A Different Take on Blues

When my daughter was in grade seven, I volunteered in her English class.  One of the poems she studied is below.  It has stuck with me all these years.  I love the idea of seeing the blue between, of seeing what is not obvious, of seeing from a different perspective.

If, like in life, there are periods of dark and stormy clouds, then the blue is the good that happens between those difficult times.   This is a good thought to carry when your life is grey, overcast and turbulant.

The Blue Between

Everyone watches clouds,

naming creatures they've seen.

I see the sky differently,

I see the blue between--

The blue woman tugging

her stubborn cloud across the sky.

The blue giraffe stretching

to nibble a cloud floating by.

A pod of dancing dolphins,

cloud oceans, cargo ships,

a boy twirling his cloud

around a thin blue fingertip.

In those smooth wide places,

I see a different scene

In those cloudless spaces,

I see the blue between.

--Kristine O'Connell George

Focused on the Blues

In my last post I was pretty blue.  In the spirit of shaking off those blues I thought I'd show you what I did on a morning walk I took with Maxie last August when I was really "focused on the blues".

Often when we walk I take my camera with me, in case I see something interesting.  That day I decided to spice things up by only taking photos of "blue things".  Here are a few of the 30 photos I managed to snap in a 45 minute walk.  

 

 

 

Maxie wasn't too happy with me stopping so many times on this walk.  Usually she is the one stopping!

Sludge and Joe Bastianich

Sometimes my brain is sparking.  Ideas are coming fast.  Bam! Bam! Bam!  Everything is working like a dream. Paintings are flowing off my paint brush.  My pen is inking out like crazy.  The connection between head, hands and heart is working at 110% capacity.  Nothing seems impossible. I am an artist! I rock!

Other days the brain is a pile of sludge - a thick, dull, heavy grey mass of lifeless void.  No matter what comes out of it, flatness reigns. Of course, this is also the time when I burn the green beans, the dog wants to go outside 50 million times in one hour, and I accidently delete NCIS New Orleans from the PVR then find out Husband was not finished watching it.  *sigh*

So I've been having quite a few of those days lately, the sludgy ones.  I don't know if anything will come of the work I've tried last week.  It's sitting in a corner of the back bedroom, away from the seeing eye.  I still know it's there.  It taunts me with its clashing colors and pedestrian design.  I ventured out into the unknown and the unknown did not give back to me kindly this time.  I'd had such a good run of happy art lately that last week was a particularily hard blow to my fledgling confidence.

Then the universe spoke in the voice of Joe Bastianich.  Yes, one of the judges from Masterchef spoke directly to me.  This week.  From the television.

Masterchef is a cooking competition where home cooks go through intense pressure-filled elimination rounds creating gourmet restaurant quality dishes in order to please the highly critical evaluations of three extremely talented, experienced and wildly successful judges in the quest to be crowned the best home cook in the entire world.   The judges? Crème de la crème of the cooking world - Gordon Ramsey, Joe Bastianich and Graham Elliot.

This week I watched an episode of Masterchef Junior, the competition for nine to thirteen year olds. Yes, young children competing in a gourmet cooking show.  I can't even pronouce much less cook some of the dishes they are making and they don't have recipes in front of them!

This is a hard competition for adults, so it is harder still to watch these kids deal with the results of mistakes, sudden problems and sub-par dishes.  Every episode has a winner and a loser and every loser has to leave the show. There is disappointment and tears.

One little nine year old girl Oona, who had been doing impressively well over the first two episodes, had a bad week.  She put out the worst dishes since she started and she knew it.  I felt so bad for her. Then Joe handed her a napkin (this is where the universe spoke to me) and told her to wipe up her tears. He wondered if she thought she was going to do everything perfect all of the time 'cause no one was perfect.  She was going to make mistakes and mess up many times. Failures, especially the big ones, are often the catalysts that brings you to the next level.  They move you to improve you.

Oona was disappointed, but no longer devastated.  She was ready to accept her fate if she needed to leave the show, but I could tell she would leave with her head held high and undaunted in her cooking capabilities.

