BLUE!

BLUE is...

 the James River in Richmond, Virginia on this particular day in October...

 The clear sky on a fall day at Shabo Mekaw...

The cystalline water of a Rocky Mountain lake reflecting the beautiful azure sky...

Don't Forget to Breathe...

 One of my favorite early spring flowers,

the tiny and delicate bluet...

and last but not least, this Rocky Mountain beauty...



Please visit the blogs of Jennifer Coyne Qudeen and Julie Booth, our wonderful 'Searching for RoyGBiv' hostesses, for links to lots more blue!

Inspiration Abounds + The Pulse

First of all, I want to thank my new followers; I always feel it's a great compliment when someone follows my blog. I'm grateful to have you along for the ride.

Secondly, I'm happy and honored to have my photo featured today in Chapter 4 of Still Life, part The Pulse, an ongoing online collaborative project by Seth Apter of The Altered Page.  Seth is an inspiration to me because he seems to get 10 times as much done as any other person, and still manages to be a genuinely nice guy.  I'm pretty sure that if did all that, I'd be tired and cranky!  If you haven't seen the earlier editions, please check them out as well; there have been a wonderful variety of still life photos by amazing artist-bloggers who you may not have met yet!

I've enjoyed perusing all the photos so far; it's interesting to see what they reveal about the artists.  Sometimes the photo seems to "fit" them completely; others you would never guess in a million years. And you'll find many fascinating new blogs to explore.


Inspiration can mean many things to many people.  According to Wiktionary, inspiration means:

1. The act of inspiring or breathing in.
2. breath
3. The drawing of air into the lungs, accomplished in mammals by elevation of the chest walls and flattening of the diaphragm.
4. The act or power of exercising an elevating or stimulating influence upon the intellect or emotions; the result of such influence which quickens or stimulates; as, the inspiration of occasion, of art, etc.
5. A supernatural divine influence on the prophets, apostles, or sacred writers, by which they were qualified to communicate moral or religious truth with authority; a supernatural influence which qualifies men to receive and communicate divine truth; also, the truth communicated.

 I was inspired by a visit to the blog of my friend Lynne Hoppe, who, in a couple of recent posts, featured glorious photos of some wild flowers that grow near her home in northern California.   Right now I'm referring to definition #4, though her posts are definitely also a breath of fresh air.  The flowers she posted reminded me of the astonishing beauty of similar ones I had seen in Glacier National Park, in Montana.  I live in Kentucky, so our wildflowers are completely different from those of the northwest.  (If you want to see what Kentucky wildflowers look like, I posted some photos of them here, here, here, here and here.)  Anyway, when I saw Lynne's photos, I was inspired to look at my wildflower photos from Glacier, and they made my eyes so happy, I thought, why not post them so people from all kinds of different places with all kinds of different wildflowers can see them too?  So that's what I did.  I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do.

gentian

glacier lily

indian paintbrush

bear grass and ?

 forget me not

 columbine- these we do have in Kentucky

geranium

 saxifrage?

indian paintbrush

bear grass- Can you tell it's my favorite?

 bear grass, indian paintbrush, and ?

I apologize for not having identified most of the plants; I will hopefully look them up and make an addendum in the next day or so.

Another Baby Step and More Possibilties

I've been engaged in some artistic explorations lately, in hopes of stumbling onto a new artistic path, which I discussed in more detail in a previous post. I feel like I've been hopping willy-nilly from one idea to another, but I guess that's okay for now.  Here's the result of my last couple of days of exploration.

I was just looking at some scraps I had laying around; this was a piece that I cut off the original piece that became the Buddha "Paradox" piece.  I'm not sure if that made sense, but I can't think of a better way to put it.  As I was thinking, "should I pitch this scrap or keep it?", I suddenly began to see a strange sort of landscape image in it.  So, why not?  I scribbled a bit here, liked it, and scribbled a bit there; I glued on some bits of map and other papers, and added some more color, and... a kind of semi-abstract imaginary landscape emerged.

It seems to be an amalgamation of all the ideas I've been playing with over the past year or so:  the collages made from more collage-y things (as opposed to just my monotypes); the maps from my "Traveler's Tale" series (which isn't finished yet, btw); the landscapiness from my monotype collages; and a bit more of an abstract quality.  Also, it occurs to me that my trip to the Rocky mountains last summer has impressed itself  on my subconscious more strongly than I realized; I can see the shapes of the Rockies in some of these landscape elements, for sure.

I'm intrigued, and could maybe see myself doing a series of these.  If I do, I think they would need to be larger, with more saturated colors, and perhaps pushed even more toward abstraction.  What do you think?

Rocky Mountain Memories

Some of you may recall that I took a trip to Glacier National Park last summer.  Since I came back, I think about the mountains literally every day.  I had a medical procedure done this morning, and am still pretty loopy, so I thought it might be best to just post some images from my trip.  Enjoy!

I love looking at these; what great memories!  I might do this every once in a while- I took over 500 pictures!

My Rocky Mountain experience

I returned from a vacation in Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, and surrounding areas almost a week ago, but am only now beginning to get my head back down to earth. This was my first trip to the Rockies, and it was a truly transcendent experience. I can attest that I do feel changed by the mountains, in ways that I'm unable to put into words.


In my attempts to find a way to express this, I keep coming up with phrases like "clarity of being", or "a present stillness."
I feel like the mountains are somehow in my soul, and always will be.



Even to my own ears, this sounds hokey and "new-agey", but I don't know another way to say it.





So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to thee.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge