reservoirs. " Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

Do not depend on the hope of results…you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to that you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.

Thomas Merton

I am happy to announce the inclusion of two of my paintings in the new member exhibit of CWOW curated by Ebony Simpson at the Atrium Gallery of Seton Hall University School of Law, Newark, NJ. April 26th - July 25th, 2015.

I will be showing "When Morning Comes" Oil on Canvas 48 x 36"

and "Squall" Oil on Canvas 36 x 48".

In both of these paintings I am using aspects and appearances from the material world to disclose an undercurrent, an inner life .