watching paint dry

"Watching paint dry" is a phrase my father used to describe something that exceeded the definition of boring. Funny. I have discovered that it provides a still space of quiet inside of me and helps me be completely in the moment.

I'll meet you there

Out beyond ideas of 

wrongdoing
and 

rightdoing

 there is a field.
 

I’ll meet you there.
 

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi

The Fray. "Be Still."

a step on the path

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver

clearing clutter

beginning painting books

In 2005, when I took my first art class, I did not own a single art book. Not because I wasn't a book collector, because, believe me, I was. I have a library full of books about music, literature, theology, history, nature, travel, birds, and other topics. But none about art.

My art classes answered a lot of questions but raised at least as many more. I started to acquire beginning books on how to draw trees, how to draw the figure, how to mix color, how to arrange a still life, and so on.

As my interest grew, so did my book collection. I collected books on painting florals, landscapes, water, buildings, en plein air and in the studio. Books on composition, color theory, painting substrates, and on and on and on.

Little by little, I added books that were filled with plates of paintings by painters. The Group of Seven, Matisse, Picasso, Manet, Monet, Hopper, Rembrandt, Bischoff ... too many to name.

In the last several years, I have not looked at those beginning books at all. I have loaned several of them out to interested students, but I have not used them beyond that.

Real estate in a studio space is precious. My book case was full of books, many of which I no longer looked at. Time to clear out the clutter!

Now there are empty spaces for the new books I will collect, books about painters and their paintings and drawings. Books like these new purchases:

Sarah Mclachlan "I Will Remember You."