Pair of Pears

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I love pears, I love to eat them, and arrange them in bowls on my table. I love the way they seem to have hips and body shapes, no two just alike. I painted these because I know I won’t be buying any pears for a while. I will trade the sturdy lunch box fruit of the school year for the tender stone fruits of summer.

I love the changing of the seasons.

Here are my Best/ Least of summer-
Texas: homegrown tomatoes/ chiggers
New Mexico: desert sunsets/ tomatoes

Waiting with Trembling Hands

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I read an article last night in Smithsonian magazine about a neurosurgeon who teamed up with a neurologist. It seems like a logical team, but apparently it is unusual for those two disciplines to work together. These two Doctors figured out a way to insert a small electrical probe into people’s brains, and stop a tremor caused by a stroke or Parkinson’s Disease. The article went on to recount one particular patient and his journey towards elective surgery (it was affecting his golf swing) and play by play of his surgery (which he was awake for). To test if the probe was in the right place they had him draw spirals on a clip board during different stages of the surgery. The surgery was a success, his spirals went from shaky to smooth. As I fell asleep I wondered who would elect to have brain surgery.

Then today I got in the car to drive to NM with my dear husband. He likes to drive, so I had all day to sit. Why not paint? We weren’t in a car actually, we were in a SUV, and it was a fairly bumpy drive. I had time and desire to paint, but couldn’t get my hands to hold still. Then I remember the article, and thought how I just had to wait until a small town for a red light, or even a pit stop to regain the steadiness in my hands. I chose for this one small painting to paint with my hands shaking.

Making our Way Through The Storm

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There is something exhilarating about forging through a storm under an umbrella with a friend, or spouse, or sibling, or child. You blindly press forward afraid to release the umbrella, and knowing that by sharing it you are getting soaked to the bone. I am neither timid nor afraid of geological storms, but in an honest assessment of myself, have to admit that I am more than reluctant to face metaphorical ones. I don’t seem to trust that they will end, and sometimes the darkness is more than I feel like going into.

I am not experiencing a storm: metaphorical, or geological. I have been traveling and had time and willingness to paint. I realized that I had about the same amount of white paint, that if it were toothpaste, I could brush my teeth 3x. If you paint in oils you know white is the one color you must have. Failing to plan is planning to fail. So I planned a painting based on color: my puddle of mud left from an earlier painting, darks, and my 3 dabs of white. Circumstances brought about the storm; that happens sometimes.