brush stokes to keystrokes

This past Friday mama and I went to see a violinist play at Johnson County Community College. His name is Roby Lakatos and his ensemble included an additional violin, guitar, piano, bass and something called a cimbalom, similar to a hammer dulcimer (one of mom’s fav’s). He’s known for his quickness and versatility. The style of music was a very unique blend of jazz, classical and a sort of odd folk. I don’t really know if “odd folk” exists, but I do know that folk in general is strange to me, so maybe that’s what I mean.  My favorite ones were the lullabye-esque ones. The fast ones were entertaining but they were so fast that I didn’t so much pay attention to the actual music as I did the motion of the arms and swaying of the bodies.

The person playing the cimbalom was mind-boggling and I wondered if he had 8 arms and hands and maybe the reason we only saw two was that he was moving them so quickly. I also wondered if he ever hit himself in the head with his cimbalom sticks. I loved the way the bass sounded, though it’s not all that spectacular on its own. If I were an instrument, I’d definitely be a bass. It doesn’t sound good enough solo, not good enough to stand out, but you sure do miss it when it’s gone.

It’s amazing how much a little bit of culture can ignite the senses and spirit, which I think are very closely related…at least in my life. It brings alive those parts of me that are dulled from the monotonous hours of cube life and a few hours of television. Something within is inspired and what’s left is a hunger for just a little bit more. I suppose we are a society of “a little bit more.”  

Speaking of more, hubs uploaded a few more paintings to the website. I’m just about to go off searching for my next source of creation….for a blank canvas awaits!

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Mama and I went to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art this past weekend and were delighted to have our very own personal docent. She’s a family friend, who I actually give full credit for giving me my husband. Aside from the many magnificent treasures on the inside, the structure of the museum, especially at night, is most breathtaking. I wanted to sit in the grass and just stare at it for a few hours. And then I decided I want to work there.

We saw an exhibit called “Art in the Age of Steam.” Artists portrayed their take on the introduction of trains to society in Europe and America. The exhibit was arranged in such a way that the story was told from the beginning, naturally, where steam engines were fire-breathing monsters invading nature, to the end where they were a great feat of engineering. As it was mostly a history lesson of sorts with sketches, propaganda and photos, there were a few abstract paintings that particularly caught my attention. My favorite was a piece by Thomas Benton called something like “Dream,” where the conductor of a train is dreaming that the train track has been broken and the train is going to crash into oblivion. In the painting he’s jumping out the window. I just loved the way the old man, in his dream-state, was wiggly-esque and his shoes looked like those of the dwarves in Sleeping Beauty.

Artists have the pleasure of being able to make their pieces look exactly how they want, to the point of changing realities and making abstract things real. I very much admire the craft of those realists and exact lines, but I much prefer to make my own world. One where blue means love and fall gets an extra month to stick around just because, one where flying is as simple as clicking my heels together and nobody gets to die without sipping a cocktail in the ocean.

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I’d like them back, please. I mean, you owe me that much.

I’m looking for my concentration. I seemed to have lost it a few weeks ago. Oh, once sweet, imaginative companion, where have you been hiding?

I think I’ve said this before, but if I could somehow tape-record my dreams, I could have some amazing and powerful images for paintings.  They’ve been absolutely out of control, conglomerations of short stories that are insanely vivid and the movement crisp. A lot of times my dreams are foggy and without edges. I hear mom can share dreams with baby while he/she’s in utero. I tell you what, we’re coming up with some strange ones. We might make an excellent team for fiction writing later on down the line. Maybe once the crawling and peeing in the potty have been mastered.  

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I have some complaints about red being seemingly the sole color for the representation of love. I suppose it’s passionate, it’s the color of a beating heart (I would guess – I’ve never actually seen a real one myself aside from those medical shows on television) and it does make for an exceptionally beautiful flower. The problem is this: you can’t stick your finger through it.

