Last January for me began with drawings of the white creamer, the crème de la creamers in fact. With record snows on the ground in Washington DC, I remember we hunkered down indoors and I drew still life stuff while trying to stay warm. Doll was also enlisted to do a lot of modeling for this home-bound artist.
February brought more snow and more little still life moments and apples that imitated their famously painted ancestral cousins on a snowy-looking white cloth.
March brought longing and thoughts about the warm outdoors of coming spring and summer. But this was still a spring of imagination.
With me always restlessly looking around the next corner, April brought beach metaphors in sea shell drawings.
May brought flowers, fake artsy ones, but still evocative of the field.
In June I made more sea shells and turned a phrase or two.
July mostly passed by in lovely summer idylls by the pool until that sad day when I learned the news that Paul Squires, the great Australian poet, creator of Gingatao had died. And the koi lost a great friend.
In August I thought a lot about words. If you were to grasp them with your hands, their muscles would slip and elude.
In September the bees came.
October brought new koi ponds.
In November I paid tribute to my wonderful compotier, an indebtedness that I still have yet to pay off.
And December — well, today is December’s last day, isn’t it? — and now we look to another year. My December brought me back to flowers and the still life table.
And what will 2011 bring? I hope it brings you much joy and good luck. Inside its mysteries lies hidden the future.
Aletha Kuschan's Weblog 
