(Morning meditation. Just watching the sky. Those dark clouds slowly and silently, resoundingly move in. So many volumes of darkness and light, shapeshifting, turning over and under and over again and again. Darkness is naturally part of the light, part of the most calm, intelligent, sunny sky. The mind is like this, too.)
(I used this picture a while ago in my blog #413, but didn’t say anything about the picture itself. It is one of my paintings, 12 x 9” in Gouache. It has two titles: the original one, “Chinese Checker,” and a more recent one, “Autobiography: A Middle Age Story.”
Late in my 40’s, I began making and showing my art—drawing, painting, origami. In my 50’s, I made a career as a figurative model working for artists in different settings—colleges, art centers, and private studios. I loved it. Somewhere along there I also began to study classical guitar. I started out great and then hit a wall. After a fling with my teacher, I sought out a different teacher. Again, I hit that wall! So I gave it up. In this painting, the light and dark rectangle in the center is my face with a red bandana on top. And the fan—well, in Chinese culture folding fans have traditionally been seen as symbols of wealth and wisdom, neither of which I can claim, though I like the thought.
I’m posting this picture now on the occasion of my painting being accepted in a juried art show featuring works by Philadelphia area painters. This makes me happy, and I’m sharing it here because happiness, as with most things, feels all the greater when shared with others.)