Now blue – that color you can stick your finger through, especially the darker blues. If you hang, say, two pieces of construction paper in front of you on a wall – one red and one blue – and stare at them, you’ll never get your eyes as far into the red one as you can with the blue one. And if you stare at them long enough, as if to stick your fingers through them, you’ll eventually get to the other side, or the end, of the red one. It’ll just stop. The blue one is seemingly eternal and no matter how long you stare or how deep you try to stick your finger into it, you’ll never hit the other side. It’s naturally deeper, and truer, and just plain bluer.

So I say this to Hallmark and mother nature, maybe make a few more blue Valentines Day cards and a few more blue flowers.

On another note, I’ve been distracted with the ever so beefy “What to Expect the First Year” book about, well, what to expect the first year, regarding mother and baby and changes. Who would have thought it would be a riveting page turner? I mean, it evokes pleasure, pain, horror, laughter, joy, sadness, all of the things a great fiction book would possess. The problem is it’s very, very real. I guess I’m on my way to finding out, eh?

I sat down to begin an abstract painting of…I’m not sure what yet. As soon as I figure it out, I’ll be sure to let you know. Instead of the aforementioned reds and oranges, it turned out to be browns and blues and hints of lime green. I surprised myself. Though depending on the color inside my pores for the duration of the process, there just might pop up some reds and oranges. Now that’s a suspense/thriller if I’ve ever heard one.

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No? Maybe some freshly chapped hands?

Somebody sent over the arctic skies last night. My 4 layers, gloves and scarf weren’t nearly enough armor to combat the frigid wind. Luckily I have some extra poundage that seems to help a bit. I loved it all the same though. There’s something very clean – cleansing, if you will – about said weather.

I don’t have a lot to say today except that I got some really large canvas’ thanks to the lovely Christmas sales. My next project is yet to be known…just waiting for some inspiration. I’m itching to do something red…maybe brown and orange too. Those are the colors radiating through my pores these days – an intense serenity…simple things and ideas suddenly having 8 separate layers that can’t be seen on first observation…

…hmm…that’d be a hard concept to make visible…painting 8 layers that you can’t see…

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I was awake at 4am this morning and wide awake for about an hour after that. (Mind you, this is totally bizarre because never in my life have I ever had issues sleeping.)  I kept thinking about how wonderfully naked this particular line of trees looked the other day, out our kitchen window. Even though they’re brilliant in the summer, they sure don’t lose any of their awe-inspiring features in the winter. And now it’s snowing! And now they look even more solid, barer and open to arms. It was so cold this morning I thought I had lost my nose on the short walk to my car. I should write an ode to winter…one of my few true loves.

My thoughts drifted from the trees to a distant family member who has been having sudden and severe health issues. The scariest part is, they don’t have a certain diagnosis. I’ve never met him before but it’s such a terrifying situation, to be suddenly hospitalized, to the point of losing his life, and not knowing why. So I prayed for him.

Next, my hands felt their way to my tummy to play with baby. We had a nice little talk about him/her making it easy on me at birth, coming out quickly and with ease. I’m not sure he’ll/she’ll remember that 5 months, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. J

The next thing I remember had something to do with being in my grandma’s house confronting ghosts in the cupboards and smelling the clothes still hanging in her closet. I’m guessing I finally fell asleep. If not, I don’t ever remember being cold on the drive there.

In paintbrush news, the Cancun panorama is finally complete. I had to redo the buildings a couple of times and the sky was being particularly stubborn, but I’m satisfied with the result. I hope to have it posted soon along with an alternate blog entry with pictures of each stage of the process for this particular piece.  It’ll look like a story without any parallel structure.

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I honestly believe myself to be the luckiest, most blessed girl in the universe. Even including those new planets they’ve been finding lately. (Which has really shown me how very little knowledge I posess about a lot of things, but that’s a different story.)

I guess it’s appropriate to reflect this time of year. Never has it been more so to realize exactly how much we have.

