Month: January 2019

Everyday Blessings

We had about 10 inches of fresh snow and ice and then snow again. last weekend. The temperature plummeted into the double digits below zero, and the Big Guy and I were working together to get the wood bins filled so that the door didn’t have to open again between Saturday and Monday morning.

I was actually enjoying a little bit of the labor. Iit’s one of those every day reminders to be grateful. Be grateful for the fact that we could to stay inside for the next 24 hours and work on tech support or illustrating books. And it was a reminder to be mindful of those who did have to work in the snow and cold or those who have no home at all.

The weather is bringing less drama this weekend, but as my big orange tabby settles himself in my arms to negotiate painting and cuddling, I’m making a point to be looking for the everyday blessings.

Simply Peaceful

It’s 1 am, and i’m trying to fill the wood stove as quietly as possible.As the official night owl in the family, my last job before bed is loading her up so that we have coals to make starting the fire in the morning easier.

Earth-sheltered on three sides, the house base temperature is around 55 degrees, and It takes several seriously subzero days to require more than a couple loads of our Kitchen Queen wood cook stove to keep us all comfortable.

This weekend is predicted to be normal temperatures for this time of year—single digits at night, teens and low 20s during the day. I know I only need to load enough fuel for a few hours. As i put the last log in, I open the vent for a few minutes to let the wood catch. The soft red glow is the antidote to electronics, medí and social media anxiety. It soothes and hypnotizes. It’s a reminder of how much the simplest tasks can bring peace to our lives — even for just a few moments.

Comfort Time

Jim-Bob, somewhere in his kitten hood, develop some sort of attachment disorder. This is displayed on a daily basis by his inability to let his favorite humans sit down without being sent on.

Most days when I sit down to work at my computer, he will hop up on my desk and then crawl into my arms, wrapping his paws around my arm. The first few times he did this, I would put him on the nearby chair or the ground and then another spot on the desk and say, “not right now Kitty.”. but he persisted.

I’ve now adopted a new typing style so that I can sit hunched over with the cat curled up between me and the laptop. I’m realizing this is setting a terrible example for the kids-if you badger mommy long enough she’ll eventually give in. But with the subzero temps, I like my living for coat.

The only the little hitch in our new routine is that my other winter routine has become doing my illustrations at my desk (painting doesn’t work during tax season for some reason). Jim-Bob, However, is refusing to recognize the line of demarcation between comfort time (when I’m typing) and creative time (when I really want to draw). I realize that we humans were put on this earth to serve felines, but now my conundrum is how to convince my orange art director that he’ll best be served sleeping next to and not on the drawings.

Delayed but not forgotten

Last week, the blog got away from me, as did the giveaway, but it is not forgotten.

The winner is Marsha Kropp. Marsha I will be emailing you to get your address and send this out to you.

Thank you for commenting everyone. There will be others in the days and weeks to come as decluttering continues.

Decluttering Meets Kryptonite

Cool, by Thing2, Age 8

The first thing about going through papers that consists mainly of sketchbooks is finding something to do with them. I’ve done that.

At least with my sketchbooks.

But then there is Thing2.

we used to have a weekend tradition of going to different art museums and then taking the boys to get Thai food-a bribe for pretending to like art for two hours. Thing2, however, was always pretending, at least a little bit, to not like art.

I always bring a sketchbook to art museums. That’s how I consume art. That’s how I make it part of me.

Thing2 Will start our visit pretending that come out like his brother, he could care less about Turner or Constable or Picasso, but as soon as my sketchbook comes out, he’s asking if he can borrow it for just a few minutes, and I’ll turn over my 6 x 9 pad and pen.

When he first started doing this, I believed that I would get my sketch pad back. Now I’ve made it a habit to bring two.

As I’m cleaning out my closet, I’m finding surprising number of surrendered sketchbooks-all of them chock-full of copies of paintings, characters for fan-fiction scripts, and spaceship designs.