Good advice for me too.  When I run into mistakes, sudden problems and sub-par work, I will grab a napkin and wipe my tears.  I am not perfect and neither will my work be perfect all the time.  I will own the obstacles and embrace my mistakes.  I will allow my failures to move me to improve me.  I will go to the back bedroom, look at my mediocre work, and figure out a way to go forward from there, head held high and undaunted in my artistic capabilities.

Thank you Universe and Joe for the advice, just when I needed it.  I will turn my sludge into something beautiful.

By the way, Oona survived the elimination round to cook another day



 

After the Fire

 

Painted with acrylic folk paint and charcoal on cardboard cut from the side of a Rice Krispie Box

An Angel Came

Recently I have been reading about some of the Masters like Henri Matisse, Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso.  I love looking at their work and learning about their lives.  One thing that struck me as I examined the photos of the art work is the use of black outlines.  I thought that was a 21st century phenomenon.  Go figure!  I have lots to learn about art.

Olga Merson

Painted by Henri Matisse

1911

I decided to try my hand at an image with the black outlines.  It is not nearly as  expressive with depth as Henri's (or nearly as good!), but I'm pretty happy with my first attempt.  

An Angel in the House

How sweet it were, if without feeble fright,

Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight,

An angel came to us, and we could bear

To see him issue from the silent air

At evening in our room, and bend on ours 

His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers

News of dead friends, and children who have never 

Been dead indeed, --as we shall know forever.

Alas! We think not what we daily see 

About our hearths, --angels that are to be,

Or may be if they will, and we prepare

Their souls and ours to meet in happy air; --

A child, a friend, a wife whose soft heart sings

In unison with ours, breeding its future wings.

                                                 James Henry Leigh Hunt

Gotta Have Book

I confess to a weakness of the bookish kind.  I simply, absolutely, 100% cannot resist buying art books.  My collection is growing alarmingly fast.  Real life book stores that sell new books and real life stores that sell used books, online book stores, artist website "buy now" buttons -  I visit them all and I spend money at them all!  In my head I tell myself, "Leah, you need to buy this book. It's an investment into your art, your future, your very survival!!"  Yeah...no.  Not really my survival.  But I love reading these books, and I read them over and over again. I haven't even begun to try all the different projects and techniques in the how-to ones.  Osmosis is hopefully at work here.  

I came across the most perfect phrase a month or so ago, to help me justify my art book obsession but darn it, I didn't write it down.  Basically it told me that I should "always have an new art book on the shelf to read".  I saw it either in a book about Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse or in one about Paul Cezanne which I borrowed from the library. Oh yes, in addition to buying books I also use the local library, interlibrary loan and download library books on my iPad.  If I really like a book, I go buy it. If you happen to ever come across a quote like this, please, please let me know.  It will help me convince my husband when I need to buy another set of bookshelves.

Here are a few of my many favorites in no particular order.  

                         

                                        

If you've got a favorite book or two you would like to share, let me know.  I just might like to buy it!

  

Honking Winged Creatures

Winter is officially here.  Snow is on the ground and it is not going anywhere again until next spring. When I let Maxie out yesterday morning about 5 am, I could hear the geese honking.  I love that sound, especially in the crisp, cold, night air.  There is something magical about it.

Honking winged creatures crossing greycast clouds, 

soaring above gleaned fields.  

Steady onward, formed in flights of primordial instinct.

A shift from here to there.

Gazing at soft underbellies shaded in silvered slate,

trembling at dizzy heights attained.

Reaching upward, following, seeking, chancing.

Where are they going? 

I will go too.

                                  Leah Boulet

Speaking of geese, there's a fabulous artist I love who I also happen to know.  She is amazingly creative and an awesome teacher.  In the last few years she's spent time sharing her knowledge and love of art in the schools.  Her lastest project is crazy good.  Geese are involved along with feathers, flight, thoughts, hopes and dreams.  I just have to share the You Tube video she posted last month. Here is Roberta Laliberté and her video Future Flight Path.

The last of these soulful flyers are winging their way south.  Next time the songs of the geese fill the air above my head, spring will be around the corner.