A general ugh post

should be working... and am blogging....
I should be, oh the list is endless. So what? The universe yawns and rolls over, so what? This is an ugh post. ugh. There having said that I should get up and go on doing what must be done.
One more for good measure UGH.

A dying thunderstorm

Mirage

The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
Was but a dream; and now I wake
Exceeding comfortless, worn, and old,
For a dream's sake.

-Christina Rossetti

Since then I have fled in the shape of a crow,
since then I have fled as a speedy frog,
since then I have fled with rage in my chains,
-a roe-buck in a dense thicket.

I have fled in the shape of a raven of prophetic speech,
in the shape of satirising fox,
in the shape of a sure swift,
in the shape of a squirrel vainly hiding.

I have fled in the shape of a red deer...

Taliesin's Song of his Origins
translated by Caitlin Matthews

All night I am the doe, breathing
his name in a frozen field,
the small mist of the word
drifting always before me.

And again he has heard it
and I have gone burning
to meet him, the jacklight
fills my eyes with blue fire;
the heart in my chest
explodes like a hot stone.

-Louise Erdrich

Marabou Stork

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

They both looked at the fallen body with a mute stupor. He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away any sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entangled in the mud...

... He was lying in the corner drying his open wings in the sunlight among the fruit peels and breakfast leftovers that the early risers had thrown him. Alien to the impertinences of the world, he only lifted his antiquarian eyes and murmured something in his dialect...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I am not cruel, only truthful
—The eye of a little god. . . .

Slyvia Plath, Mirror

summer is in his death throes here
all the birds are becoming restless
eating like mad
for their journey

Camel Touch

Osprey flight

had a nice but brief visit to the river...

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.



Rumi- translated by Coleman Barks

here little piggy, piggy, piggy

Members of my vast blog audience decide for yourselves on this one.
Hmmmm a bit too far? Perhaps artists should limit some of their innermost urges....
http://www.artinfo.com/News/Article.aspx?a=19347

http://www.tract-liveart.co.uk/Kira%20O%27Reilly/Kira%20O%27Reilly.htmla%20O


perhaps she should use a live pig....

Nothing special

An interesting little blurb on blogs:
http://www.artinfo.com/News/Article.aspx?a=19387

"Hypostasis is the feeling that something as dead as paint might also be deeply alive, full of thought and expressive meaning. One moment paint is nearly nothing, an excuse for some historian to write about the influence of Florence and Siena, or the difficulties of realistic painting- and then suddenly it is also there in all of its stubborn weight and thickness, clinging to the canvas, gathering dust, wrinkling with age. Ordinarily paint is a window to something else, a transparent thing that shimmers in our awareness as we look through it to see what the painter has depicted: but it is also a sludge, a hard scab clinging to the canvas. "

"Paint is like the numerologist's numbers, always counting but never adding up, always speaking but never saying anything rational, always playing at being abstract but never leaving the clotted body."

James Elkins- What Painting Is

The Flamingos

Jardin des Plantes, Paris

With all the subtle paints of Fragonard
no more of their red and white could be expressed
than someone would convey about his mistress
by telling you, "She was lovely, lying there

still soft with sleep." They rise above the green
grass and lightly sway on their long pink stems,
side by side, like enormous feathery blossoms,
seducing (more seductively than Phryne)

themselves; till, necks curling, they sink their large
pale eyes into the softness of their down,
where apple-red and jet-black lie concealed.

A shriek of envy shakes the parrot cage;
but they stretch out, astonished, and one by one
stride into their imaginary world.

Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by: Stephen Mitchell

The Future

Spent some good time with my nieces and nephews today.

Harris Hawk

one of the few social hawks that hunt in packs and live in family groups, they are called the wolves of the sky-

The Man-Of-War Hawk

You black man-of-war hawk that wheels in the light

Over the black ship's white sky-s'l, sunned cloud

to the sight,

Have we low-flyers wings to ascend to his height?

No arrow can reach him; nor thought can attain

To the placid supreme in the sweep of his reign.

Herman Melville

Have you ever rubbed your cheek against a man's rough tweed sleeve and, from its very stout, warm texture against your soft young cheek, felt the strength and manliness of all it contained? Afterwards you discovered it was only the masculine of him calling to the feminine of you- no particular strength or fineness- and you ached a little at the disillusion and said to yourself, "Sleeves are sleeves, cheeks are cheeks, and hearts are blood pumps."

Emily Carr
Hundreds and Thousands

Flying reprise

There is nothing like the communion between you and the bird when you free fly. The subtle gestures of the posture as they make themselves ready to take off from their perch to your glove. The uplift as they swing their body up to land on you, the feathers brushing you, and the magnificent whoosh of air that pushes off of them. Their taloned feet grasping you as they again test the wind and leave your hand. For a brief moment a seperation between the two of you does not exist. What a privledge to host such a creature, to share space and air. I miss it like a dull ache, what can come close?

Soon I will end this silly blog space and take my photos with me.

Flying

More fun at the Fair

who knew such things existed?

Mean Chicken

fun at the local fair...who would ever suspect this sweet little chicken has such a dark side?

De Profundis

OH why is heaven built so far,
Oh why is earth set so remote?
I cannot reach the nearest star
That hangs afloat.
I would not care to reach the moon,
One round monotonous of change;
Yet even she repeats her tune
Beyond my range.
I never watch the scatter'd fire
Of stars, or sun's far-trailing train,
But all my heart is one desire,
And all in vain:
For I am bound with fleshly bands,
Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope;
I strain my heart, I stretch my hands,
And catch at hope.

Christina Rossetti

The Three Thieves

Polar Snarl

The bear at the zoo was smelling his audience as we walked past...perhaps dreaming of devouring us all?

