Croning My Way Through Life
By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
~William Shakespeare
The artists of the past were not exempt from painting images that scare the beejeezes out of you.
Let me share some famous nightmares with you.
Sweet Dreams!
Cassius Marcellus Coolidge (September 18, 1844 – January 13, 1934) was a drugstore owner, painter, bank owner, and inventor.
But Coolidge (who at times signed his work Kash” or Kash Koolidge) became well known as the creator of the dogs-playing-poker genre of painting, a subject which grew out of the 19th-century tradition of visual humor.
From the mid-1900s to the mid-1910s, Coolidge created a series of sixteen oil paintings for them, all of which featured anthropomorphic dogs, including nine paintings of Dogs Playing Poker,] a motif that Coolidge is credited with inventing.
His work was purchased by cigar companies, who made copies of his paintings as promotional giveaways, and by the printing firm of Brown & Bigelow who made his work widely known by using it in advertising posters, calendars, and prints.
You can find more of Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s artwork across the Internet.
I took the day off from work. I slept late, went to the store, am fooling around on my computer, and am going to nap again. I think I am so sleep deprived the cosmos made me take today off. After all, you can’t make magic…you can’t BE magic…if you are too sleepy to think straight.
So before I doze off on this cloudy Friday afternoon, I wanted to give you a sneak peek at the galleries coming up:
I am so fascinated by the magnificent ideas that have come from the souls of creative people. I don’t believe you have to understand or even like a piece to understand the passion that went into its creation.
If you have enjoyed the small selection I share here Sunday nights (and other nights when I can’t hold back any more), please find your way to my Sunday Evening Art Gallery for a more extensive selection.
Tell your friends to follow me too! (how shameless of a promotion is that?)
Until we meet again, enjoy art of all sizes and shapes. It’s what makes us unique in the universe.
I was driving home last night from meeting a friend for dinner and saw the most marvelous orange full moon. It was a redhead in all her glory, slowly rising above the horizon.
My first reaction (after amazement) was a little sadness, for I always want to see the rising moon from the far end of my property. There’s a cornfield on the other side of the back back back gate, which makes the horizon long and flat and dark.
There’s something about a full orange moon that fills me with magic. I become young again. I want to play, I want to do magic, I want to write magic. I want to see faeries in the woods and elves walking along the paths.
My imagination soars when I’m outside with the Lady of the Night.
Yet I missed this one — one I could have easily have watched from the very beginning. But I was out to dinner with a friend.
A friend who has just beaten cancer. Again. She has done chemo and is now going through radiation.
A friend that is full of life, of hope. I love her stories…she has so many of them. After what she’s been through, she is a gift from above. She has children and grandchildren that adore her, a husband that supports her, and everyone she meets becomes a friend of support through this bad time.
Maybe that’s what the moon was telling me last night.
Maybe it glowed with the magic of friendship. Maybe it glowed with pride in my thinking about someone else besides myself. Maybe She knew that if I hadn’t taken my friend to dinner I’d be zoning out on TV or some other wasteful pastime.
What’s the big deal about taking someone out to dinner? An hour and half, twenty-five dollars later. It’s an hour and a half out of your busy, busy, oh-so-important schedule.
Yet it is an hour and a half of strength. Of love. Of friendship.
Two people, both having suffered from the horrid demon C, eating soup and chowing down burgers, laughing about work and boasting about our grandkids and our kids and how lucky we are to be alive. We planned for tomorrow and the next day and the next day.
That’s what you do with friends.
One night go out and gaze upon a full moon. Listen to what it’s saying to you. You will understand what She is saying. Your soul will be better for it.
Buried in the archives of the British Museum is this wonderful series of lithographs from illustrator Charles Joseph Hullmandel (June 15, 1789 – November 15, 1850) that transforms the English alphabet into sweeping landscapes.
Charles Joseph Hullmandel was born in London, where he maintained a lithographic establishment on Great Marlborough Street from about 1819 until his death.
Born in London of a German father and French mother, he travelled widely in Europe, making drawings and paintings of the places he visited.
In 1817 he met the inventor of the lithographic process, Senefelder, in Munich; the following year he established a lithographic press at his home in Great Marlborough Street, from where he produced prints until his death.
He refined the lithographic process, developing a method for producing gradations in tones and creating the effect of soft washes of color.
You can find more of Charles Joseph Hullmandel‘s work The British Museum and other sites across the Internet.
I was riding down an interstate highway this afternoon, going home from my grandson’s soccer game. Since I wasn’t driving I was daydreaming.
