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A Matter Of Taste

OK, so I once again made an empty promise to myself. I didn’t begin working on my project until after seven tonight. As always I had the best of intentions….no excuses, just didn’t get to it. I did however spend a great deal of time putting my work in my new presentation portfolio that I received as a birthday present (thank you Dan). My old portfolio is at least thirty years old, the plastic pages were cracked and the zipper quit years ago. Over the last few months I have accumulated quite a bit of work and it needed a home. I still need to get extra pages for the new one. I am proud to say it is full right now. For my project tonight I began another acrylic painting. I so loved the results of my vintage shoe form painting from the other night that I have decided to do a series of paintings based on some of the vintage collectables I have. Warning: If you collect anything thing that has the name Bradford Exchange, Village 56, Thomas Kinkade, etc., you might want to stop reading here……………….. Have they gone yet? I mean the Disney people, the Precious Moments people, the people who collect any of the previously mentioned highly collectible, mass produced…crap. Sorry, I just feel that way. I don’t want to acquire number 121 of 500 of this year’s Christmas Village. I would never deny anyone the right to their own taste, but I really just don’t get it. I have seen just about every Disney movie because I have children. I love the classics, I particularly like the Genie in Aladdin. Robin Williams was great. I love Beauty and The Beast, The Little Mermaid and Cinderella. The Seven Dwarfs creep me out, particularly Dopey, he reminds me of a friend of my Dad’s when we were growing up. (Let’s see if my sisters know who I’m referring to.) My favorite character has to be Winnie The Pooh. No reason, just look upon him fondly. He was our high school mascot (be nice, it was an all girl Catholic high school, Pooh was as manly as we could get) I like Piglet, Eeyore (who I believe may be part Irish. I believe this based on my previously mentioned theory of glass not half full, not half empty, shattered on the floor because I’m Irish), and love the rest of the crew of the Hundred Acre Woods too, but not enough to have them on my fireplace, or on my toaster, or my bath towels, or God forbid, my pajamas. I had a Pooh collection once, but I was seventeen not forty. Again, I will defend your right to personal taste, but Precious Moments, really? I’ve been in houses where it looks like the gift shop at Disney World. I’m sure that these same people would come in my house and look at my vintage wooden shoe forms, and my McCoy Pottery, and the rustic industrial stuff and think it is…crap. That’s OK. Actually my Dad said something years ago about my house. He said it was full of shite (Irish for, well I think you can figure it out) I heard this from one of my sisters. He found out that I heard it and called to apologize.  I was quick to agree with him. I said, “Yes Dad, I know, and it’s my shite and I like it.” I don’t think he knew what to do with that. I ‘m not offended if someone doesn’t look favorably on my taste, its mine, remember the “no peer pressure” I wrote about last night? I meant it. I like being different, I don’t want to have the same house with the same stuff as everyone else. I hope I haven’t truly offended anyone. (I feel Catholic guilt creeping into my brain as I write.)  Anyway…I have some very interesting, well-worn and well-loved pieces. I think they deserve to be preserved for all eternity, or at the very least until my grandchildren throw them away. I only managed to color block a canvas for the painting, nothing worth posting, so I decided to throw another old favorite piece of art on the blog. Many, many years ago I came across a photo of Donald Sutherland in a magazine, his face was emerging from the dark. I loved it. A pencil portrait.

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My New Year

I’m not a New Year resolution kind of girl.  The whole new year to start over by making promises that I and the rest of the world won’t keep, just doesn’t work for me. I was never a person that went along with what everyone else was doing. Peer pressure? I don’t get it. Even as a teenager I got angry when someone else tried to tell me what to do. I have always liked being an individual. I decided today that I will make my new year from birthday to birthday. I feel like I’m well on my way to making change and progress in my life. I’m six months into my 365 project, and at over two hundred posts and art projects, I think I’m finally fulfilling a lifetime of empty promises. My resolutions for this next year? To see this project through. That’s an easy one. The other is to open our business. That is a huge project. We are under no delusions about the amount of work ahead of us, but we are both in the mind-set that we need to move ahead. Yesterday’s stolen iPhone was just the cherry on top of six plus months of not great luck. Dan and I are quite talented together and I think it’s time to begin making our own luck. That and there’s nothing I love more than a new space to decorate, I’m itching to get my hands on our shop. We have some small pieces ready to go, and some roughly halfway there. This is the first week of getting our act together. I’m excited about this next year, and hope to make this next twelve months the best of our lives.

