William James said....

"Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit."   ----William James

Buddha said....

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change."   ----Buddha

From Art and Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland

"Making art means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt & contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither audience nor reward. Making the work you want to make means setting aside these doubts so that you may see clearly what you have done, and thereby see where to go next. Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself."

Sweet Sheila

My friend Steve adopted Sheila, who is a total sweetheart. Her coat is like gray velvet, and I really struggled to try to capture that in paint. I think this is the best I can get it.

Lillian Hellman said....

"Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called 'pentimento' because the painter 'repented,' changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again."
                        -from the introduction to Lillian Hellman's Pentimento

Watercolor sketch

Two days ago, I experimented with painting in watercolor in my sketchbook after first putting down a layer of white gesso. I did this in order to smooth out the surface of the handmade paper a bit. I used my small travel watercolor kit while at the library to paint this picture of Armstrong Woods Park. I had been there with my wife the previous evening to watch the sunset. As we drove away, we saw the moon in the distance.