And so here I go…

I have the strongest, most faith-filled parents this side of the ocean who I still can’t manage to be apart from for very long and, as a result, I have prayer. I have 6 whole brothers that each amaze me in their own, unique way – every single day. I find myself looking up to every one of them, even one that I literally look down to because I’m a bit taller. (11 year-olds have a thing or two to teach 27 year olds, I tell ya) I have the sweetest sisters-in-law, I have the most beautiful niece…she’s the epitome of what those gap babies look like in the old commercials they used to make. I have a husband who, to this day and every day, treats me like gold and, as a result, I have in-laws with the most genuine hearts. I have a real, living person in my belly with a beating heart and everything. I’m driving my #2 dream car (number one being a red jag, which is also a different story), I have three really great, honest-to-God friends (which is all I need for a lifetime), I get to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day, put gas in my car, by a pack of gum, satisfy really bad fast-food cravings, give the bell ringers all I have on hand, see the snow, hear a heartbeat, smell nut bread, feel hubs’ hands on my feet and taste strawberry starbursts. All blessings from Him who thinks I somehow deserve them.

…and the icing on the cake is this: I get to paint. I get to steal back parts of my soul that my cube has stolen from me over the past 4 years. And I get all this time to really inhale all these amazing graces that I would otherwise not see because of the normal stresses of the day.

Really. Who’s luckier than me? I’d like to see someone prove it. That way I can be thankful for all your blessings too.

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It seems that time keeps passing without my permission. We’ve never really had that great of a relationship, time and I. Though I will admit, I’m a lot more forgiving than he is. I suppose that’s what makes him so…unfriendly, and lovely.  

The good news is, time is finally bringing the most comforting of holidays to us once again. I’m one of those crazies on the road that listens to Christmas music before Thanksgiving. It goes back to that time issue. I need to get in as much of it as I can before January comes and I have to wait a whole ‘nuther year for turn-around. And this year the Christmas music seems to make my belly dance and smile, inside-out.

Snow is something I’ve always had trouble painting so I’ve been looking ever forward to the first blanket of flakes. I’m hoping my beautiful photographer-of-a-husband can snap me a good shot to recreate. I can’t wait! I mean, no matter how much we gripe about having to scrape our cars and trudge out to the mailbox down that nasty slope of a driveway over ice, the extra sparkle ads a little something. It makes us all feel rich to be surrounded by what looks like fields of tiny diamonds, who, funnily enough, look their best under a bright, sunny sky. And, no matter how much we kid ourselves, the world certainly needs to be tucked in for a nap every now and then. Otherwise we’d never slow down.

Besides, have you ever known anyone to turn down a nap? To shield their eyes from diamonds?

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I just emerged from my very own heaven on earth…a one hour massage. It’s the only way to escape those pesky, everyday problems we think we have, to make your world stop turning, to make time stand still. I got to lie underneath a warm blanket and have these giant, magical hands (once the music starts and you close your eyes, the masseuse disappears, becoming only hands) rub all the toxins out of my entire body. They took me to a castle garden in Greece where there’s a giant, wooden swing hanging from a budding tree, surrounded by fragrances that only those flowers can emit. The sun came and went through the spaces in the millions of branches. I will say, however, that when the hands become a person again and the person says “you’re good to go,” it’s quite the rude awakening to find out that the world is, in fact, spinning once again. Anyway, he put color in my cheeks! I’m utterly convinced that if I had a massage like that at least once a month, I could add ten years to my life…in all certainty.

The problem now is, all I want to do is lie on the living room floor and listen to the clock tick and tock. Oh, woe is me!

My most perfect niece helped me paint the chaos layer on my next piece, well, one of two. She did a great job, mostly concerned with getting paint in every little circle on my pallet because, after all, that’s what it’s for, right? I’m going to put a fall scene on top of it. I need to hang on to those golden leaves for as long as I can, until winter takes them from me.

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