After Exhaustive Research (ok i exhaust easily) on poems about this subject, I found my favorite:

Sometimes simple is just the most beautiful . . . and fun.

That’s all. 🙂

I love you guys!  ❤

 

“Art is the only way of running away without leaving home.” Twyla Tharp

3 Reasons I Love Indigo Buntings

A couple weeks ago on July 4 exactly, Phil and I went on a lovely rainy day bike ride at the Meadowlark Greenway.  There I saw 5 or 6 indigo buntings flitting among the bushes alongside the path. 

They are so abundant there.

I usually spot this breathtakingly beautiful little bird  only from a distance sitting on telephone wires, confirming that it is indeed indigo bunting only by the light hitting it just right and upon hearing its complicated and beautiful song.

Thusly and therefore, I have always thought of them as shy–forgive the anthropomorphism.

But the gorgeous Meadowlark Greenway has brought indigo bunting to my eye level. So fun on my bike rides with Phil to have their company flitting and singing on the down low. 😉

Here’a little watercolor/collage I did a couple of years ago of the beautiful Indigo Bunting of which I speak.  See–on the down low–like in the bushes beside the bike path.

And so:  3 Reasons I love Indigo Buntings.

1. The iridescent blue green color shimmers and changes color constantly in the sun.
2. They are usually shy and sit on telephone wires
3. They are plentiful at the Meadowlark Greenway
4. Bonus: Their gorgeous and complicated song.
5. Bonus #2:   The name:  Indigo Bunting–just the word “indigo” rolls off my tongue and I can almost feel it’s blueness. And “bunting”–a cozy baby bunting of a word–like all wrapped up with love in indigo.

 

Did ya know?  I love you guys!   ❤

A Whole Lotta Love!

” A Whole Lotta Love”

It’s very, very messy you guys–and playful, and joyful, and happy– being me.

Many many creative people are like this, you know–we play a lot– our art is our play, actually.

As you may have noticed, lately, I’ve been playing a lot online.

It’s been fun–makes me feel the way I used to feel as a kid at the beach, building little sandcastles, and then tearing them down again just for fun, or watching with wonder as the ocean has its way with them–filling up the moats, smoothing out the edges, flattening the pointier parts, turning them into something differently beautiful.

I have made a few changes in the last year:

I’ve included my maiden name Huntley in my moniker:  reason being–when one googles “Margaret Harrison artist,” at the very top of the list

is a UK feminist who has swords and fangs and such coming out of the nether regions of the female anatomy–

not that there’s anything wrong with all of that, of course–just not my style.😉

I will continue sharing my ART (paintings and photos) here accompanied by tiny stories about my life as an artist both today and in the past.

I LOVE having you here. Though I paint mainly to please myself, it would be so lonely without YOU here to ride along with me.

This original is available and I wouldn’t part with it because it is my favorite, unless I could make an exact reproduction of it (near to perfect, anyway) in just about any size I want through fineartamerica.com.  So If you’re interested in owning this masterpiece ( it is a masterpiece to me–I’ll share why at some point) please message me.  🙂   I love you guys. ❤

Balance in Painting and Life

” I Told You I Could!”

Is this painting out of balance?   The vase is clearly on the left side of the picture with lots of stripes and flowers coming out of the top of the vase and lopping over into the other side of the picture–both left quadrants and top right quadrant very full of visual activity.

Now look at the  lower right quadrant with its peaceful blue green hue or “negative space” as us artists like to call it.

So is this painting balanced?

If someone were to peer into 1 quadrant of your or my life (this quadrant could be a day or week or even month), they might conclude imbalance:

For instance vacation week with lots of eating and imbibing,

or an especially difficult, busy frenetic day or week at work,

or an especially slow day or week at work,

or a day or week that you laid around all day and rested,

or a day or week that you went on a  donut binge,

or a day or week in which you went on a green smoothie binge,

or day or week in which you painted all day and forgot to eat,

or a day or week in which you ran around in the car taking children where they needed go,

or a day or week when you went from fast food restaurant to fast food restaurant for all 3 meals of the day.

