California Dreaming

I call myself beloved

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on this earth.
- Raymond Carver 

*The beautiful bird photographs are from Pinterest.The lovely main bird is by Naoto Kitamura, and I'm not certain who the artist is for the small yellow bird.

What are all these kisses worth?

From my Spark journal. One of my favorite pages.

Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle -
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea -
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?       

 Percy Bysshe Shelley

One flew over the goose's nest

I buy every vintage children's poetry book I can find at thrift stores, garage sales and library discards. This double-page spread unites my love of poetry with a recurring image of wild geese that shows up in all my work.

There are extraordinary things in your everyday lives. There are hidden treasures in familiar shadows.

The Tim Holtz line of Adirondack Alcohol Inks has the most divine selection of colors. The inks are actually meant for coated/non-porous papers, but I don't care. I use them on this Fabriano Artistico 140 lb Hot Press watercolor paper and it does beautiful things. It bleeds through to the back of the paper but I don't mind working with that.

My quote was hand lettered with a large bamboo quill and Dr. PH Martin's Bombay India Ink in "Aqua". I added German scrap, more gold leaf, and more found text.

I almost always add some sort of gold spray or gilded element to my work to represent The Divine.

Harsh and Exciting

 

When the streams of rain pour out of the sky and the sparkles of lightning go flashing by.

 One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the goose's nest.

Most of us know this poem's variation as "one flew over the cuckoo's nest". 

Which always makes me think of the book and movie. I'd like to believe I'm the one who will fly over the cuckoo's nest. 

I Pray

My wonderful friend Vasia Papazoglou on Pinterest recently invited me to pin to her board,

The Suggested.

I thought for my week of notoriety I would share a few pages from my current art journals.
I have two main journals I work on, "Spark" which is kind of a messy experimental journal, and
"Each Little Bird That Sings" which is also experimental but more spiritual in nature. Later on I can talk about how I constructed them.

I think in light of today's events, sadness both national and personal, I'd share this spread.
I usually work in double-page spreads. These pages contain basically the whole panopoly of mixed-media techniques.

"I Pray"

On hot-press watercolor paper I like to drip alchohol inks, add photo transfers, photographs, stenciling, embellishments, and gilt. I use many photos that I download from Pinterest as inspiration. I love the sherbert colors of this palette.  

The red alchohol ink created a beautiful heart on the second statue. So I dedicate today's post to two prayers.

My first prayer is for the people affected by the Boston Marathon today. For the dead, for the injured, for their families, for the 8-year-old child and for the cowardly evil person(s) who would do such a thing. My next door neighbor ran in the race this morning and I burst into tears to discover from his wife he crossed the finish line 30 minutes before the bombs went off.

My second prayer is for everyone on this planet, who, like me, are born with hearts too fragile, too trusting. Hearts so easily broken and unsuited to this world.

Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.

Thomas Merton