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It’s amazing how much wisdom I gain from my children. My son is an artist who focuses more on abstract painting and yet his work tells very vivid stories.

In my own practice, I choose a more narrative style, with flourishes of abstraction woven in. When I’m painting, I smear the extra paint on my brushes to blank canvases which I squirt with water so the color will mingle and pool. This is how I get interesting textures and colors for my backgrounds.

One day, I had done this to a 5×7″ canvas when I was working with black and white and a little bit of magenta. My son saw the canvas after the color dried and was impressed with it as it is. I kept it for a long time, over a year, in a place I could see it. And I began to see ghosts in it, and this fit in with my ideas on benevolent ghosts. Now I have manipulated it a bit and finished it as a narrative abstract.

What do you think?

~~~

Thanks for reading my blog. Feel free to share it, if you’d like.

This blog is brought to you by the generosity of people who support me on Patreon , buy my art, and who support me in so many different ways. 

If you’d like to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal

Cards and prints of some of my art is available on Redbubble.  Also T-shirts and stickers and other odds and ends. When you click an image, in the lower right hand corner you’ll find a link to all the various products that these are printed on. If you have any trouble finding what you’re looking for, let me know. joyzmailbox@gmail.com 

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I am reposting a story from 2013. I used to tell it when I was a member of the Portland (Oregon) Storytellers Guild. For awhile I told stories verbally instead of writing them, even though I started writing stories first. This one’s quite short, like life.

Driving Home 
A Story

by
Joy Murray

I never learned to drive because I’ve had health and mobility problems most of my life.  Part of my condition includes really bad fatigue, where I get so tired I can’t think straight.  I always told myself that if I went a whole year without experiencing that kind of fatigue, I’d learn.

I got an opportunity when I was about 43.  I was recently divorced and spending a year house-sitting for a good friend who was spending the year traveling.  She said I could use her car while she was gone.  She thought it was absurd that I never learned.

I hadn’t gone a full year without fatigue, but it’d been several months.  I had started a B-12 therapy, and was pretty energized.  I got a crash course in driving, got my license and was on the road on my own for the first time.  My whole world opened up.  Without long bus rides, I could go to work, go to the gym, go to a volunteer meeting, visit a friend, and get groceries all in the same day.  It was amazing.

And it was too much for me.  I was driving home one night after an exhausting day and I kept making mistakes.  I didn’t remember to use my turn signals.  I spaced out and veered into the next lane which brought on a blare of horns.  I was so nervous I was shaking.  I pulled over and parked at the first place I could find, stopped the car and rested my head on the steering wheel.  It took me a minute to realize where I was.  I was in a part of town I only knew from the news.  It was where all the gang warfare, murders and muggings happened.  I was in the parking lot of a row of seedy dance clubs.

If I could just rest for a minute, my head would clear and I could make the short drive home.  I couldn’t relax and I couldn’t get the sound of those car horns out of my ears.  I closed my eyes and tried to will some energy into my brain when I was startled by a knock on the window.  I looked up and saw my brother.

I rolled down the window.  “Oh, my God, I’m glad to see you.  How did you find me?”

He reached in, unlocked the door and put his hand on my shoulder.  It felt cold but soothing.

“What are you doing driving a car?”

I couldn’t explain, the words got stuck in my mouth.  “Friend gave me lessons… I can… It’s just… I mean today… the horns…I don’t know.”

“Come on,” he said, then helped me out of the driver’s seat, and escorted me around to the passenger side.  “Put on your seat belt.”

I obeyed.

He got back in and started the car. “You really aren’t meant to drive.  You’ve got a good life, but you’ve got to take it slow.”

“It’s just a bad day,” I said.

“It’s going to be a lot of bad days if you have a wreck.  You’re always trying to be something your not.  I can’t keep getting you out of trouble.”

I wanted to argue with him but couldn’t find the words, so I asked, “How’d you find me?”

“I had a gig over there and imagine my surprise to see you weaving your way off the road like some old drunk.”

“You had a gig?  They like your music over there?”

“Something like that.”

By then, he pulled into my driveway.  He turned to me and put his hand on my shoulder again.  “Really now.  Don’t drive any more.  It’s not for you.”

From where his cool hand touched me, I felt warmth spread all through my body and I got so tired, I fell asleep right there in the car.

When I woke up, the sun was peeking through the car windows. I was still in the passenger seat and the keys were in my lap.

I rushed into the house, called my sister and told her everything that happened.  I don’t think she believed me, but she came over in her car and picked me up.  We went to florist and bought a huge bright bouquet.  We spent the rest of the morning cleaning and decorating my brother’s grave.

*****

Afterword:

My younger brother died of complications of mental illness 2004. He is always contented when he visits me in my dreams. I’ve always wondered why there weren’t more ghost stories where the ghosts were lovely to behold and helpful, which is one of the reasons I wrote this story.  I have to say I’ve never had any problem from monsters or ghosts.  It’s the humans that have hurt me in life  — although I have been truly blessed to know many saintly people, too.  I hope you are blessed that way, too. 

Let me know what you think.

