At the tab called Works and specifically the pull down called Art. I’ve updated that page with more artwork. I’m doing more and more artwork, getting ready for something great. So I added some of my favorite pieces from the past in anticipation of that.
The kite, the spaceship and aliens, the owls, popcorn, cocoa, the cat, and an easy one – the bear with the blanket parachute?
I drew this little piece of artwork in 2020. The pet shop was created using Adobe Illustrator. It was my first project and I learned so much. The grocery store was hand drawn and colored with colored pencil. The tree and border were drawn with pen and ink, and then colored in Procreate with my Apple Pencil. The moon was from a real photograph that I took of the moon from the back deck of the log home that I lived in back then. It was a time before many unfortunate things happened in my life. I took the photograph with my Canon Mark II, 5D digital camera, on a tripod. This little project was the result of putting together every creative thing I’ve learned over my lifetime, with the exception of film and writing.
Drawing (making myself exercise discipline to be still and draw), my favorite reference book, and my Sophia.
My ear, using a mirror rather than a photo or my phone. Staying “alpha”.
Lessons in Classical Drawing (Essential Techniques From Inside the Atelier) by Juliette Aristides
This was the first reference book I read cover to cover. When I purchased it, I figured it would be helpful in going beyond where I was with drawing. It turned out to be a world-changer. Its now full of stickies and notes.
She will always be my friend. She participates in our life together. Chasing my shadow. Sitting on my art desk, beside me, and stroking my hair to ask for grooming. Pulling my hand to her so I’ll talk to her or pet her as she falls asleep. Going around a corner and seeing her there, her head cocked to one side. Greeting me at the door when I come home from wherever. Watching her play with her toys and finding them all over the house after I’ve picked them up. She’s awesome.
Dwayne Walker, in his YouTube video entitled “Where Does Art Come From” tells us that art has the power to capture moments and while time erases and diminishes, art saves and preserves. Time tries to wash things away. We make art because it lets us time travel. Art is a portal, allowing us to speed across time, documenting our presence right here and now, for then…proving we were here. Dwayne tells us that art is how we build a bridge between every version of ourselves. He says we make art because something sacred happens when we do. We make art because our soul has to. My final note from his video is where the title of this post comes from. The world needs more memory keepers.
Those are my favorite parts of the video. Dwayne puts words to what I’ve been unable to describe for over sixty years.
My daughter and I call ourselves memory keepers. We thought we were the ones to invent the term, but not so. There are many memory keepers in the world. We are artists, writers, musicians — creatives.
I’m writing about this because I’ve been feeling quite blue lately. A lot of things are weighing on my heart. To make things worse, I’ve been feeling like my ability to do art is gone. It’s as if all the years of creating art were just a dream. Yet when I think of what Diego Montoya said about going back to the beginning, I find myself thinking back to my childhood – to when I was ten and discovered the wonder of writing and art.
Here I am, seventy years old, trying to reclaim that wonder, to see if it could rekindle a fire within me and shed light on the truth that the things hurting my heart of hearts aren’t bigger or truer than the fact that I’m going to be just fine. I’m looking at the world around me like a child, seeing it as if for the very first time. It feels like I’m learning to draw all over again, because drawing starts with “seeing”. Not looking. Really seeing. I’ve taught that in classes so many times and I believed it. I must have been seeing or I wouldn’t have been able to render things correctly. Yet I was teaching about seeing with my eyes. Now I’m learning to see with my eyes AND my heart and maybe even a childlike imagination. This time I want what I draw to have heart and soul in it – to have meaning. I’m doing the work for myself this time and doing it just to enjoy the doing of it.
It started the other day when I drew the circle piece that is at the top of my previous post. I used colored pencils on watercolor paper, wanting to see what colored pencil looked like on that very textured paper. If I’d used watercolor paint, it would have had a completely different look.
A while back I drew a cube. I tucked it away for several weeks. When I came across it yesterday, I laid it out on the desk, looking at it all morning, wondering what I could do with it. Also on my desk was a rubber band wrapped around three colored pencils from the previous circle project. Hm, I thought. What could I do with them? Why worry about ruining the carefully sketched cube? Just do it. I set about filling in the cube with the two yellows and one violet. The paper was Marker paper and had a very smooth texture. I loved the way it felt, softly putting colored pencil layers on that paper. It was a new style of drawing and coloring for me.
Working on the cube transported me up and away from my worries and made me feel more like the child I was long ago. It let me exist in the moment and that moment lasted as long as I wanted.
Here then, is the cube.