(Actually if you are the mother of small children or even tweens and teens these quadrants seem to last for years 😉

Anyway, in my life I go on painting binges sometimes–like when I did 100 for 100–and I led a rather unbalanced life while I was doing that–eating lots of lifesavers–the yummy kind with the huge “no-no high fructose corn syrup” which addicts you–I used to love those big Charms “all day” suckers–that lasted a couple hours if you were careful– when I was a little girl. Nothing better than curling up on my bed with a good Nancy Drew book and a lemon, or orange or cherry Charms sucker.

After my art opening, I was still in a bit of a flurry catching up on the continuing education in order to  renew my counselors license so I can continue to pay the bills and then completing a couple of painting commissions–

Whew–got a little out of whack in the physical exercise, healthy eating and relaxing quadrant of my life.

And my brother Captain Bob came for a visit which is wonderful and we eat good when he’s here even if it’s not all good for you.

So this weekend, I have a blank slate–to catch my breath and plan for a very relaxing quadrant ahead. Dog sitting, lying around, sitting around, big brisk walks and healthier eating and hiking and long vigorous bike rides with my guy.

I’m intending a month, or two, very similar to the 4th quadrant of the painting above–serene light green blue and still–except for the vigorous walking and biking of course. 😉

 

 

Piddling, Dreaming, Biking, Chatting, Eating

Yesterday I took the day off from blogging.

I suspect that the most valuable and full of wonder things happen for us on days when we feel least productive, least focused, least intent on making the world a better place-hah!–days of resting, dreaming, piddling, chatting, biking, eating, and so on and so on. All of which I did yesterday.

In my dream state I decided what story I will write for you next week: It’s called

“Fuzz L Furr and Why I Paint.”

It’s a pretty, pretty good little story about a kitty we used to have back in the day–sort of–we sort of had him–he sort of had us–by the name of Fuzz L. Furr and how good ole Fuzz inspires me to paint.

No picture of Fuzz L. Sorry, he was camera shy.

Hugs, Margaret

How the ocean made me feel

You know that great feeling you get after you exercise really hard–that loosey, highish, zenful feeling of well being.

I used to think  swimming in the ocean was the only way to get that feeling!

When Bobby and Joy and I were around 6, 7, 8 and at the beach in the summer we would jump over the ocean waves gleefully shrieking a name for each wave according to it’s size and ferocity-Baby wave,  Granddaddy wave,  Mama wave, Daddy wave, Bobby wave, Poochy McGoochy wave!  It was loud splashy hilarious fun!

Later I went off to camp and noticed that I could get that good zenful feeling after swimming in the freezing mountain lake. So my 10 year old brain brilliantly deduced that swimming vigorously and bracingly in the water was what made me feel all alive and relaxed–it didn’t have to be the ocean–it could be a mountain lake as well.

Much later at the very ripe age of 26  I realized that the wonderful feelings of vitality and relaxation that I coveted were actually the result of hard exercise–and not necessarily in the water. Running 3 or 4 miles would do it–that is after you get over the part where you feel like you’re going to throw up pretty much at the 1/2 mile mark.

Ureeka!

I wish I could go back and tell my little self all about the secret of exercise endorphins–I think life may have been a lot better for my little anxious self who didn’t think of herself as athletic at all unless she was in the water in which case she felt like a very relaxed fish.

I had no words for these zenful feelings when I was younger–I just knew I was looking for something to give them to me.

Now I am full of words. 😉

And I love the feelings that I loved as a child just as much if not more!  And I still dial them up with hard exercise.

I also have learned another way to dial them up–

painting–

when I get lost

in color

challenging myself to make it look like something

and look like something beautiful all at the same time!!

I love you guys! ❤

 

 

The Joy and Rest of Empty Space

You know that feeling you have when you do something challenging and you did your very best and folks were kind enough to agree that what you did was good?

