It Totally Slipped my Mind

The first anniversary of this blog came and went without notice. In fact, art totally slipped my mind yesterday. The coloring that took priority was my hair. It had to be done. I put it off for the holiday parties and went salt & pepper with blond tips, (Sea Star at Hialeah in the fifth, LOL)--but that would not due next week in the warm and sunny. So I bought some brown and frosted it with sunshine and voila! I'm blond again and having so much fun.

I'm sitting around waiting to go. The clothes I'm taking are piled on the bed in the guest room and all I have to do is gather my essentials--Mr. Wilson II, my fancy set of markers in the new, too-short-but-good-enough travel case, a pad of paper--I'm thinking watercolour this time--and my Nano, which could use some new tunes. Muskrat Sally's been playing in my head.


Food has been getting scarce around here as I've been emptying out the frig a meal at a time. Honey hasn't complained. He over did dessert New Years and has been moaning on the bathroom scale every morning since. I,on the other hand, have dropped a few pounds intentionally. My plan is to pick them up in Mexico and smuggle them back through customs undeclared.

I am really enjoying this week. The high of getting away from it all is the best elixir for the winter doldrums. Today, Art is also not on my schedule, (I'm getting my new blond hair cut). So I'll tell you about the painting behind me in the photograph.It's a significant. You first saw it January sixth, 2010.


It's twelve feet by six feet divided into three sections. I painted it around 1978.
It's "mixed mediums"--acrylic, latex house paint and oil. When I first started the blog, a year ago, a close up detail of it was my header. It's the largest painting I've ever done or will ever do. And Honey and I have grown quite found of it as we've moved it from house to apartment to apartment to condo. It's been a wall unit. It's been our headboard. It now the big splash of color in our otherwise neutral living room.

Seven years after I painted this painting with no set title I stopped painting. Honey and I went into the design/build business. Earning a living became the priority. When I look at this large, ambiguous, autobiographical expression about finding one's self, I think that's probably the last painting where I was totally free--style, subject, good art, bad art was of no concern. The painting of it was just me and the canvas, an open conversation. Even though I've been painting for a year now, I haven't quite gotten that wonderful, uninhibited feeling back. Maybe this year?