Scenes From My Travels (and a plug for some very special “Performance Art”)

Gargoyle overlooking the solarium pool on Adventure of the Seas

I returned from my cruise through the Southern Caribbean last week just in time to get back to the reality of a full week of work. No complaints from me, though. We had a wonderful time: travelling with good friends; celebrating Valentine’s Day in San Juan, Puerto Rico; great ports of call (Aruba-though it poured!-, Curacao, St. Martin and St. Thomas) to safe and smooth flights to and from and a chance to escape the cold and snow. I was lucky have the chance to go so I won’t grumble about being back.

Promanade Sketches on board during a rainy stop in Orangestaad, Aruba

I have gotten a bit better about taking and actually using my sketch book when I travel. So here are a few thumbnails from the voyage and we have a great many wonderful photos as well.

I look forward to my next vacation break at home with a chance to re-organize the studio and start some Caribbean- flavored paintings from the trip.

Bikini Beach, St. Martin

On an unrelated, but time-sensitive, note I want to let everyone know about a bit of local “performance art” taking place this week for a very good cause. As was covered in the Cape Cod Times earlier this week, the Harwich Fire Department, their extended brotherhood and the local community of Harwich have been banding together to raise funds for one of our own, Robert Johnson, a long-time Harwich fire fighter who is fighting his own battle against a brain tumor now.

My husband Richard, a local Realtor http//:www.waystack.com issued a challenge that he would shave his head bald if they could raise an

Even Richard Simmons couldn't resist him with hair. Who will still love him after Bald for Bobby Friday?

additional $2000 for it to be done.He either has a lot of friends or a lot of enemies in town—-I’m not sure which. But the end result is he’s taking it all off on Friday, March 6 at noon, downtown inHarwich Port in front of his office. I’ve assured him I will still love him, though I will love him more when his hair, no matter how prematurely gray it is, grows back!

For more information on this and other events for this very worthy cause you can check out the Friends of Bobby J page on Facebook.

This link is so long it probably directly here. Go to Facebook and search for Friends of Bobby J. It’s well worth your time and effort.

http://www.facebook.com/s.php?init=q&q=Friend+of+Bobby+J&ref=ts&sid=11fda777d26e88fe429df16f271dcecb

Tropical Dreams

His Favorite Place, pastel 16" x 20"

I am very fortunate that in less than 24 hours (yes a 2 AM departure time) I am heading to the airport and a flight to Puerto Rico. I will be cruising the southern Caribbean for the next 7 days and nights so this will the the only post for more than a week.

I recently purchased a yummy set of Unison Pastels that are the Tropical Ocean collection of colors. I also bought the polar ocean set but let’s not think about that now.

I had the beginnings of a painting sketched out on the easel right which I started last summer without the

On the drawing board

new pastels. But I will be bringing home fresh inspirations from this trip during the cold New England weather. So once I have completed “re-entry” I’ll start working out some glimpses of paradise to help me through till the summer.  I’ll be back and posting sometime soon after my return.  Till then stay warm wherever you are, fix yourself a Magarita or pina colada and put on your Hawaiian shirt and some Jimmy Buffet.   Imagine yourself under a rustling palm at sunset and you can be there in spirit if not reality.

Reflecting on Creativity and the Spirit Within

A busy week and weekend has all but come to a close and I hadn’t gotten around to this week’s post. Yes, I am revising my goal now to be one per week. I made a commitment to do 2 a week for 30 days as recommended in The Huffington Post Guide to Blogging which inspired my New Year’s resolution. But I knew from the start that I will be a better blogger if I have one a week and have been slowly dropping into that pattern.

So sometime over the weekends I will get one out and can be fairly sure to be consistent that way, which is the most important thing for anyone who may be interested in reading and following.

This is a “quickie” after another weekend of work on the condo project and another week of teaching looming ahead.

I have been working on my spiritual direction as the new year began as well as my blogging. I had a couple of very insightful conversations regarding painting as a prayerful, meditative process and the concept of being co-creators with our Higher Power/God -however one may acknowlege it. (By the way, if you are an atheist, please feel free to ignore or disregard these thoughts but don’t bother to respond to tell me I have no right to them.)

Some of the best work I do comes seemingly without effort on my part and is undoubtably the spirit working through me… when I remember to let it. Below is an example, a figure that I painting last June in a life drawing session. Every time I see it, it stills fills me with excitement and pleases me so much. It came together so much easier than so many of my works do. I can honestly say it is one of my best, and not out of any conceit. In fact most of the time I am rather critical and unsure of my own work. I think many artists share this but it is a painful and perplexing conundrum. Why do we feel compelled to do this and why? Maybe I just need to do more often what I feel I must and “let go and let God” as they say. The best seems to come through me when I relinquish control and open up to the grace within.

I have been reading a new novel (seems I read more than I paint, doesn’t it? That may well be true). I have had a habit for more than a year now of collecting quotes about art that I find inspiring or moving in some way. Here is one from The Miracles of Prato about Fra Filippo Lippi, the Renaissance monk and painter:

God made the world so beautiful. There’s no shame in finding the world beautiful, and celebrating that beauty.”….The holiest of men have known this world is a speculum majus, a mirror of the Lord’s kingdom. The beauty we find here and the beauty we make here pleases God, for it makes our world closer to His.”

Attributed to Fra Filippo Lippi in The Miracles of Prato

"Il Dolce Far Niente", pastel by Bernadette C. Wastack