~~~

Thanks for reading my blog. Feel free to share it, if you’d like.

This blog is brought to you by the generosity of people who support me on Patreon , buy my art, and who support me in so many different ways. 

If you’d like to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal

Cards and prints of some of my art is available on Redbubble.  Also T-shirts and stickers and other odds and ends. When you click an image, in the lower right hand corner you’ll find a link to all the various products that these are printed on. If you have any trouble finding what you’re looking for, let me know. joyzmailbox@gmail.com 

You can subscribe to this blog by email in the link below this post.

If you find a typo, let me know, and I’ll send you a postcard.

Here’s the official poster for the Opulent Mobility art show at the Makery in Los Angeles. I love the painting by Rachel Ungerer – so vibrant! Two of my pieces will be part of this show.

I urge you to check out the other artists that will be in the show:

A. Laura Brody, Kat Chudy, Julie Forbush, Patricia Fortlage, Bronte Grimm, Ash Hagerstrand, Austin Lubetkin, Ellen Mansfield, Monica Marks, Lisa Merida-Paytes, Tom Peters, Elizabeth Rajchart, Priya Ray, Abigail Stockinger, Emily Tironi, Celeste Tooth, and Rachel Ungerer.

Exploring the work of these artist gives such an expanded idea of human experience and beauty, something that’s been a theme in my work form the beginning.

Makes me want to do a happy dance:

I’ll provide links to artist interviews when they are available.

~~~

Thanks for reading my blog. Feel free to share it, if you’d like.

This blog is brought to you by the generosity of people who support me on Patreon , buy my art, and who support me in so many different ways. 

If you’d like to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal

Cards and prints of some of my art is available on Redbubble.  Also T-shirts and stickers and other odds and ends. When you click an image, in the lower right hand corner you’ll find a link to all the various products that these are printed on. If you have any trouble finding what you’re looking for, let me know. joyzmailbox@gmail.com 

You can subscribe to this blog by email in the link below this post.

If you find a typo, let me know, and I’ll send you a postcard.

I’ve never had a problem with ghosts. It’s the living that scare me. I always feel delighted when one of my dead friends visit in my dreams. That’s what I was thinking of when I made this drawing back in 2012, when I was making the transition from working in fabric to drawing and painting.

I stopped working in fabric because my hands had gotten too weak to do the kind of sculptural work I wanted. I had done a sculpture of a woman and her ghost sister a year before. I wanted to create something that showed how the love between us never really leaves us.

I enjoyed Halloween most of my life, it seems a festive way to deal with all that frightens us. (Although it also brings to the surface our massive prejudice against prejudice against people with scars and physical anomalies, as well as an ongoing fear of older women and wrinkles. Sigh.)

My feelings about Halloween became more complicated after my younger brother died in 2008. He died in October but wasn’t found until weeks later. I usually get somewhat depressed in the fall, but afterwards, I knew to prepare for the season of mourning, and I identified more with the Day of the Dead than Halloween. As the years have gone by, both seem like valid human ways of dealing with the coming dark winter and our sense of mortality.

I like skeletons, not because they frighten me, but because bones are so strong. They carry us all our lives, then can exist for thousands of years. I love this quote from the illustrated book Georgia’s Bones by Jen Bryant:

“In the desert, she picked up the bones

of animals – of cows and horses, pigs and sheep – 

put them in a sack and took them home.

She cleaned them one by one, then held them up to the sun.  

They gleamed with a white light, pure and bright,

like the sliver of moon

that crept over the mountains at night

and hung there, a perfect curve, like a rib,

over the sleeping desert.

She didn’t know why they pleased her so.

Perhaps it was the quiet way

they did their work – the years of being invisible,

and then, when everything fell away,

they appeared, pure and beautiful.

Sometimes she would look at her own hand

and imagine the bones inside

doing their important work –

holding everything together.” 

I often dream of my brother and he is always happier than he was in life. Same with other loved ones who had difficult lives. I know this is magical thinking, and I don’t really care. The human brain is remarkable in it’s ability to recast stories, sometimes in terrible ways, but if I put some effort in it, I can recast them in a more wonderous and kind way. It doesn’t stop grief, but it get me through it. And sometimes it makes me quite happy.

I have a kernel of an idea for a new painting on the transitions we make in life, and our relationship with those who have died ahead of us. It’s something I’ve been meditating on since I created this painting:

“We will understand it better, by and by.”

Happy Halloween.

~~~

Thanks for reading my blog. Feel free to share it, if you’d like.

This blog is brought to you by the generosity of people who support me on Patreon , buy my art, and who support me in so many different ways. 

If you’d like to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal

Cards and prints of some of my art is available on Redbubble.  Also T-shirts and stickers and other odds and ends. When you click an image, in the lower right hand corner you’ll find a link to all the various products that these are printed on. If you have any trouble finding what you’re looking for, let me know. joyzmailbox@gmail.com 

You can subscribe to this blog by email in the link below this post.

If you find a typo, let me know, and I’ll send you a postcard.