I’ve been unsuccessful in my attempts to find a job. At first I hoped to find something where I get to sit down (after my last assignment where I stood and walked between 8,000 and 18,000 steps a day). Now I’m just hoping for a job, period. Applying for pretty much anything. I have so much experience in finance and budget, spreadsheets, databases, analysis, etc. I’ve owned my own company. I’ve been a manager, a supervisor, the boss, and also the lowest ranking. Yet I don’t have what it takes to get a real-life job. I don’t know Quickbooks or any of the new systems. I’m seventy years old, living in a place where I know only a couple of people. Family is far away. I chose this place because it’s warm in winter. I have a history of accidents, when driving on snow and ice and would be afraid to leave the house, which would be so awful.
What do I do well? Hands down, I do art. Art has given my life meaning even when there was nothing else. It has given me purpose. For the past year, I’ve lost that meaning and that purpose. I’ve made decisions that seemed absolutely right and then had horrible consequences. I’ve come to doubt myself. In everything.
It makes me so sad, this place I’ve come to be, in my life. At seventy I sure never would have believed this would be what it’s like. Of course, I’m working at accepting that and stepping away from the conversations I’ve had with myself about where I wish I were, where I was, and who I lost.
What hurts the most is that I have so much to give. So much to offer. I’m compassionate and kind. I give away smiles as often as I can, because they’re free and they make such a difference. I believe in God and am so thankful that he gave his son, such a huge sacrifice, for one such as me. Me, the mistake maker.
My life is no longer about forever homes and close family, but is about finding a way to be alone, but independent, and to let go of everything I knew. I have to forget about what was, because if I don’t it takes me down, down, down, into a pit that gets harder and harder to climb out of.
Art, something that has been with me nearly my entire life, is where I find rest and solitude. Spending time with art makes me feel like maybe God is really right here. After all, he is the great creator. He speaks “create”. When I create, it feels like I’m speaking it, too. Like God and I are sharing it. Speaking the same language.
Wow! I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it. I am the same me as I’ve always been. I do have more aches and pains as time passes, but I’m essentially the same on the inside. I can see myself at seven years old sitting on a pile of gravel, my knobby knees and long skinny legs on either side of a cement block – my grinding table. With a tiny cardboard box that might have held a necklace or bracelet long ago, and a flat stone for grinding, I spent the summer turning small granular, sparkly stones into “gold dust”. I was going to grind enough little stones to fill my sandbox. I didn’t get enough dust to fill the little box, much less a sandbox. That didn’t really matter. It didn’t upset me or make me give up. It was the doing of the thing that made me feel so great. So focused. My family life was a disaster, but while I sat on that pile of stones, nothing else existed.
I turned sixty a month after my mom passed away. I was an orphan. It was something that hit me on the head. I don’t know if a realization hitting one on the head can do brain damage, but I’ve never been the same since. I’m not damaged, but most assuredly I’m different. It was as if I woke from a deep sleep. Maybe you’ve heard the expression “I’ve had a day”. For me it was “I’ve had a decade”. I saw some things I didn’t want to see and had to face some things I didn’t want to face. And here I am. Seventy.
For the past three or four years I’ve thought I couldn’t do art anymore. Not that I didn’t want to. I just felt like whatever ability I’d had was absolutely, positively gone. Wrung out of me like dish water out of a rag. Art was my purpose. Losing my ability to do art meant I’d lost my purpose. According to Victor Frankl, in his book Man’s Search For Meaning, those who have no purpose, no meaning, die. And so I was prepared to die.
Tonight I watched a couple of videos on YouTube about not being able to paint and on not being able to finish a painting/creation. It was quite a wake-up call for me. One person spoke of the inability to paint as being part of a story – the story of your life. She called her viewers/followers to think about what the plot for their life might be. Hm. I had to think about that. In fact, I’m still thinking about it. I want to figure it out, because the fact that she described it all so very well made me want to understand and benefit from her words. She spoke of how we are the heroine and perhaps the protagonist at the same time. She talked about the parts of all stories. There must be a conflict phase. Perhaps when an artist thinks they can no longer paint it’s just the conflict part of their story. She went on to say that characters do the most growing during the conflict. I felt a spark of hope at that.
I realize that I’m mixing tenses in my story here. This tiny little bit of story. I don’t care. It’s mine to tell and I’m renting this bit of internet space to tell it. Leave a comment if it bothers you more than necessary.
Okay. I’m in the conflict phase of my life. I’ve been divorced four years and its been four years of relief, total abandon (in a good way), going into debt (not a good thing), making good decisions and bad decisions, all of which may well be necessary in the larger picture. As my very good friend, Terri, just told me, if all the recent bad stuff hadn’t happened, we never would have met. More about that later.
