Painting Class

by with One Comment Crafts and Projects

Artistic talent runs in my family. My mother was a talented painter and wordsmith, my dad is excelling at watercolors and my children draw and paint and do graphic design and attend college at Columbia College Chicago for music and photography. While I’ve always had a certain affinity for textiles, part of me has always wanted to paint. Specifically, I want to paint luscious landscapes with oils. I figured that I first had to learn the basics, so I signed up for a painting class at Magdalena Gallery of Arts in the Carmel Arts and Design District. What an lovely place! I am having so much fun. Two of the other artists are my age and are very talented, but they swear that they started off just like me. The other student is a young lady who is benefitting from hearing all the ‘women’s talk.’ Got me to thinking about the book The Red Tent by Anita Diamant and how as women we should consider it our sacred role to share with the younger generation what it means to be a woman. But I digress!!

Here is what I did the first week in class.painting class 1-2013 003

I was secretly very pleased when Magdalena told me that I was very good at drawing!! I couldn’t do an exact drawing, so I aimed for the ‘feel’ of the flowers. In the second week I started painting the flowers, and although they arn’t terrible, they don’t look the way I imagine it in my head. Of course, I’m not finished with the painting, yet.

painting class 1-2013 011

What is really the best part of painting is not the finished product, but the ‘flow.’ My personal initiative for 2013 is to be in The Flow whenever possible, whatever I’m doing. I want to be so engrossed, and thus fulfilled, by what I’m doing that I lose myself in the activity and get in The Flow. Of course, what I really want is for my rose to look like this.

painting class 1-2013 010

Maybe someday I will be able to paint the cover image for one of my books! I just have to keep reminding myself to enjoy the process, because we are never finished.

Graduation

by with No Comment Things That Occur to Me

My son and daughter are graduating from high school this year. I find myself being very excited for them and perhaps even a little jealous. They will be attending college in downtown Chicago – right across from Grant Park and Navy Pier with a view of Lake Michigan. One thing that I never did was live in the city after college. I guess I can live a little vicariously through my children. They are following creative pursuits -music management and comtemporary music, and photography and graphic design.  They are both very talented artists. The interesting thing is how many people want to tear their dreams down before they’ve even started or tell them that they can’t ‘make a living’ as an artist or to be ‘realistic’.  Is it that these people have thwarted dreams of their own? I even know of a young lady who dreams of being a baker whose mother told her that she can either major in business or education, not culinary arts. Why would you want to subject your child to life in a cubicle? And last time I checked, teaching jobs were pretty hard to come by. I find that very sad. I told her to take cooking classes as electives and learn about the business of owning her own bakery!

I’m not a very nostalgic person, and while I am sad that my children will be leaving home soon and will miss them and all of their friends and all the positive energy that they bring, I am really so excited for the adventure they are about to embark on. Frankly, I’m also a little excited about the adventures that I am about to embark on, because, now its gonna be all about me! 🙂

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~ Howard Thurman

 
“Find your passion and then you will have found your purpose.” ~ Bishop T.D. Jakes

Art and Science

by with No Comment Writing

I was listening to a show on our local NPR station “The Art of the Matter” on Saturday and they mentioned a new program called The daVinci Pursuit. It is aimed at young adults who are a little old for the ‘Children’s Museum’, but still need a cool place to hang out and experience art and science. The director of the program referenced Leonardo daVinci (obviously) and Michealangelo as examples of artists whose work was informed by science. This really resonates with me as I didn’t start off as a writer (although if you read my last post – Projects – you’ll see that I’ve always been interested in art.) I worked summers in college in the mirobiology lab of Evanston Hospital and have a B.S. in Biology from IU. I still love science even though my career path took a different route. I’ve always felt that my mathmatical/scientific mind helped me to see patterns and shapes, relationships and colors in my art and that understanding science (or perhaps making new discoveries) requires a considerable measure of creativity. My sister-in-law once gave me a terrific complement by saying that I was one of the few people she knew who is both left and right brained. I was flattered, but I wonder, is that really true, or do we all have equal measures of both? I find that my writing incorporates my science background as well. My next novel-in-progress, a YA titled THE FIELD, deals with alternative energy sources (wind, solar, and so-called clean coal) and The Universal Energy Field or Zero Point Field that some scientists postulate permeates every inch of space in the Universe. It takes a bit of creativity to imagine it and a lot of scientific work to discover it. I’ll post a new excerpt to THE FIELD soon!