Here are a few sketches of faces from some drawing sessions earlier this year... I constantly am trying to improve and capture a moment in time....
And below, here is one that I painted on a small 5"x7" hard canvas... mixed media.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Faces, Sketches, and Drawing Practice
Faces, faces everywhere, all so interesting, all carrying a story...
Here are a few sketches of faces from some drawing sessions earlier this year... I constantly am trying to improve and capture a moment in time....
And below, here is one that I painted on a small 5"x7" hard canvas... mixed media.
Here are a few sketches of faces from some drawing sessions earlier this year... I constantly am trying to improve and capture a moment in time....And below, here is one that I painted on a small 5"x7" hard canvas... mixed media.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Paintings, Color, and Spring
"Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me forever... Color and I are one. I am a painter." Paul Klee
Delorse Lovelady 2010 "Oh, Give Me Color Today!" 4x6 acrylicI have managed to do some small paintings to enter into a local juried miniatures show, the Edmonds Art Fair that is held every year in June. I won't know til May if any of the four I am submitting will be accepted.
The top one is inspired by our yearly trek to the Skagit Valley tulip fields where we usually enjoy viewing the farmlands, beautiful vista's and sometimes, snow geese. I used my imagination this time, didn't feel like pulling out reference photos. We won't be able to go this year as April is slipping away and other plans are brewing, so here is my tribute to the colorful tulips and springtime in the Valley. However, I am enjoying the many tulips and other flowers blooming in our yard... so lovely...
The second painting is another imagination painting.... I was thinking about the distance, viewing something in the far distance, a panorama. Though not quite a desert scene (or maybe it could be?), I thought of Georgia O'Keeffe and her fascination and love of the desert, what she called the "faraway"... "a beautiful, untouched lonely feeling place", of infinite beauty and space... a place I enter in my mind sometimes in a painting like this one.
Delorse Lovelady 2010 "Somewhere in the Far Away" 4x6 AcrylicI was disappointed that we didn't make it to the Death Valley desert as intended in March, however, instead we went on a wonderful road trip in Oregon I will soon post about...
"Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. " Rabindranath Tagore
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
An Exotic Bird, Jubilación, and Granny D
"You have to keep the young adventurer inside your heart alive long enough for it to someday re-emerge.... Granny D
It may take some coaxing and some courage, but that person is in you always -- never growing old." Granny D
An Exotic Bird
"For me, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, or for flowers or beast or bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly and perfectly alive." Al Purdy
We happened upon the wonderful parrot in the pictures on a stroll in a Portland park in July 2008. He was perched on his owner's shoulder. I have to wonder who owns who... Aren't we the ones captured by the wildness, that exotic beauty, the sumptuous colors? I couldn't resist taking several photographs. This one is for my current photoartjournal project on birds.
I will soon share more photos from a more recent trip I have been on... meanwhile...
Jubilación
I just passed my 6th anniversary of being "retired". It's hard to imagine it's been that long ago already. First let me say, I detest the words "retired" and "retirement" as they have a connotation, if not a stereotype, that seem to conjure up images of settling into a rocker for the final few days. Not that anything is wrong with sitting in a rocker, it just always seemed to me that it used to mean that life was almost over, and in our culture, you might become one of the invisible folks, the aging, that are not as revered as the youth culture.
Anyway, I happened upon the word for retirement in Spanish - it is "jubilación" -- jubilation!!! Jubilation in the English dictionary means: a feeling of or the expression of joy or exultation or shouting for joy. What a wonderful word to describe the next phase of life after work. Because, in many cases, I'm sure, people didn't do for a career what their "purpose" called them to do, but instead, perhaps as I did, fell into their line of work by accident or as a practical matter of making a living. So leaving and entering the next stage may be with some jubilación, as you become freed to do more of whatever your heart desires.
But, as with any change in life there is what I call the "land of in-between" where you have one foot in the past and one stepping forward into the unknown. I remember vividly my last work day having stayed late to "finish" things up, feel that completion, while everyone else had gone home. I had the card key pass that I left for a manager on her chair, then hesitated as I walked out the door for the last time without the key, knowing I would never go back in. I was closing the door on that world, a thirty-four year career, and walking into an unknown world.