Talked of giving up on art/writing/etc. Many famous people gave up on projects. DaVinci, for example. Mozart. The Greats! Not all things get finished. Selling one’s work validates the creative. What, of ourselves, we put into our work is what people spend their hard earned money to purchase. That feels good. Something you say with paint or words or music and the way you say it strikes a chord with the purchaser. They’ll hang that story on their wall for a long time, hopefully. When our work doesn’t sell, it fills us with doubt. For me, it was the act of deciding to return to traveling about in a camper, wanting to live a simpler and less expensive life. There would be no room for all of my unsold, but much loved works of art and I wasn’t going to rent a storage unit and have them bake to death in there. So I unframed them all, stuffed them into a leather portfolio, and threw the frames into the dumpster. From then on, I would confine my work to small projects that could endure in a camper and probably never be seen by anyone but me.
The man in the video said the first part of our life is outward, when we’re focusing on jobs, growing our lives and having families. The second part is the inward part, when we focus on ourselves.
In the newest video in the “Reflections of Life” series, on YouTube, the man being interviewed said that when you’re alone, doing things alone, your critical voice is louder. So true! “AMEN!” I wanted to shout. In the last couple of centuries, civilization has taken upon itself, change at a ludicrous speed. We went from the pony express to mail sent by jet. Perhaps soon, it’ll be mail sent by spacecraft or teleporter. Civilization is hurtling towards a precipice with no slowing down. Maybe all that change is bad, but maybe it’s good. We won’t know until we fling ourselves over the edge.
The past three years have given me pause. Time to reflect, to be mindful of the moments instead of the days. I’ve had lots of time to do so. My life in a small camper was nothing like life in a 6,000 square foot log home. I could clean my entire dwelling in minutes. I had everything I owned with me in that little space. If I bought something new, something else had to go. No alarm clock was needed. Dinner could be eaten at any hour. My path was like the path of an ant on fine dirt. All criss-crossing and seeming destination-less. Folks came and went in my life – sometimes for a day, sometimes for a season. It was a season and a day made up of moments. Moments lived and experienced slowly and deliciously. It was like getting to eat fine French pastries for every meal.
That something happened in late October 2024 and nothing has been the same since. That’s a story for another day. The only thing that matters is where I am now. I’m seventy and I’m still me, but my feet are on a path I didn’t foresee. We shall see.
I dreamed of becoming a great artist, but it was not to be. Yes, I am an artist and will always be, but a quiet artist who just had to make art, with all my heart.
I think God was the first artist. The first creator. He sculpted the hills and mountains, the valleys and river beds. He hung clouds, galaxies and the universe above for our delight. When I create art, I feel like I’m speaking God’s native tongue and like he’s there beside me, ready to give a high five. In fact, it’s like he’s there beside me, watching my heart be poured onto the paper or canvas and he’s smiling and saying, in his own creative way, “well done”. His smile is like a hug. Creating is a language. It’s the words between the lines. It gives us glimpses of something deep in our hearts.
When someone smiles at me, I’m like a puppy who’s tail wags so fast its like an airplane propeller, whirring into a blur. Oh, to be seen.
I’ve slowed, nearly to a stop, in my ambitions, but not in my purpose. I give away smiles.
Imagine yourself under that sheet, using a flashlight to do whatever your heart desires. Do you feel clever for finding a place of your very own, even if simply underneath a sheet in the middle of the night? What would you do in that secret place? Read a good book? Write in your diary? Its a secret place and its all yours.
My flashlight is really just my favorite lamp. My sheet is actually a small camper and my kitty, Sophia, is here, too. Oh, I almost forgot about Vector. He’s the little robot on the table. Vector and Sophia – best buds, right?
So what am I going to do under the sheet, by flashlight? I’m going to do art. Lots and lots of art. I have two months here under this sheet. Lets see what I can create.
The other part of the next two months is to use social media to get word out to the world about my stickers and other graphics. Can you help me with that? Let people hear what you think of my work. Point people to where they can find it. My Red Bubble shop for now.
Just in case you forgot where my shop is, I’ll put the link on the next line.
There’s a link to my Red Bubble shop in the menu above. I’m not finished. There’s much more to upload there. In fact, it’s going to be an on-going project to create more and more art for my shop.
After getting my Red Bubble shop operating well is to let people all over know about my work and to put my work on more locations. It’ll take time.
However, this time around I’m letting my art be fun. I need to earn some extra money and getting a minimum wage job somewhere is not my choice, but I know it will take a combination of doing art and having a job somewhere. Until I get to Yuma, looking for a job is not possible. At least it doesn’t seem so.
Having fun with art is so freeing. I think I was a slave to trying to paint things for galleries and sure-sells. So lets wish upon a star, eh?
Sets of stickers are created and ready. I’m looking at digital sales so people can purchase sticker sheets and print them on their own printer with their own choice of paper. I’m also looking at printing them on the Canon Pixma Pro-100, which prints with pigment rather than inks.