Painting: Rural Free Delivery

This is an oil painting on a small canvas board.   This painting hung around for a year because I couldn't figure out how to finish it.

Below are earlier versions of it.  I have this debate with every picture:  when do I stop? Things are lost and others gained. Perhaps I am over painting them.

Painting: Busy No 1 - Cat Dreams, oil on canvas board

Cats are busy when they're awake, and who knows what they dream about. Maybe little birds or mice running, or leaves skittering on the wind? This painting is busy too, with color and movement of dots. I don't know why. Just a fancy I had I guess.

Vote. It's important.

Vote. Whoever you are, vote. In the end, when you complain to me about the results of this election - I will ask you "DID YOU VOTE?"  If you didn't vote you  should be ashamed and no one should listen to your complaint. I know I won't. Are you in the hospital? Out of the country? Get an absentee ballot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DRkUU-qhjk

My improving mood

A little sunshine can improve your mood. This afternoon featured streaming rays with attendant blue sky. This pic looks like someone just beamed aboard the mothership. And only a moment ago I was sitting right there... haha

three sisters dance

Though this is based on a family of sisters I know - today, right now, this is how I feel. No matter what I do, I am hemmed in by some imagined necessity.. No matter how I dance I am not doing the right step and meeting with disapproval on every side.

There is a ton of paperwork I am behind on and somehow, despite my efforts and worry I can't seem to do it right.  I forget things. Am beleaguered beyond reality today.

This sketch started in pencil then other odds and ends were used to add color.

Live with Reason and Sympathy!

Live with Reason & Sympathy

Look. Investigate. Appreciate. Share who you are. Help when you can. Value people over dogma. Celebrate this brief beautiful life

It's no surprise that most people find aspects of nature beautiful and inspiring since we are a part of nature and its amazing menagerie of life. We are a part of the earth, subject to the machinations of its atmosphere, oceans and crust. We are part of the cosmos with its billions of stars. This universe is beautiful, astonishing, and we are alive for now - so celebrate, appreciate, explore, invent, create, achieve, care for each other and for our home, the earth! Nature, the earth, the cosmos are a part of 'space-time', a gestalt, a matrix of all, and they are what they are, without intention towards us, whether we understand them or not, and without regard to our various conflicting cultural stories about them. What they are, objectively, can be shown, overtime, though reason and scientific method, which assembles an amendable approximation  of how things work - amendable by future knowledge gained through replicable experiment. This sits opposite so called "revelation"  or story-telling. The writers of ancient texts, "inspired" preachers, story-tellers, alledged psychics, channelers and shamans reveal their own thoughts which may contain purely human metaphor and which may  metaphorically reflect the culture in which they live. Their thoughts may become codified into a dogma or religion  by which some are content to judge themselves and others -- by which sometimes armed groups judge others, waging bloody wars to enforce their beliefs. Everything, (both inside of us and outside of us, including codified belief) arises from the natural physical world. What most folks refer to as the soul is the best part of the self as found in the intricate human brain. The logical end of this thought is this: when we die, the matter and energy that we contain will be recycled and reused, but our unique life will be gone, except in memory, in history, in genetic code. So cherish this one life that you are privileged to possess. Never, never throw it away..

You only get this one life, so live it well.

-- MM Walker

Human Being on Planet Earth,

Painting: The Competitors, some dancers in conflict

This is an acrylic called Competitors which dates from the days when I was associated with the Connecticut Conservatory of the Performing Arts. Though it was voice I studied there, most of its students were dancers. Before that time, I never really thought about the competitive aspects of dance - I just enjoyed watching it.

In this piece, dancers flair into seeming conflict. Or is it seeming?

And yes, their legs are unnaturally long. Very exaggerated.