There is that one moment of trusting the momentum of the step forward, and releasing the energy in the foot stuck in the past that propels you into the new. And suddenly, in a step, a blink... life is different. And you might wonder why you resisted at all. And you might realize that there you are, everything you were and are, is still there, the adventurer, the artist, the person with experiences that have prepared you with tools, still there. New and different, but still the same after all... we are such paradoxes. And that land of in-between is always with us as we shapeshift from one phase of life to another...
Granny D
Here's an interesting life story of "Granny D" who just passed on at 100, what an inspiring woman. I read about Doris Haddock a couple of years ago and was so impressed. She walked 3200 miles across the country at 89 years of age just to make a point, stand up for her beliefs and educate people along the way about campaign finance reform. And she even ran for the Senate at 94. Her autobiography, written with Dennis Burke, is being republished soon, "My Bohemian Century" with the subtitle "You're Never Too Old to Raise a Little Hell." Don't you just love that? It's on my list to read. And, we are SO, never TOO old if we stay awake to our possibilities........
Here's a You-Tube about her; copyright the Boston Globe and filmmakers:
And another; copyright Arts Alliance America and filmmakers:
It may take some coaxing and some courage, but that person is in you always -- never growing old." Granny DAn Exotic Bird
"For me, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, or for flowers or beast or bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly and perfectly alive." Al Purdy
We happened upon the wonderful parrot in the pictures on a stroll in a Portland park in July 2008. He was perched on his owner's shoulder. I have to wonder who owns who... Aren't we the ones captured by the wildness, that exotic beauty, the sumptuous colors? I couldn't resist taking several photographs. This one is for my current photoartjournal project on birds.
I will soon share more photos from a more recent trip I have been on... meanwhile...
Jubilación
I just passed my 6th anniversary of being "retired". It's hard to imagine it's been that long ago already. First let me say, I detest the words "retired" and "retirement" as they have a connotation, if not a stereotype, that seem to conjure up images of settling into a rocker for the final few days. Not that anything is wrong with sitting in a rocker, it just always seemed to me that it used to mean that life was almost over, and in our culture, you might become one of the invisible folks, the aging, that are not as revered as the youth culture.
Anyway, I happened upon the word for retirement in Spanish - it is "jubilación" -- jubilation!!! Jubilation in the English dictionary means: a feeling of or the expression of joy or exultation or shouting for joy. What a wonderful word to describe the next phase of life after work. Because, in many cases, I'm sure, people didn't do for a career what their "purpose" called them to do, but instead, perhaps as I did, fell into their line of work by accident or as a practical matter of making a living. So leaving and entering the next stage may be with some jubilación, as you become freed to do more of whatever your heart desires.
But, as with any change in life there is what I call the "land of in-between" where you have one foot in the past and one stepping forward into the unknown. I remember vividly my last work day having stayed late to "finish" things up, feel that completion, while everyone else had gone home. I had the card key pass that I left for a manager on her chair, then hesitated as I walked out the door for the last time without the key, knowing I would never go back in. I was closing the door on that world, a thirty-four year career, and walking into an unknown world.
There is that one moment of trusting the momentum of the step forward, and releasing the energy in the foot stuck in the past that propels you into the new. And suddenly, in a step, a blink... life is different. And you might wonder why you resisted at all. And you might realize that there you are, everything you were and are, is still there, the adventurer, the artist, the person with experiences that have prepared you with tools, still there. New and different, but still the same after all... we are such paradoxes. And that land of in-between is always with us as we shapeshift from one phase of life to another...
Granny DHere's an interesting life story of "Granny D" who just passed on at 100, what an inspiring woman. I read about Doris Haddock a couple of years ago and was so impressed. She walked 3200 miles across the country at 89 years of age just to make a point, stand up for her beliefs and educate people along the way about campaign finance reform. And she even ran for the Senate at 94. Her autobiography, written with Dennis Burke, is being republished soon, "My Bohemian Century" with the subtitle "You're Never Too Old to Raise a Little Hell." Don't you just love that? It's on my list to read. And, we are SO, never TOO old if we stay awake to our possibilities........
Here's a You-Tube about her; copyright the Boston Globe and filmmakers:
And another; copyright Arts Alliance America and filmmakers:
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