Today I saw a photo in The New York Times that really appealed to me, but since I have vowed to only use my own photos for my work, I instead asked my always supportive husband to pose for me. The photo in the paper was a woman, I have instead painted a man. There was an anguish in the body language that spoke to me, as I said we haven’t had great luck lately. Maybe I should have painted a picture of me hunting down the thief that stole the phone, or of Dan and I sitting in our business. ( You know, for visualization purposes) Funny thing is I’m not even angry anymore, I’m ready to move past it. As I said yesterday I’m trying to let stuff go. There’s always something else to focus on, like being happy. And on that note, in my woe is me I had a crappy birthday post, I failed to mention that Dan cooked an incredible Greek dinner for me, and that he and the kids gave me lovely gifts, but what’s more important, they wrote very supportive words of love and encouragement for my art. There’s always a silver lining.10 27

 

Happy Birthday…To Me

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Another year passes by. Another year older, and hopefully wiser. I’d like to think that I’ve become a better person this year. I made the decision to not be angry, and for the most part I’ve remained pretty level-headed. I also, thanks to this project and blog have been trying to make myself a priority for the first time in my life. I’m still struggling with it a little, still putting too many obstacles in my own path, but they are getting fewer and fewer as time goes by. Here is my birthday wish, I want my children to be healthy and happy, and I would like to find myself a year from now buried in work with Dan at our business. Nothing spectacular, just simple wishes for health and happiness.

Today could have been a better day. Dan and the kids went above and beyond in making the day as special as they could for me. Unfortunately some other people in my life seemed to have forgotten that this should be a good day. There was also a very troubling incident in our life this morning. Dan took me for coffee, set his iPhone down and forgot it for a minute. Someone stole the phone. I have written before to remind people that you never know what is happening in the life of another person. To the person who stole Dan’s phone, I don’t understand taking something that doesn’t belong to you. Every action has a reaction. My husband has been out of work for six months. He was waiting on a call about a job, the call is supposed to come to that number. You didn’t just take our phone today, you took some hope along with it. You made what was starting out to be a nice day into a day to be upset. You had a hand in ruining my birthday. I hope it was worth it.

Every single day is a workday, today was no exception. A little drawing for myself, and to use in our business. Pen and ink.

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Scar Of The Heart

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Nothing funny about my words tonight. They are inspired by my own life, and something that has been in the news and on my mind. There has been a story in the news lately about a young girl who killed herself. She was being bullied at school, reached a breaking point, and threw herself off a platform at an abandoned cement plant. I am the mother of two, I cannot imagine the anguish and pain of that girl’s family, but what haunts me more is the desperation that would drive a child to do what she did. I cannot stop thinking about her. The anonymity of the computer has allowed people to distance themselves. It is easy to write something awful when you don’t have to look the person in the face. It saddens me to the core to think about that little girl, she was only twelve. I wish it were just a matter of closing Facebook accounts, or shutting down emails, but it isn’t. It is amazing to me how thoughtless people can be with what they say, or how they say it. Insults cloaked in “jokes”, as if somehow calling words funny lessens the pain. It doesn’t. Saying something spoken doesn’t mean anything, you are wrong, it does to the person hearing it. I have had words spoken to me, or about me, that are well in the past, but live in my heart and mind as if it were today. It isn’t about holding on to the past, it is that the words hurt enough to brand themselves into my heart. I was bullied, I know that girl, I could have been her, any of us could be her, any of our children could be her. I have heard words spoken that cause me pain as they are inflicted on someone I care about. I feel powerless in their presence, there is no weapon in hand for me to knock away, I can only stand and listen as the air around me is poisoned. Don’t speak, stop and think. Parents need to choose their words carefully, think about what you say to your children, because they are yours does not give you license to inflict pain. You are the foundation of your child’s self-esteem. Even as we age we look to our parents to approve, to respect, to love us. Physical wounds may heal, but scars of the heart are permanent. I don’t believe that we can ever harden our hearts enough to make them invincible, or that we can ever grow old enough to not want to be loved, or cared about. Words are an easy weapon. Be watchful in anger, or in frustration. Choose your words wisely, when there are spoken words, an apology cannot erase them, and written words once read speak as well. Remember that what you say could very well be the last thing you say to someone. Living with words that were used to hurt another can scar your own heart as well.

For tonight there are words. Hateful, nasty, awful words, branded into the heart. I love words, but not those I have written here. Once again I turn to the words of another.

The Unspoken word never does harm.

Lajos Kossuth

This is dedicated to Rebecca Ann Sedwick. I didn’t know you, but you were worth far more than you realized. Rest In Peace.10 25