I may have found my decluttering kryptonite. The decluttering gurus will tell you that nostalgia is not your friend, but tonight it’s one more unexpected thing to be grateful for. These drawings are as illustrative of his childhood as are any of the snapshots we’ve taken. I know not one scrap of paper from these books will find its way into the recycle bin or even off the spiral binding.

I’m clearing another shelf for his sketchbooks. He still draws, and I know the collection will grow more slowly as he divides his creative time between drawing and writing and his band. But even if he returns to drawing full throttle, I know I will buy a bigger house before I think any of his sketchbooks and wish them goodbye.

Everything to be Thankful For – Giveaway

Acrylic on canvas panel, 9×12”

I’ve done clothes. I’ve made a dent in the pile of books so that I can put everything away.

Now I’m getting to papers. On her show, Marie Kondo makes it look very easy to get rid of papers, and for the most part I find that to be the case. I have financial records going back 17 years that could definitely be scanned and burned. But I also have stacks of sketchbooks and drawing pads chock full of drawings sketches and even little paintings.

A lot of them are pretty bad, but I love them all. They are proof that I have at least given my creative life a fair chance. But in my 10 x 10 office, there is only so much room, and right now that space belongs to the future. It belongs to the paintings that are waiting to be made and the books that are waiting to be written and illustrated.

About two months ago, I started scanning in the drawings, thinking I would make an e-book to sell on Amazon. I wasn’t sure what I would do with them once the scans were done, but now I think I know.

Thing2 has claimed dibs on anything I plan to discard (he hasn’t let the Big Guy know he’s second in line). But instead of burning doodles I don’t want, I’m going to start offering them here for a regular giveaway. I figure it’s a fun way to thank the drawings (and readers who like them) before sending them on their way and starting a new stack.

Tonight is the first giveaway. This is a painting I did at paint and sip in acrylic. if you like it, share the link and leave a comment. I will choose a winner at random from the comments on Wednesday January 16th and mail it out to you.

Wintry Road

Wintry Road, 8”x10”,oil on canvas, $125

Prints and originals (when still available), can be purchased on Etsy here.

New Year’s resolutions are made to be broken, so the only ones I make tend to be diet related (something I excel at breaking). The end of 2018, however, marks what we hope is a new beginning for Thing1 as he charts his course for recovery, and I’m trying to use the lessons of the last year to make it a new beginning for me as well.

Yesterday marked a blissfully boring beginning of the year for me as well. It was my day off. My one obligation was to get to the grocery store and then do some illustrating.

We got a halfway decent snowfall yesterday. It warmed up in the afternoon, causing most of the trees to lose that confectionery look, but it was still a lovely day for errands. The clouds were churning, and as I passed the church yard in Shaftsbury, Vermont, they raced far enough east to let a little sun shine through over the Green Mountains and the valley.

I’m always mindful of the weather and the living landscape. It inspires me and informs my art, but yesterday, before inspiration took over, I felt something else. I felt grateful, not just to live where we do, but for that one moment of sun on snow. As I got to the supermarket parking lot in Bennington, I realized a good practice for the new year might be to start living every day looking for those moments of gratitude.

Last week my parents visited so we could celebrate a late Christmas. We took a day to visit the Clark institute in Williamstown, Mass which is featuring an exhibit of works by William Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner. I’m a huge fan of both painters, even though the two rivals produced very different interpretations of the landscape at the same time in history. Turner is passion, informed by travel and poverty, shaped at least a little by mental illness. Constable is observation and studied precision.

I once felt that Constable’s precision reflected an intellectual detachment from the landscape, that his work lacked passion. Seeing his paintings up close again and reading more about his life and work, however, I realized that what I was seeing was a love for the landscapes that had given him joy. I realized I was seeing the work of someone who was grateful for every part of his life.