Painting ...again....

So it is just me again, no profound quotes or articles of interest. I am not as much in other artist's words right now and am gathering myself to create an outpouring of the inner stuff I have been collecting. Really that just means that I am working again. I am only taking a break from a rather frustrating bit of painting to rest up for the final attack. I have gone back to an older work that had some very good areas and some areas that demanded to be moved up in order to make the overall thing successful. I had a moment of insight on it, quite out of the blue when I was showering this morning. I knew percisely what I needed to do. That is a rare thing, and makes me feel rather silly that I had not seen it before. Once changed the good parts of it rang out like music, an of course, of course! The gold eye flickers as it did not before and I am hopeful I will conquer the rest of it.

Another idea creeps up as well for another painting, they are coming through the fog like old ships gliding without sound. All at once this giant thing is here, how could it be missed? So large and looming as it comes into full view.

He looked at himself in the mirrored glass.

To Play Artist

I went to the local zoo to play artist today. I need to draw from life to keep my skills up and I am obviously a big fan of animals. The only dilemna is that to do this, you become quite similar to the animals, in that you are also on display. This means all of my crappy drawings which I always start with until I get into my groove; are out there for everyone to see. You become this ambassador for artists everywhere. People literally crowd around to watch, which is difficult for me. I like to remain somewhat covert and seek out the most unvisited places to draw. No matter how many times I found a cozy spot, free from screaming crowds of children, I would be surrounded within minutes of starting my picture. This would always cause my subject to move out of its relaxed position, leading to yet another poor study from life. I did remain quite civil and joked with the people around me in order to keep artists on good footing with the general public. Who knows, maybe one day in the future one of those kids I saw will be drawing at the zoo themselves. Hopefully they will have better results then I did today!

grizzly bear

A credit to Bartolomeo Veneto on the "Portrait of a Lady" I am using as my photo. I actually do quite resemble it, as was noted once during an Art History class I took. My eyes are blue though, not brown.

Faculty Meeting

I am not looking forward to the end of summer.

Transatlanticism

The Atlantic was born today and i'll tell you how...
The clouds above opened up and let it out.
I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go.
Oh no.

Those people were overjoyed; they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flood lands to your door
have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before
Oh no.
I need you so much closer
So come on, come on

Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie

Today's Tally

Art: 2
Housework:0
Misc:0
Dream:1

Scarlet Ibis

An Egyptian Vulture

An incredibly intelligent, tool using bird. This is one of the species in serious decline.

Vulture Decline

An article on the rapid decline of vultures. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1821631,00.html

When I worked with birds, the vultures and condors were always my favorites. They are very intelligent and social. They do not deserve the negative associations that they are given in many Western cultures.

Today's Tally

Housework- 2
Art- .5
Misc.- 1

Something interesting

I was reading my weekly newsletter when I ran across this artist. I find her work interesting as I am painting in a similar subject area.

http://www.artinfo.com/News/Article.aspx?a=19255

I need to be better at painting things around my subject. I lose my focus when I get to it and rush it. I should only draw background materials for weeks. Maybe I will find more in them and get it right, if I do that.

Soon my freedom ends and I dread it. I have to increase my momentum on my work so that I can carry myself through another extremely busy year. Hopefully I will not get as sick as I was at the end of this one. I just hate the constant list of things to do that sits in my head and makes it impossible to find time for myself. I am a person who needs time to dream, above all.

Today

Housework- 1
Art- 0

Lismer

"Somehow they wake an instant response in me. Lismer's two last pictures gave me a feeling of exhilaration and joy. All his works are fine, but he is going on to higher and bigger things, sweep and rhythm of the lines, stronger colours, simpler forms. He was extremely nice. I wonder if these men feel as I do, that there is a common chord struck between us. No, I don't believe they feel so toward a woman. I'm way behind them in drawing and in composition and rhythm and planes, but I know inside me what they're after and I feel perhaps, given a chance, I could get it too. Ah, how I have wasted the years! But there are still a few left."

Emily Carr on Arthur Lismer
I just visited an amazing exhibition of Carr's work in Ottowa, Canada. Though she is known for her paintings of the Native Americans of the Pacific Coast; I love her renditions in her later work of the "life" in nature. There was a self-confident loose brush work about them that really struck me when I saw the actual work.

Companion

Smile

Of The Body

And what of the other net? The one
we willingly give ourselves to, it is that beautiful-
each knot so carefully made, the curved
plate of the sternum tied to the shape of breath,
the perfect hinge of the knee that opens and closes the earth.
The water of the eye very cold, very clear.
And the sturgeon, the golden carp, how they continue to elude us.
Swim straight through and are instantly gone;
though a shadow flickers, remembering.

Jane Hirshfield

Northern Fulmar

This is a gray morph coloration of this seabird.

Homage to Artemis

In my secret heart I am wild, savage, unbroken, uncivilized, uncultivated, and undomesticated. That as I am bound in by the ordinary day by day, in my soul I am still roaming the forest. The smell of earth under my feet as I pass through the trees, my blood rushing through me, my eyes alert for movement. Knowing, in a moment I can disappear into the woods and turn away from all of this civility.

thin earth

hawk flight

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Henry Thoreau

Dante's grave

Young Swainson's Hawk

He says I am the Phoenix, she
outwitting all the ages
who brings herself to life, then death,
inters herself, and rises.

She who makes of womb and tomb
a union so wonderous
that she is rocked, reborn just there
where her body was buried;

Who, nestling in the fragrant fires
of sweet gums and perfums
reanimates herself just when
she seems to be consumed;...

Sor Juana de la Cruz