daily painting | piglets

Wrestling piglets in the straw-strewn dirt — what could be cuter? These inseparable litter mates, I am told, will grow up and get huge. So I really enjoyed their cheeky adorableness out at the new location of Maker Farm next to Ploughshares Nursery. Charlotte’s Web comes to mind, with Charlotte saving Wilbur the pig. I loved those books, Stuart Little in particular. Probably because Stuart could fit into those clever little matchboxes and be safe, a feeling I longed for when I was Emily Little (how I loved those illustrations!). Today’s trip to buy groceries felt far from safe and made me so anxious, with Covid marching through California and getting more clever. Always happy after a crowded store experience to come home and scrub my hands with Clorox and Brillo pads and gargle with Lysol. Ugh. But this too shall piss — uh, pass. Happy Merry New Year, everyone. All the cliches have already been said about 2020, but my wish for 2021 is that our hearts can heal from loss and we can have hope again. And give each other lots and lots of hugs. LOTS.

7″ x 10″ watercolor, pen, acrylic ink on paper = $90

 

 

 

daily painting | christmas still life

You know you are an artist when you roam the produce dept at Berkeley Bowl looking for still life material instead of recipe ingredients. In this case I “shopped my refrigerator” and put this together on this most remarkable Christmas Day, the first day in my 68 years to have a solo quarantined December 25th. Wow, I must say it’s been pretty damn interesting. And amazingly happy. I knew it would be a quiet day here in the marina (neighbors’ remodeling projects temporarily stilled), and I’ve been paying attention to and appreciating a complete lack of family drama. Is that a good thing? Am I destined to become a recluse? Who knows. But I admit I am glad to observe my adaptability to this somewhat sequestered life. And I completely enjoyed a rainy, windy holiday walk on Crown Beach with a good friend. As I sit in my slightly rocking houseboat enjoying a winter storm’s arrival, anticipating putting together a Christmas feast just for one, I am standing outside myself a bit and watching my life as an aging woman. Content, surely. Filled with grief — how could I not be? Flexible, sturdy and rolling with the 2020 punches. Merry Christmas everyone. Though, as a dear friend said, “Merry” and “Christmas” are not exactly a well-matched pair this year.

7″ x 10″ watercolor, pen on paper = $90

 

 

 

daily painting | scratchy

In between making sale placards yesterday for my pop-up sale, I tacked up a fresh claybord to splash acrylic paints on while the signs dried. I have off-and-on relationships with smaller boards (12 x 12 is my fave) so I was nicely & unexpectedly surprised to enjoy painting this one. It’s really scratched up — I kept adding layers of paint and scratching them up and then adding more color. Since most of us feel scraped up and scarred after this astonishingly challenging year, it felt right to get a bit violent with the edge of my palette knife; we’ve all scrambled through the bramble patch and are cut up and bleeding. Eons ago a beloved therapist comforted me as I struggled to believe I would ever be whole after surviving a painful childhood. He said that yes, your wounds heal into scars that become part of a beautiful tapestry. I loved that image. An all-American creation, sturdy, imperfect, complete.

8″ x 8″ acrylic, crayon, pencil on claybord = $85

 

 

 

 

daily painting | december persimmon

I think most of us would agree that this is a December unlike any other. For the first time in forever I will be locked down at home instead of in San Diego for Christmas with grandkids — so many Americans will be quarantined as well, lonely for family. I am grieving my sister, who was taken out by cancer, but I cannot ask my friends for hugs. I watch in horror as Covid death numbers rocket through the stratosphere in the US. I worry myself sick about my daughter’s family. I watch politicians deny and subvert the truth. It’s like trying to breathe after having been swept off the mountain by an avalanche, crushed under eight feet of snow.

And yet. Small treasures keep my focus on the glory of just being alive today. Bike rides to Crab Cove to meet a kind and warm friend and together watching leggy black-necked stilts at the water’s edge (I looked them up!). Spicy, hammy bean soup in the crock pot. Getting out my tray of watercolors and painting this persimmon I set up on a flowery napkin I lifted from Uncle Fuzzy’s kitchen. Doing mindless chores like laundry which soothes me. Celebrating my health. Drinking my sister’s favorite brand of tea I ordered on Amazon, brewed in the little metal teapot she used every morning that her wonderful husband mailed to me. Netflix series about spies in WWII. Green herons out my kitchen window. Inhaling fabulous apple-cranberry homemade pie a friend made. Marveling at the hopeful news of vaccines. Dancing lights on my ceiling, reflections from the water outside my boat. Finches fighting at the birdfeeder. These are small slices of life that keep me from being squished, giving me a breathing tube that reaches up through the suffocation of snow into fresh air. I know I am quite sturdy, all-in-all, but Jesus, Mary and the Pips what a year.

7″ x 10″ watercolor, pen on paper = $90