It can be hard to be grateful when all hell is breaking loose around you. But when you think your child might die, when you see someone you love in pain, when work is stressful, or when you’re doing something as ordinary as getting a car unstuck from a snow bank, focusing on the things you appreciate in your life can also be therapeutic. I know I am more determined to see those things during the crises.

But, one of the lessons of 2018 that I’m trying to take into the new year is to not save gratitude for the hard moments. As I was sitting in the car, thinking about the burst of sun that had washed over a landscape that I have learned to love, I wondered if choosing to live gratefully every single day, even if it just means recognizing the smallest of moments once a day, might yield more lessons in 2019.

OK, I Get It

So far this is been a pretty good exercise. Sure there is a leaning Tower of clothing on my side of the bed, and the Big Guy could be suffocated if he tries to go to sleep too early. But going through this pile of stuff give me a chance to understand what it means to truly feel joy from something you own.

As I’m going through the contents of my closets and drawers, I’m realizing I have a little bit of a handbag problem, more of a footwear problem than I would’ve liked to admit, and a scarf problem.

I have a collection of scarves, but I tend to wear only one or two of them over and over again. my go to winter scarf was rolled up and put back in the drawer as soon as everything was emptied. It doesn’t give me joy, but I work constantly. Then I put another piece from the pile, and I smiled instantly.

It was a piece made from antique handkerchiefs collected and assembled by my friend Maria Wulf. I saw the scarf when I was a guest artist at one of her open houses, and I remember the moment I saw it. They were pinks and greens and blues, and two of the hankies had patterns in which Paris figured prominently.

As I rolled the scarf up and put it back in the shoebox I have now designated for these items, I felt myself smiling the entire time. Suddenly I realize exactly what this process was about. It was about being mindful of the things that surround us. Some people will certainly go through this process and find a lot more items in the collections that bring them back kind of joy. I realize (and I’m not terribly surprised) that a lot of my acquisitions only brought me joy when I was acquiring them.

The donation bags are filling up, and I’m going to try to hold onto that feeling of joy so I can summon some of it when I’m next to tempted to add to the collection of things in our house.

Decluttering

I had already decided to make 2019 the year of finished projects, but I was a little unsure of where to start and how best to prioritize them.

Last night I stumbled onto a new Netflix show, Tidying Up, and, having seen reviews of the host’s books on Amazon, decided to give it a whirl. I knew that the host, Marie Kondo, made her fortune helping people de-clutter. Some of the reviews had panned her strategies as being doctrinaire and extreme, So I hit play with healthy amount of skepticism.

Ten minutes into the show I was hooked. I recognized the people she was helping—parents of children a little younger than ours. they too had started the show as skeptics, but as they begin to think their relationship with their possessions, they begin to see the beauty and the advertised joy of illuminating what doesn’t make your life better.

I listen to the show last night as I struggled to settle on an illustration style for a book I’ve been working on for too long. I played with colored pencils. I played on the iPad drawing tool. And finally I got out what worked for me at the very beginning: a number two pencil and a $10 pan of water colors. It took me an hour to redo the first drawing, and it was the first time I’d been happy with the results for this book. I’m onto the next pages, issuing methods that I “should“ be using in favor of the one that works when I’m illustrating.

Focusing on the method that brings joy worked so well, I may actually have to try it on the house. My days of being able to write about being the world‘s worst housekeeper may be coming to an end.

Calm in the Storm

One of the things this last year has drilled into me, is the need to count your blessings every day, even if there isn’t a religious bone in your body. We’ve done a lot of it, so much it may have to be a book the future. This morning, however, a mundane little crisis reminded me that this little ritual it should be done even on the days you don’t think you need to.

There’s about 5 inches of sticky snow on the ground. The phone rang at 5 AM to announce a snow day, and Thing2 and I pulled the covers over our heads to go back to our winters naps. The Big Guy had to go to work, but most of the snow had yet to fall when he left this morning. By the time I got up to the news that we needed milk and cereal, our 900 foot sloping driveway had enough fresh snow to erase any tracks he had made only a couple hours earlier.

