Category: Paintings

Art, Collage, Paintings

Blue Horizons

Shelly

A Book of Vessels: Blue Horizons
Blue Horizons

A Book of Vessels: Cave
Cave

I had to use Flickr again. I like how easy it is to upload and manage images, but I’m not happy with the thumbnails it generates. They’re a little too small, I think. I prefer 120 pixels instead of 100. Hrmph. So, I decided to use the next larger size as thumbnails. (Yes, I really do obsess about these sorts of things!) Anyway… Both of these collages are destined for the Vessels book I’m working on.

Blue Horizons: As always, I turned to Mr. Dictionary to see if there was anything I was overlooking. One definition given for “horizon” is “The limit of the theoretically possible universe.” I like that. It speaks to exploration and a potential to be fulfilled.

Cave: This image came from a scenic/touisty type magazine. I tore it into vertical slivers, then inked the margins (my hands are still stained black) and used a Q-tip soaked with ink to color between the torn pieces. I like the way the vertical black lines echo the errosion lines in the rock face.

In mythology, caves are places where the underworld and the real world meet. The cave, like the cauldron, cup, and chalice, also echos the womb. It is the place from which things are born.

A Book of Vessels: Conceiving the Plan
Conceiving the Plan

This is a piece in progress. I’m not happy with the way it turned out (watercolors drive me insane), so I’m probably going to either use the painting in a collage or collage over parts of the painting. We’ll see.

Art, Paintings, Poetry

Happy I Found and Finished the Sky

Shelly

Happy I Found and Finished the Sky
Happy I Found and Finished the Sky
acrylic and Faber-Castell Pitt pen in composition book journal

Happy I found
and finished the sky
cleared up as I
have been toying around with
the spine
I swear counting backwards
in control of the wind
I was named after him
hidden and harder than anything.

Spent an hour down
with the dogs
all underfoot and more
from the digging
half a red letter tall
a storm day of woe
when it is warm
leave the baker alone
the same hope does not seem to keep us.

I’ve been dwelling too much on the weather. I saw a glimpse of sun as I drove home this afternoon and it made me think of optimism and expectations, which made me think of the story of Pandora and her jar of woe, which made me think of the dual nature of hope. How hope can inspire both dreams and nightmares.

Art, Paintings

Radish

Shelly

Radish

I went to the grocery store Saturday morning and bought a cartful of veggies. Babbs has the yummiest veggies. (Though the cashier was confounded by my sack of fresh brussels sprouts. “What are those?” she asked.) Their radishes are especially good–crisp and sweet and slightly sharp, without the excessive bite that radishes can get. Oh yes, and a hint of garlic, too.

I washed and halved a baggie of them to bring to work today, so I’d have something to snack on. I overestimated as I was pulling them off the greens, so it’s a very large baggie of radishes. I was distracted by the dogs underfoot; it never fails to amuse me as they snatch the flung roots and tops and gobble them up. I’ve trained them well to intercept random veggie missiles.

Anyway, I’m enjoying my little late-morning snack.