Don't even try to tell me that God isn't an artist.

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Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight
The Stars before him from the field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n,
and strikes,
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.

From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

I love the melting feeling you get when you come in from the cold. I am so glad that we get to experience these sorts of sensations!

Bono and Brandon Flowers on the same stage, that is just too exciting.

The wind is blowing my curtains. They are beautiful, they look like a waterfall.

Doodling on the aeroplane

As we were landing, the guy sitting next to me asked me if I was an artist.

Cumberland University

Holy cow, I just stumbled upon this. I am in it! And it also features my English Professor, Dr. Rex (he's the one with the earring).

"Life must be understood backwards; but... it must be lived forward."

- Soren Kierkegaard -



Very interesting. It was on my gmail this morning.
Also, Soren is a nice name.

Alone in an Airport

I'm sitting in the Denver airport listening to people's conversations. This trip has been filled with running into kind strangers. I think they are members of a secret army trying to restore my faith in humanity in general. It may be working.

Also there is snow here.

It's about time.

Here's the third in this series, she's coming along nicely, if I may say so myself.

Hilarious

Not only does this cat technically have four ears, it's name is Yoda.

What I'm about-Part V

I think very often about shadows. I take pictures of lovely shadows that I see with the intent of using them in a painting. I remember as a child, after watching Peter Pan and seeing him catch his shadow, thinking that your shadow was a very essential part of who you are, your spirit. Of course, he needed his spirit with him so that he could be whole, and (I'm convinced) so he could really fly. I have sat watching my shadow, waiting for it to do something independent of me. It makes sense that I haven't seen it do such a thing though. As long as we are attached, my shadow/spirit and the physical me, I think we'll balance each out and act in accord. You see, my physical being would be very mechanical without my spirit. And my spirit would probably fly every-which-way without being grounded by my physical self.

There is a leaf, it is yellow, on the ground in front of me (I am sitting out on a bench in the park-like lawn of my campus). Even though it is technically (scientifically) cut off from from its life source, it is still accompanied by it's shadow. How can I think it dead? It still casts a shadow, it still has a spirit. It still conveys beauty to me, and in a way I may have never known had it remained high in the air, anchored to the branch. Such a dear little leaf. Leaves are like feather except better because they are alive.
Why do we have such a negative view of shadows? Why are they 'scary'? What is so terrible about a shadow that we would want to 'cast no shadow'?

I wonder if pine trees look so sad because they never die? I think that's why deciduous trees are so excited- their lives come and go, they have a season of death and then are revived. Pines are old and tired. They have to suffer through the cold of winter always conscious of the bitter reality surrounding them. But then, God has allowed them to see snow, which is not something He has afforded the other trees. And maybe they enjoy being a shelter for other living things whose lives are not as enduring as their own. I wonder what they think of the flamboyant display of Autumn? I'm not sure they approve at all. Pine trees remind me of nuns.

I definitely think the Transcendentalists/Romantics had something right. Nature is obviously linked to the spiritual. God does reveal Himself through the sky and the trees and the waters. I don't agree with everything they've stated, but I do think they started off in the right direction. God reveals Himself through His creation in the same way that an artist does. One can learn the style of an artist, and recognize a work as being his/hers, just as we can see and recognize and understand the beauty that God has allowed us to interact with.

A peek at my newest painting

Today would have been John Lennon's 68th Birthday

Sonnet:To Science

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

Edgar Allan Poe 1845


My feelings exactly.

I just traced (online! Oh the joys of internet!) one side of my family back to 1490 in England. Holy cow, I feel very small.

Here's a free download of The Guggenheim Grotto

I don't know what you'll think, but I love it. This is good music, and if I had money (ah the life of an artist. At least I'm not starving, er, that is when I'm not forgetting to eat because I'm painting) I'd buy every last song they've made. One day.

Here it is!

'A Tear Isn't Such a Bad Thing' makes me cry, but its just so beautiful at the same time that I have to listen to it.

This is the 200th post!

I give you Edinburgh, a view from Greyfriar's Cemetery.

What I'm about-Part IV

It has been too long since I've pondered these sorts of thoughts on paper (well, here it is on a screen, but never mind). I've just experienced a wonderful kind of art: a story, but more specifically, a fairy tale. My heart was awakened with the realization of seeing a happy ending. Of course, it was a just a movie, but the need for a chaotic world to again come to order is central to all of humanity. There are fairy tales in every language, in all eras of time. They bear the simplest of truths about us as the human race: we want love, we want to be happy, and we want to know the ending. But if you think about it, really Jane Austen was writing fairy tales too. Her characters are seeking those same things, but without all the magic. Well wait. Of course there's magic in Austen! What else would you call a dance that everyone knows so perfectly, that two people can stare at each other, while dancing, with such a super-natural intensity, that by the time they leave the room, they are madly in love. Sounds like a spell to me. And they encounter all the trials and confusion before they get their happy ending, just like in fairy tales.
My favorite fairy tale is that of Tatsinda. (I won't relay it to you here, but I will encourage you to seek it out and fall in love with it for your self.)

I painted for 4 hours today. It has become more ingrained in my daily activity than ever before. Things I need to do everyday: sleep-paint-sing-read-write-think-speak-breathe. And I suppose eat (if I remember, I never had trouble remembering to eat until recently.)

I wonder what animals think of us? I wonder what they think of our forks and spoons and tv's? I wonder what they think of the sky?

Today was the first day I could hear Autumn singing, albeit from a distance yet. She isn't quite here, but she will be soon in all of her operatic glories, with all of her flamboyant costumes. If only Summer would quite bowing and just let the curtain fall already. . .

I love having chills, it is like an alarm screaming "You're alive!!!"

This morning it rained for the first time in a long time. I love the smell of rain. Breathing in air cleansed by rain is breathing what makes flowers happen, that is magical air. Breathing is growing. Can you imagine the anticipation that plants experience when they see a thunderstorm forming on the horizon? They must all be in a frenzy! That explains why they dance about so much before it rains.

Once I saw the mouth of a spring. I felt I had stumbled upon the 'world navel'. Surely the source of water marks the source of life. Think of the trouble that Genesis goes to to explain the rivers converging in the garden. And as far as archetypes go, water equals life.

Today I finished the first painting in a series of five (for now) that I'm working on. I think these are really going to be important for me, as far as art goes. They are really piecing together a lot of the loves I have-of text and pattern and iconography and antiquity and shiny-ness and symbolism- essentially art and literature, now that I really think about it. Maybe that explains why Im double-majoring in art and english? Hm. I hope they will be readable to more than just me, but then I do love to explain things, now don't I?