For the first 10 years we lived in this house, we were completely off the grid, watching every watt, hanging every second scrap of underwear on the line to save energy for ourselves and “do our part“. Most of those years my big environmental sin has been the use of a small SUV that rationalized because I work at home and don’t drive that much, but I’ve always felt guilty about it.

Last year, in a concession to our maturing bodies and increasingly busy schedule, the Big Guy and I tied our house back to the grid again. We still use the solar panels and solar hot water for most things (and our solar fridge and we’ll when the power goes like it did today), but our winter has been made easier with the use of an electric dryer. I compensated for my guilt by trading in my SUV for a car with much better fuel economy last year. Most of the winter it’s pretty good, but every so often, it struggles and even fails to get out of our driveway. I’ve been stuck twice.

Today was the third time. Even before i shoveled the path, I knew I should just wait for the Big Guy to bring milk and a few other things when he gets off work. Instead I ignored common sense and went out to scrape the car. The snow had fallen on cold steel and glass, and a few quick passes of the snow shovel got all of it off. The fact that there was enough snow to dig out my car with a shovel should’ve been one more warning to stay home, but I was determined not to let the physics of snow prevail.

I started the car and after the first 20 feet, knew I wasn’t getting enough turbo or traction to make it the 900 feet upwards, but I kept my foot on the gas. I almost made it, but when I got to familiar crest, my little car growled back at me and said, “that’s it!“

“F&$”*#%!” I yelled as I got out of the car and held my foot back from kicking the tires.

I was so close, and there was so far to back down. I knew I couldn’t stay where I was. The plow guy would be by later. The Big Guy would want to come down the driveway when he got off work. So I got back in the car.

I put the car in reverse. With one foot on the gas and the other switching between the clutch and the brake, I crawled backward, inch by inch, down the driveway. Previous attempts at this exercise have landed me in one of the ditches on either side of our driveway. I am not proud to admit that my 18-year-old son is much better this than I am, but as the backup cam switched on, I realized that my 18-year-old son has one thing that I lack—calm.

We are both patient when we need to be. We both have determination, but where mine is driven by energy and stubbornness, his is sustained by a seemingly bottomless well of calmness. I have seen it over this year, watching him respond to one bad diagnosis after another with a quiet acknowledgment that his only option is to keep going. As I looked at my tracks that would be my guide back to the parking circle in the back up cam, I knew the only way to stay in those tracks was to find some of that calm that I’ve seen and my son and his father.

Calm is not my nature. I paint landscapes with emotion and energy, but rarely with linear detail. The lines of a barn or, God forbid, a city, require too much calm, They don’t allow broad strokes and stabs of a brush. Those broad careless strokes have gotten me into trouble in life — they’ve been the bad choices that came with serious consequences — but on canvas they work for me, and I’ve been embracing them lately.

As I inched my way down the drive, however, I kept bursts of energy in check. I started to look, not over the dash at where I had been, but into the monitor at where I was going. About 200 feet down, I worried I was edging too close to the ditch where I had once been stuck but, instead of yanking the steering wheel the opposite direction, I took the time to get out and see where I really was. Then I got back in and looked at where I needed to go.

Five minutes later, I realized I was back in the parking circle. I put the car in first, and moved it onto a smaller hill so our plow guy can clear the area when the snow stops. I was empty-handed but strangely peace when I got back to the mudroom, stamping off snow as I hung up my coat.

I’ m making biscuits on the wood stove for Thing2 now, counting the blessing of being at home with my boys on a winter day made beautiful by a mundane little “crisis”.

Part of me looks at the driveway and thinks, “I should give it one more try. I should look for a different car for next winter.“ The new part of me, the one that has learned to count blessings, thinks about the things I learned in that driveway just a few minutes ago. I think about the things I realized about my son and the internal calm I didn’t know I could find.