I noticed so many office buildings, apartment buildings, gas stations, and more blurring past me, and I wondered what this highway was like a hundred years ago.
A hundred years is nothing in the timespan of life.
But it’s the difference between cars and buggies. Electricity and coal.
And I wondered what these roads looked like a hundred years ago.
Was there a traffic jam with buggies like there was going east on Hwy. 94? Were there exit ramps taking them to landscapes unknown? Office buildings ever other mile filled with thousands of desks doing thousands of tasks?
I know it was still a struggle to live back then. No phones. No electricity. No iron lungs. Child labor. Prohibition.
But they survived.
They survived without computers and electric razors and Porches. They survived without The Voice and The Walking Dead.
I know they also had syphilis and diphtheria. They didn’t have the polio vaccine or a heart lung machine.
You know where I’m going with this.
What do you think the world was like before all this instant ticky tacky gratifications like Facebook and freezers?
It was harder. It was scarier.
But it was quieter.
There was more time to look inside and contemplate our role in the world. Our future. Our past.
We cannot change where we are, what we’ve developed, nor where we’re going. Our children’s children will go places we only dreampt of in science fiction and fantasy.
That’s what people thought a hundred years ago, too.
They couldn’t do a thing about horse dung in the streets or malaria or lack of refrigeration.
But they could dream.
Just like we can dream.
Dream of a quieter world. A peaceful world. A world where time has no meaning, nor does politics or war or greed.
They dreampt of that a hundred years ago.
We can dream of that today. And tomorrow.
Until then, find a quiet place, far away from the maddening crowd, and connect with your soul. You live in a city; find a park. You live in the countryside, find a different countryside. Listen to what the Earth is saying to you. It talks to you, it talks to me…even when you don’t feel like talking.
It’s the only peace and quiet you can find that’s true and good.
And we all need a little true and good in our lives. Right?
Alas, my art gallery affectionados…this is the last evening standing on the veranda, showing off unique and wonderful art. It’s getting to the point where a sweater is just not enough.
As I was wandering from one point to another, I came across this bizarrely amazing artist Ben Ashton.
On his website he has many different types of artwork.
But I came across these paintings and I wondered….what was he thinking?
Was he trying to smear the most intimate parts of the human body?
Looking at the magical paintings, we will never know.
More of Ben Ashton‘s work can be found at http://www.benashtonart.com/
A friend of mine through WordPress, TextileRanger, wrote a blog on Gifts for the Person Who Has Everything. She writes about her birthday, and the best gift she could get was that her daughters came and took furniture and articles that have been sitting around being unused for like ever.
And it got me thinking about birthday presents in general.
I don’t know how many of you still exchange gifts for birthdays or Christmas. In our family, grandkids and kids are a must. Husbands (or myself as a wife) are more of “I need this now so why not give it to me for my birthday/Christmas?” sort of thing. We still exchange birthday gifts with my husband’s family — there’s about 3 grandkids and 5 adults, and it’s been a tradition for like ever, too.
Once you get up in age — and these family members run from 40 to 73 — have just about everything they need. Their collections of unicorns, Precious Moments, or Chicago Bears paraphernalia is fuller than a landfill. Half the time I don’t know what they do in their spare time, so buying something personal gets to be harder and harder.
So the last few years we have been giving food and drink for presents.
I think my family couldn’t be happier.
These are gifts that are fine-tuned to my friends and family’s taste. They are foods and liquors that they would normally never purchase. I once gave a cousin two lobster tails for his birthday. Last year we bought a different cousin a selection of hot seasonings and sauces, because he loves hot food. A couple of weeks ago I gave a girl cousin a bottle of Relax German wine and a tin of Pirouette cookies to go with it. I would never buy a $7 tin of cookie for myself, but it was fun to buy them for someone else.
I think realistically our family and friends have enough t-shirts, earrings, and video games to last three lifetimes. But to pick out something special that doesn’t have to find shelf space is probably the best idea ever. That friend/family member can enjoy that special expensive beer, cookie, or chocolate creme pie more than the shirts that won’t fit or the video game that’s too hard.
Think about what you’re giving to those who mean the most to you. Maybe it’s time to stop the calendars and socks and give them some wonderfully decadent treat to show them how much you care.
And maybe if you’re lucky they’ll invite you over to share said goodie…
Sam Gilliam (born November 30, 1933) is an African-American painter associated with the Washington Color School movement.
Gilliam’s hallmark “drape paintings,” which consist of stained fabric or paper resembling tie-dye, are regarded as a major step in the development of American art.
