It’s early, at least for my writing, only eight forty in the morning here in California, but I find myself already thinking about what I want to write this evening. If you read my ramblings on a regular basis, you know that it primarily has to do with what I have created and why, and though it still sneaks in from time to time, I believe the blog has become a little less “woe is me”. To be honest I’m boring myself just a little. I think I need to change things up. I’m not talking about abandoning the project, I fully intend to see it through, but maybe to expand beyond the talk of the what and why I create art. I have noticed that when I check out many of the people who “like” my postings, their blogs reveal a great deal more about them. It isn’t as though I haven’t told a story or two, but I’ve definitely held back. The photo on my blog isn’t even me, it’s my grandmother, I just love the picture, and frankly never like the ones of myself. I may have mentioned that my dear friend Theresa, has often told me that I need to “put it in the book”, by that she means the never-ending stories of the funny, not so funny and weird things that have happened in my life. I think it may have something to do with my Irish heritage, I hear that we are “gifted” story tellers. I think that it may have more to do with my Irish parents, my dad in particular, he can be quite a character. My intention at the end of this year of blogging was to have the blog and its accompanying art turned into a book for my two children. Something they could have of their mother, as I have very little of mine. So, tonight there will be art, maybe a little something about the piece, but a little more about me and my life.

I have mentioned that I won my first art competition in the third grade, I haven’t however revealed the project I made, or the inspiration. As mentioned above, I’m Irish, but my dad looked just a little Asian as a child. (Weird, I know) I looked exactly like my dad when I was a little girl, one of my nicknames was “Daddy’s Double”, my dad occasionally will still refer to me as “double”, although in my eyes I look a little more like my mother now. (He won’t hear of that, and I had two other nicknames, Cookie and Natalie. The second one is a whole other story for another time) My sister’s and I had our hair cut really, really short. This was thanks to some whack job doctor who told my mother that long hair holds germs, seriously. The traumatic event of having our pony tails snipped off still haunts me, maybe that’s why I still like my hair long. With my short hair and my dad’s face I looked a little Asian. We went to see the Ice Capades, and it was Chinese New Year. The beautiful skaters came out on the ice with rickshaws, they pulled children from the audience to pull around the ice, I was chosen. Now whether or not it had anything to do with how I looked I wouldn’t know, but I always thought it did. The next day at school we were asked to draw whatever we wanted, I drew a clown, but a clown with big, multicolored plumes coming from his hat, and I outlined the entire drawing very carefully in black. Completely awed and inspired by the show the night before. I was very proud of that drawing, and even more so when I won. My dad must have been too. He had that drawing in a frame for years. He finally gave it to me, but unfortunately I was in a place in my life where I just didn’t care enough. It is in pieces now, I still have those. It is a remnant of the first time in my life when I felt really special.

Tonight, just a play day with watercolor. A vintage phone, a photo of a flower that I took in France, and finally, I came across this watercolor inside one of the pads in my studio. I’m not sure when I did it, I just remember trying to recreate a sort of comic book feel.