Grief affects each person differently....

My way of dealing with the loss of a loved one is to paint.  I began working on two paintings Friday after learning that my elder sister had died.  I am at an uncomfortable point in the grieving and painting processes.  As for the former, I have been sick with flu and subsequent cold for a week, feel exhausted, want to clean my house and am too tired to do so, want to enjoy my daughter who has come from Nevada to be with me and I can't stay awake long enough to do so. 


As for the latter, I awoke Friday evening with two paintings pressing themselves into my consciousness.  I got out of bed and for over three hours began laying them in.  I slept for a few more hours, got up and worked on both pieces more.  Since then, all I've done is write about them and sleep some more.


Add to all this, I am so frustrated with myself because I still have not learned how to download videos from my camera.  For whatever reason, before dawn on Saturday morning, I decided to make videos of the progress I was making on each piece as I painted.  Well, yesterday, I showed you the photos of that progress on the 10 x 20" horizontal I have decided to entitle "In the Valley...." 


This is the start I made of the 24 x 12" vertical, "Blue Sky Day."   I've discovered that I only made this one still shot; the rest is on video.  [scream]   I had blocked in the main areas in underpainting and then had gone back in with the beginnings of color:

"Blue Sky Day" is the vertical 12" x 24" version.

In the 1960's when I was working part-time at a detective agency [honestly], I read the book Archy and Mehitabel, written by Don Marquis some time in the 20's.  Quoting from the DonMarquis.com website:


Archy is a cockroach with the soul of a poet, and Mehitabel is an alley cat with a celebrated past — she claims she was Cleopatra in a previous life. Together, cockroach and cat are the foundation of one of the most engaging collections of light poetry to come out of the twentieth century.


I loved Marquis's humor, especially this phrase, which applies to me right now:  "Whatthehell, whatthehell, toujours gaie, toujours gaie!"  On that note, I'll call it quits for today.  Au revoir, mes amis!

“'expression is the need of my soul,' declares Archy, who labored...

...as a free-verse poet in an earlier incarnation. At night, alone, he dives furiously on the keys of Don Marquis’ typewriter to describe a cockroach’s view of the world, rich with cynicism and humor. It’s difficult enough to operate the typewriter’s return bar to get a fresh line of paper; all of Archy’s dispatches are written lowercase, and without punctuation, because he is unable to hit both shift and letter keys to produce a capital letter."


Here I am again, remembering Archy's bon vivant attitude back in the 20's and 30's.  I admire that ability in others, especially in tough times such as the Great Depression and its aftermath.  Times aren't particularly easy today, so it helps to be reminded of Mehitabel's mantra:  "...toujours gaie...." 

Yesterday, I was showing you images of the two acrylic paintings I began at 12:30 on Saturday morning, May 5th.  You saw three images of the progress on the horizontal 10 x 20" "Into the Valley..." but only one of the vertical 24 x 12" "Blue Sky Day."


That would be because I had a major problem.  Somewhere along in my painting process, I stopped taking still shots and continued on taking videos only.  You might wonder what my problem was.  Well, although I've taken short videos on my new camera and Droid, I had never learned how to download them so I could make any use of them.  Well, today, thanks to friends and my daughter and son-in-law, I've solved that problem.


This is to say that, NOW I can show you BOTH paintings I was working on.  I don't guarantee that I'll ever match John Ford or Steven Spielberg as a maker of movies, but I'm willing to take the necessary baby steps needed to share my methods of thinking and painting with you.  If Archy, the talented cockroach, could type on a manual typewriter by jumping on the keys one at a time, I can be patient too.   Here goes:

And then.................

What I managed not to say clearly was that I'm painting these two pieces in honor of my elder sister who died last Friday, May 4th.


Well, it is time to call it a day.  Tomorrow, I'll show you more of my progress on these pieces.  Till then, au revoir!