A pillar of the Washington, D.C., modern and contemporary art communities, internationally acclaimed Gilliam has been testing the boundaries of color, form, texture, and the canvas itself over the course of his long, productive career.
His works have also been described as belonging to abstract expressionism and lyrical abstraction.
He works on stretched, draped and wrapped canvas, and adds sculptural 3D elements.
He is recognized as the first artist to introduce the idea of a draped, painted canvas hanging without stretcher bars around 1965.
More of Sam Gilliam‘s work can be found at http://davidkordanskygallery.com/artist/sam-gilliam/ and other galleries around the Internet.
I enjoy the new television season.in the fall. Dozens of shows try their best to make it to the evening line up. Most of the new crop is stinky. Some are merely okay. And some are pretty good.
Now and then there are some that hit pretty close to your life. And it’s creepy.
I just watched two sessions of Cool Kids.
For those who don’t know, Cool Kids is a new show about four “seniors” living in a retirement community who are sassy and a little troublesome. The most recent show was about one of the main stars (Vicki Lawrence) turning 65 and how she didn’t want to even acknowledge it. The foursome went out to a dance club and had a great time embarassing themselves before they went out drinking and met for breakfast the next morning in sunglasses.
65 and wanting to believe 65 is not old. And going out and doing crazy things to prove to themselves they are indeed as young as they feel. Which, in the end, was strained back muscles when they stood up and headaches in the morning.
Does that sound familiar or what?
I’m afraid I identify too closely with these oldsters. They say and believe the things I say and believe. They laugh and pick on each other and get sassy and throw parties they’re not supposed to throw. They fear getting old and being forgotten once they pass. The show didn’t get into grandkids or working past retirement age. Perhaps those will be touched in future episodes.
But what they did talk about and complained about sounded a lot like me.
Vicki Lawrence is 69 playing 65. The other actors are 62, 63, and 75 respectively. All within my age sphere. Their characters — and probably the actors themselves — have been there, done that. And so have a lot of us.
At this point in my life it’s great to see someone else portray my ups and downs on the screen. It’s great to see seniors being proud to be seniors. They may ache a little more and get tired a little more, but their memories of once being young and agile are every senior’s memories.
Of course, my life on the big screen will come crashing down once the show is cancelled.
But for now it’s fun watching the female lead talking about having a Peanut Booze and Jelly sandwich for lunch.
On my way to researching something or other last night, I came across a blog by Brett about becoming a minimalist. She went through everything — I mean everything — and got rid of 75% of her clutter.
Now I don’t know how much clutter she had, or what she considered clutter, nor do I really know what a minimalist is…unless continuously getting rid of “stuff” puts me in that category. But I could identify with her energy.
I had to step back for a couple of weeks to declutter my head. I wasn’t sure what my problem was — I still am not sure. But I realized I wanted to get a little more clear on where I was going and what I wanted.
But I realized I had to cut some of the clutter from my life.
I’ve gone into my WordPress account and unfollowed everyone who hasn’t posted in 10-12 months. They’ve moved on. So must I. I am in the process of going to each and every one of the people I follow and comment on their postings. After all, that was the reason I followed them in the first place.
I decluttered. And I feel so much better.
I’ve also decided that I may not have much revolutionary things to share with those who choose to follow me, but I have my experience and my passions, and who knows — maybe my passion will ignite your passion.
I find that my daily life is very routine, which is just fine with me. But I am into this art thing, and I keep finding amazing art from around the world. Things that amaze me. Humble me. Make me wonder.
Those are the things I want to share with you. Perhaps now and then some sage advice ( like I know what I’m talking about). but mostly I am working on uncluttering my life. Keeping what is important, and letting go of the rest.
What’s left is wonderful. And that’s all I need.
Good to be back.
Russian-born painter Wassily Kandinsky is credited as a leader in avant-garde art as one of the founders of pure abstraction in painting in the early 20th century.
Born in Moscow in 1866, Wassily Kandinsky took up the study of art in earnest at age 30, moving to Munich to study drawing and painting.
A trained musician, Kandinsky approached color with a musician’s sensibility.
An obsession with Monet led him to explore his own creative concepts of color on canvas, which were sometimes controversial among his contemporaries and critics, but Kandinsky emerged as a respected leader of the abstract art movement in the early 20th century.
Kandinsky’s creation of abstract work followed a long period of development and maturation of intense thought based on his artistic experiences.
He called this devotion to inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and spiritual desire inner necessity; it was a central aspect of his art.
More of Wassily Kandinsky’s work can be found at https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/.
Humoring the Goddess 