Quality

A couple of weeks ago my husband came home with a couple of tubes of new watercolor paint from Daniel Smith for us to try out. He'd played with it a bit himself and thought I might like it for my daily drawings, so this week I took the lids off the tubes and began to play....

Arch

Medallions

Oh....I was in love immediately! Something about the vibrant color, the richness and way it handled was unlike any other watercolors I'd ever tried. It was one of those moments when you realized that you were in the presence of true quality....and indeed these are from the line of Daniel Smith Extra Fine Watercolors. It made all my other art materials feel ashamed somehow and it made me wonder why I sometimes scrimp and don't use the highest quality materials. I know the reason, of course....money. I certainly don't use the cheapest materials and what I do use has a fair amount of quality, but these are in another class entirely. It's gotten me thinking about the notion of quality....in the food and drink we put in our bodies and everything we surround ourselves with...and indeed, what we put in our hands to help us express our inner mysteries to the world. I'm going to be buying these paints and expanding the practice and the art of connoisseurship in my life!

New dailies from MissouriBendMusings and no. 14 in the Notes From The Ancestors series to follow:

February 12

February 13

February 14

February 15

February 16

February 17

February 18

Notes From The Ancestors no.14

I'm a bit thrown off with the Presidents Day holiday here, but will be back on track and see you next Monday. Cheers!

Infinite Connections

No.5 / The Celadon Suite

This quote from Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie has been resonating with me....

"Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come..." 

There is an unshakeable sense in me of a connection with everything....that is, everything we experience is connected. Past, present and future are inextricably linked and there is a rippling flow of energy that moves out from each of us intersecting with the flow of others. If, for a moment, you think you don't matter, you must know that each of us changes the world day by day.....in ways we cannot know or imagine. Life really is a dance and without our brief time on the stage, the music and the dance would be otherwise. 

Winter Mediation With Pearls

This week a new piece from the Celadon Suite, along with a meditation drawing and another little item, not shown here,  have all been added to MissourBendStudio. I've just posted another week's worth of dailies over at MissouriBendMusings, including my favorite from the week below.

February 6, 2013

I hope your creative spirit is flourishing! I'm not saying that mine is on fire, but it's a quest....a constant striving to stay true and to make the work that I must make. Many things get in the way....mostly my own shadow, but there are moments when I know I'm connecting to something very real....I think you probably know those moments too. They provide a fresh glimmer of recognition and lift you out of the ordinary....fine moments those are!

Hope your week is wonderful!

The Limits of Our Perception

No. 3 from The Celadon Suite

Hello....another Monday and we are pushing our way toward the end of the first week of February already! The days are noticeably longer now and I have begun to think thoughts of spring. Even though we've had a roller coaster of a winter, it's basically been mild....it will be in the 40s most of the coming week.

Last Friday afternoon, as I was driving back from Sioux Falls, I heard a short, but fascinating piece on All Things Considered about homing pigeons and a theory developed that they are using infrasound waves to find their way home. These are sound waves that are a level too low for humans to hear, but not for homing pigeons and presumably other animals. For example, our lowest threshold is 20 hertz, but the homing pigeon can hear infra sound at a level of .05 hertz. Apparently, at least according to the researcher's theory, they are using these sounds waves that generate deep within the oceans and move up through the earth and out into the atmosphere. The whole notion got my mind spinning and I was reminded of a wonderful book I read decades ago, The Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman. I was struck back then, as I was struck the other day, by the limits of our perception....we take in the information of the cosmos through our senses, but there is so much out there that is far beyond our capability to perceive. I half remember some tidbit from the book about the sense of smell of a sheepdog being exponentially more acute than ours....not surprising, yet still astounding.

So, early this last Saturday morning as I sat in my cozy chair in the still darkness with my cup of tea, watching the day dawn and the light change, I pondered these things....how we, as humans, carry a sort of arrogance that one day we will comprehend it all, that we can learn and gain understanding of everything somehow....but there is so much we can never see, or hear, or smell or taste....there is so much we will never know and yet it all goes on, quite well, without us. Think of it....the difference between 20 hertz and .05 hertz.....think of all the sounds out there that move around us and through us....quite without our knowing. And that led me to ponder....as our words carry out into space and fade away beyond our hearing....does the sound still echo at some level ringing in the ears of birds or other creatures. Do they detect the sound of our cries, of our woes, of our joy for a stretch of time long after events have faded from our own memory? And for how long...days, decades, centuries? I do wonder.

The days unfold and the daily drawings continue....another week of them are posted at MissouriBendMusings....the teabags are definitely back, at least for now!

January 29, 2013

January 30, 2013

January 31, 2013

February 1, 2013

February 2, 2013 

February 3, 2013

February 4, 2013

I'm grateful for those quiet moments when the mind is free to wander....to ponder all the possibilities. Never enough of those times....life is busy for us all! Enjoy your week and see you next week, if not before. New Celadon piece and another new one in the Notes From The Ancestors series are in the works in the studio and hope to have them finished by next Monday.  Cheers!