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On September 15th, after some busy days when I didn’t have time to write or draw, and a few more days when I didn’t know what to write or draw, I wrote in my journal:

“I guess I’ve need a few days to NOT journal.  Sometimes I just don’t know how to write about my life — and I guess that means I don’t know how to remember my life.
“When I enter into the swirl of emotions that surround my relationships, I wonder if I’m reading life right, if I’m only ever looking through the blurry lens of my own hopes and dreams.  That will always be a problem for me and will always cause some bit of disruption in the flow of my writing.  I will be fragmented.”

I try to come up with plans to create more order and discipline in my life — daily writing, daily drawing, painting schedules, reading quotas.  I never live up to them and wind up feeling that I’m not living up to some idea I have of my potential.  In this journal entry, I gave up such nonsense.  I will be fragmented.  It’s a nice bit of self acceptance for my 53rd year on the planet.

My creative process is regulated by a kind of hunger.  If I’m satisfied, I don’t need to create.  If I’m upset or over emotional, I can’t create.  The creative urge always returns, though.  After a while, I crave self-expression as surely as I crave food.  It’s nourishment that must be taken on a regular basis.

Here are some fragments of my September journal.  (If you are a facebook friend, you’ve seen a few of these.)

I learn a lot about myself from keeping a journal.  Do you?  Do you look back through your writings and drawings and discover things about yourself or your world?

I got athletic shoes instead of orthopedic shoes — they made my feet look enormous but so did the orthos

Stablio felt tip pen

waiting for a bus, I copied the graffiti on a dumpster

Meeting Notes

poem

I am enchanted by imaginary birds lately

I started taking a class on living well with chronic illness.  Apparently I need flying snails and turtles to live well

Stories and borders didn’t always mesh

I bought a cheap dip pen and compared it to a brush pen.  Both were fun in their own way.

This is how I pay attention at meetings.  Really!

Back of the journal

Thanks for reading!  Be nice to yourself.

My friend Nita celebrated her 90th birthday last month because she had family reunion and that was the best time for all of her relatives to get together.  Today, September 5th, is her real birthday.  She and I both live in the Bridge Meadows community.  Her strength and vitality have been an inspiration to me.  She was very helpful to me when my mom passed away in February.  She’s has a wealth of stories and welcomes new friends of all ages into her life. I don’t think it’s necessarily true that as you get older you get wiser, but she has left her heart open and the wisdom has come with it.  She works with kids here in the community and brings them a whole new sense of possibility.

For her birthday family reunion, I made her this card, with 9 Nur Mahal roses, a rose that hybridized the year she was born, 1923:

Nine Roses for Nita, 5×7″ watercolor and ink

For today, her real birthday, I made my second everyday icon.  My first, I made for my daughter’s birthday. I decided this kind of illustration would be a good way to honor my family and friends.  Nita and I both loved the illustrations of David Diaz in the picture book Me, Frida, so I loosely based the design on the cover of that book.

Queen Nita: Celestial Love, 7×10″, mixed media

I made her the queen of celestial love, because she is so full of love and idealism and nine decades have only made her more so.  It’s not an easy planet to live on, but she keeps a clear vision of what is good.  She has the universe in her hands.  I feel blessed to know her.

I think this will be a series and the next birthday in my family is mine, so I guess the next one will be a self portrait.  Stay tuned.

Thanks for visiting!

I’ve always loved sacred art and icons.  My earliest exposure to art was through the Catholic Church — St. Micheal’s Church in Memphis had beautiful stained glass windows and statuary.  When I first started attending mass the service was still done in Latin so there wasn’t much I could understand, but I could enjoy the beautiful, eerie and sometimes frightening art that graced the church.  Catholicism didn’t stick with me, but a love of sacred art did.
As I aged, I  began to see a lot more of the sacred in common things.   In the way I interpret things and the way I tell stories, I always hope to find that moment where the everyday is elevated into that sweet evasive sacred place.  It’s only ever a minute, but when it happens, it’s divine.  My theology is very loose and I think one of the great blessings of life is a sense of humor.
After illustrating my story The Little Madonnas I got the idea that I may have developed enough skill to start making my own every day icons. Religious Icons are elaborate, layered, detailed work done by people who train for years.  They call it writing an icon, which I like, because it makes it seem the art is part of a story.   My own art will never reach that level — and I don’t want it to, really.  I just want to create some pieces that honor the ordinary and the blessed humans who have given me grace.
So for my daughter’s 29th birthday, I painted this.  A little tongue in cheek icon to My Caledonia, who has the spirit of sunflowers, sabertooth tigers, storms and wildflowers in her soul.

My Caledonia, mixed media, 7×10″

Last month, a friend and I tried to write a poem a day.  Out of that exercise, I got about 5 poems that I like — well, I got more that I like, but only about 5 I like enough to share.  My friend suggested I start illustrating my poems, which only seems logical since I draw and write.  Here is my first attempt:

Great Blue Heron, water color and ink, 8.5 x 11″

Thanks for reading!