I’ve been living the life of Indiana Jones — or maybe it’s Walter Mitty — I don’t know, I get them confused. I live the feminine version, of course. I could hyphenate and become Ms. Jones-Mitty.
I have been cutting brush, building and unbuilding things, having adventures (mostly mental) and working hard. And only recently I have begun to resume making artworks. The household reorganization that has consumed so much of my time has come a long way. My work is far from complete, but I’ve reached a point where things have begun to come into balance. It’s a great feeling.
I discovered that getting the house right means getting the yard right too. Shrubbery had grown so much near my windows that it blocked light from entering my studio. Cutting down limbs and piling them up, carrying them off to the county’s “convenience center” (curious name), hauling a couple truckloads, has given me a great feeling of self-reliance and well-being. I’m a regular lumberjack! And trees respect me now.
But Nature is hard to put down. As soon as you do a little yard work, she says “back at ‘ya.” A little rain, a little sun, it’s a veritable jungle. And Nature asks, “Who’s your daddy?”
Mother Nature can be a real smart aleck sometimes.
In between taming nature, though, I have managed to resume drawing and painting. I got a bouquet of flowers a couple weekends ago from the farmer’s market and drew them with oil pastel. The drawing above measures 15.5 x 24 inches. The flower scene changed many times during the course of my drawing. I saw light effects that Claude Monet would have struggled to capture. But it’s good to look at the scene even when you cannot get all its features because the looking is itself so marvelous.
I have begun posting finished works at the Fine Art America site where they are available for purchase as reproductions. You can see them here:
Aletha Kuschan's Weblog 