Sunflower and Company

Hello folks. I am sharing this pastel today with you because it is the first painting I have done in quite some time. As I posted before, I have been assisting my husband in his chemotherapy. The good news is that he only has two more treatments and he's finished. The bad news is - there isn't any!!

This sunflower represents summer to me. This year the dawn of summer will mean so much. More than spring even because even though there is a gorgeous daffodil blooming at the side of my house, the temperatures during the day are still cool as if winter just won't let go. I think we can make the analogy of winter with bad times. Often when situations in our lives start to get better, it seems as if there are still reminders here and there that can pull us down again. It is as if the bad time won't let go. I have no advice concerning how to cope with such. There are a lot of cliches out there like: think positive, or have faith, or just put one foot in front of the other. These suggestions are good but on a deep level, we just plain want it over. Well, I just want some stuff in my life over and I want summer to come and to ride down the highway and watch the heads of sunflowers bend in the breeze. I want to roll down the window and feel the heat and even get sweaty because it will mean that summer is here and winter has let go. Thanks for listening.

Windblown

Good morning. This pastel painting is a new experience for me. I decided to try to paint loosely and without a lot of detail. It reminds me of a sunflower blowing in the wind but the colors are not those usually associated with sunflowers. Sometimes it is freeing to do something no one expects from us, isn't it?

Bucket Of Summer

Good morning. This is an oil painting I did of hydrangeas. As you know, the pH of the soil determines to a great extent the colors of hygrandeas. Acid, alkaline, or a mixture of both can produce the deepest or the softest pinks, blues, purples and whites. They are all beautiful in their own way. Just like people and their various shades and hues, right? I'm on the lookout for beauty today, how about you?

Home Place

Good morning. This watercolor is of my ideal house. It speaks to me of family, summer, picnics, grandmothers and grandfathers, and of Southern women who always have the prefix "Miss" before their first name, like "Miss Ada." In the lazy Southern town where I spent a lot of my childhood, homes resembling this were abundant and behind every front door was an entry, a parlor and a "Miss Somebody." On Sunday afternoons, it was the custom of my grandmother and my aunts to go and visit these sweet ladies. More often than not, they were widows. It was tough for a ten year old little girl to sit perfectly still on the settee while the ladies exchanged cares, woes, and gentle laughter. I took in all the doillies, figurines and oval sepia tinted family portraits. Once in a while I had to recite a poem or some quotation I had learned at school. There was no escape. But, now that I've come to a place in my life where the children down the street call me "Miss Morna", I very much wish I had the house to go with the title.

SUMMER SAIL

Summer is here! It brings with it all the freedom and space a person longs for during the winter. Winter asks us to stay close to home, to huddle for warmth within our four walls, to meet the day in darkness, to end the day in darkness, long before we've had enough time with the sun. We draw into ourselves, we ponder too much and we have longings that we can't even identify. In my case, I am longing for bright days with hot sun, mornings when the sun awakens me and long, lazy afternoons that slip slowly into twilight. In Tidewater, we are surrounded by water and the opportunity to sail, surf and tan by the ocean, rivers and creeks. I am grateful for summer this year, ending a long period of recuperation from heart surgery. I am uplifted by the light. Thanks for tuning in.

Painted Shack

Sometimes it can be engaging to paint things not as they are, but as you'd like them to be. This pastel/watercolor painting is an example of my muse running wild. This old shack, sitting on the edge of town, takes on a new personality when rendered in bright colors. It seems peaceful in spite of the lovely colors. To paraphrase a line from a song in My Fair Lady, "all I want is a room somewhere." A room, a shack, my room, my shack. "Wouldn't it be loverly?" Thanks for tuning in. What would your shack look like?