While the artist recovers from a marathon of expressive portraits (and plays hooky in the forest for a day or two), please enjoy a visual recap of last month's artistic journey.  

And while you are gazing, consider this:

​Where the scientist asks what equation would best describe the trajectory of an airborne rock, the artist asks what it would feel like to throw one."  - David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art and Fear

Cabellut's artistic courage double-dog-dares me to be bolder in my pursuit of capturing emotion, while Whyte's words triple-dare-me to be courageous in love.  And it's only Monday. :)

Outside the context of the poem, the phrase is a reassuring mantra of strength and abundance to this leo woman, who sometimes needs reminders of her own ability to independently survive (and even thrive)  during turbulent times.  

When I put is lion, is fed back into the context of the poem, it reminds me of the wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh, who teaches us we are not separate from any other thing in the world.  We are the lion, we are the eland, we are each other.   It was announced earlier this week that Nhat Hanh, nearly 94 years old, has stopped eating and is preparing to depart.  He, like the eland, becomes part of something else, and yet he, like us, was always a part of everything.  Even you.  Even me.  There is comfort there.

And, of course, it was week two of the Expressive Portraits course with Pauline Agnew, so feelings and paint became fodder for faces.  In this particular piece, don't adjust your glasses or your computer settings - it is intentionally blurred.  The requisite 80 million layers of paint, with several of the wet layers pulled left to right, up and down with a squeegee and a rubber wedge to draaaaaaaaaag the image into a slightly blurred perspective.   Which has kind of been my perspective all week!  So life imitating art imitating life.  Whoa!

And now to the quote, which leapt out at me from an online essay.  I've been spending some time contemplating past wounds and how they can create a space of fear, hesitation and guardedness.  On the one hand, this is an instinctive protective measure when we've been hurt (for example, stoves are hot!  Don't touch, silly!)   But when the heart has been hurt (my heart, in this case), that same instinct can find us hiding in a space of isolation and withdrawal rather than a wild, brave existence in a swashbuckling world of trust in our own resilience and in the basic goodness of the universe.  The quote put a spotlight for me on something else that I hadn't considered - the "glass of our past" can also hurt others, taking that pain and bringing it forward and casting it out into the world again.  Whoa, Nellie!   Something to noodle on as I polish my scabbard and prepare for a renewed effort at swashbuckling. :)

When I think of all the new ways of doing things we've all developed in the last six months or so, my mind is a bit gobsmacked.  I mean, how many things CAN I have delivered instead of going to the store?  And how many new paths have I walked to find the road less traveled and thus less populated with potential COVID carriers? What about how we have begun to utilize technology for socializing in a serious way?  Or how we've developed NASA caliber questionnaires to determine if another human can come into our personal bubbles?  And dating in a COVID world is a particular maze of brain challenge that I get lost in and meander through.  Send cookies and tea.

I'm thinking we are all going to have the healthiest brains in the history of brains.  And if I keep thinking like that, the art just might get even  more peculiar as this pandemic rolls on. :)