Hand Puppets

elly-web

I met this week with mentor extraordinaire and best-selling author Jon Katz to work on editing and cleaning up my first full fledged book, “A is for All Nighter”. The fate of the book is in flux as we are still working to find an agent for it and for me. I’m finding the advice of a good mentor like Jon is invaluable as I weigh the options of immediate gratification through self publishing or delayed gratification by trying to find a publisher.

So “A is for All Nighter” continues on the next step of the journey, and a new friend came to find me last week. Her name is Élly.  That accent over the E means you pronounce her name “Yelly”.
she’s kind of a loud little troll, and we had a lot to talk about last week. You see, like most people, there’s a lot more to Élly than meets the eye.

The revelations from the presidential campaign that inadvertently focused the national conversation on latent misogyny and consent brought up unpleasant memories for many women I know and for me as well.  Some people are able to talk about those memories, but sometimes, candor carries too high a price. 

Secrecy also carries a high price, however.  In secrecy there is depression and retreat from the blessings in your life.  There is a constant mental rerun of the memories that encourage self-loathing, and, in my case I began to look in the mirror and see a horrible, ugly, little troll.

That’s when Élly showed up.  Apparently she’s been lurking in the inner world I began building when I was two. She’s been just waiting for the right time to set me straight with some truth about bad things that happen in life and about trolls, about whom there is also much misinformation (they live under bridges, they have bad tempers).

So, like a kid talking to a hand puppet in a psychiatrist’s office, I told her why I felt like a troll and she told me why that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. She talked to me about her life and about the strength you find walking through the tears and emerging on the other side into a life you love. 

Élly was so helpful getting me back on track, that we decided to work on my next project together.  She even helped me find it by suggesting that we work to set the record straight about her kind.  Élly’s doing most of the writing, and I’ll be doing the illustrations, and we hope that in a few months we’ll have a kid-friendly book called The Truth About Trolls

So far she seems happy with the first portrait.

 

First Flakes

first-flakes-web
First Flakes, Watercolor, 6×9

Publicly, I love to complain about snow as much as everybody else, but the truth is the first flakes still make me wonder if we’ll get a snow day tomorrow. A tall order when you work from home, but I like to dream big.

Post Peak

Peaking, Watercolor on canvas, 12x12, $70
Peaking, Watercolor on canvas, 12 x 12, $70

A wet and windy front moved through over the weekend, blowing tons of leaves off the trees. We’re post Peak now,  looking towards stick season, which is usually my favorite, but foliage season this year was especially long and glorious. I got this glimpse of the field near our house just before the front moved in  and wanted to paint it while the glow is still fresh in my mind.

 

 

 

 

Questions or to buy any of my work email me at rachel@rachelbarlow.com

 

 

Morning Pages

Circa 1 Hour, pencil and charcoal
T1 Day1, pencil and charcoal

Just as great authors have their morning pages, I’m trying a new routine of drawing exercises before or after I paint each morning to gain a better command of the fundamentals — my homemade art school as it were.  These are very well-laid plans – the best-laid plans, so I’m not taking any odds on what will happen to them.  But the first day was fun.

Save

Save

Wild

 

I think what struck me so much about Iceland is not that it is untouched wilderness. It is a place where people have cut down trees and built their roads.  The Earth, however, will not always stay tamed.  She spits out ash to bury buildings and conspires with the wind to make some parts of herself too harsh to ever truly conquer. Continue reading Wild

Taking Back Control

untitled, oil
untitled, oil

I had a few ideas for cartoons ready to go at the beginning of last weekend, but suddenly, I didn’t feel very funny. Scratch that. I felt funny strange, but not ha ha funny.

Like most Americans, last Friday I had heard the video tape of one of our presidential candidates bragging about his predilection for sexual predation. I’m guessing I am not the only woman who needed a shower after the second debate was over.

I say this because I know I am only one of countless women for whom this week’s discussions called forth memories of being on the receiving end of that kind of unwanted physical attraction. For me those memories temporarily jammed up my creative energy, and it was hard to get back to recklessly abandoning productivity-killing thoughts as I picked at my own mental wound. The week of news did nothing to improve my mood, and it took discipline to stop picking at the scab and return to the balm that always softens it. There would be no getting to reckless abandon this week, but I knew, as always, art would be my answer. .

I can’t make presidential predators see women as people, nor can I compel true candor from him or his opponent, but I can control whether or not I let my frustration with the system shutdown my own growth. All I can do is pick up a brush and focus, not on what degrades human experience, but what inspires it.

Unconquerable

 

Unconquerable

Humans cut down trees and build their roads, but Mother Earth will not always stay tamed. She spits out ash to bury buildings and conspired with the wind to make some parts of herself too harsh to ever truly conquer.

 

Watercolor on Canvas

8" x 10"

Currently Unframed

$75.00

For questions or to buy this painting email me at rachel @ rachelbarlow.com