Thats how I feel today!

However, the counselory side of me knows that previous sentence is all about thoughts–not really naming my exact feelings–just thoughts about these feelings.

And I’m picky about deciding whether something is a thought or a feeling because I know that if I want to keep the good feelings going I need to name them and agree with myself and God and the Universe that these are feelings I want to keep.

Ergo the figuring out of these exact actual feelings is going to happen . . . right now.

Hmmmm . . . maybe satisfied,

encouraged,

amazed,

relieved,

peaceful ( a lot) ,

joyful,

relaxed (a lot),

thankful (a lot),

and happily curious.

If you look at the display of pictures above you might wonder why I named this diddy “The joy and rest of empty spaces.”

I draw your attention to the last pic of the group. It’s my lovely  kitchen counter where I’ve been painting almost non-stop for the last 8 weeks– cleared off, cleaned off and available for

enjoying the comforting ritual of folding my colorful cloth napkins right out of the dryer,

and being grateful for

just about everything.

Thank you sweet friends who read these posts, enjoy my paintings, and join me in celebrating beauty.

Have I told you lately?

I love you guys. ❤

 

 

 

 

 

98, 99, 100!

You know I’ve been painting 100 for $100.- 2 more full weekends (the day job) to paint before the Art Opening “Girls Just Gotta Have Fun!”  Friday, May 6 Hampton House Gallery–Mother’s Day weekend. Look for the article about it in Relish May 5  🙂

Been painting oodles of flowers, landscapes, a few seascapes.  I became a little fidgety yesterday and could feel the wall coming straight at me.

I said to myself: “Inspiration that’s what I need–something fun . . . hmmmmm . . . aha! vegetables, fruits.”

So I checked the fridge for subject matter and find asparagus. Bet you didn’t know  till now that asparagus is fun.

See it?  There it is nestled between the pencil and the dish of creamy pink paint.

And that one asparagus inspired me so much I popped out 5 fun fruit and vegetable paintings–I make it sound easy, but

-to be sure each came trailing it’s own artistic crisis.

This may sound a little dramatic–I’ve occasionally been characterized as having a flair for the dramatic. But that’s ok.But what do you expect?  I’m an artist.

This is my all time favorite excuse for all of my weird eccentricities and idiosyncrasies ( it took me at least 3 tries to spell the idio word and it still doesn”t look right.)

In fact I think this whole phenom of being able to dismiss my critics with ” I’m an artist” is one of the more fetching things about the whole enterprise. 😉

As I was saying, each painting-even the little ones, seems to involve a tiny artistic crisis–each crisis is “pequeño, pera con”that means “small but mighty” in Spanish. Are you impressed yet?

I’m trying to teach myself a little Spanish because my son Rob, his wife and 5 children are migrating to the far, far southern regions of Western Mexico in July and I want to be prepared.

I originally built this counter for overflow seating of my 6 grandchildren but seeing as 5 of them are migrating, the counter will be my new painting spot!  The light is fabulous. Cause YOU KNOW . . .GIRLS JUST GOTTA HAVE FUN!

I love you guys!  ❤

 

How I decided to paint in the kitchen

How the dam broke last September and the painterly bubbles in my head spilled out onto the canvas! #”Girls Just Gotta Have Fun!” big beauties, #painting 100 little beauties #show at Hampton House Gallery Friday May 6 5:30-7:30 🙂

I Paint Beauty For Us

A couple of weekends ago these juicy paints summoned me rambunctiously and I started to paint actual pictures of the thought bubble pictures in my head. I can report a full recovery from the blank canvas tizzy that I was having.

It wasn’t pretty–it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t what I had planned, but it happened.

I knew the day before that tomorrow was the day.

So when I woke up that morning instead of my usual morning ritual of gathering myself with coffee or tea and some good thoughts for the day,   I gathered my art stuff:

Good not to leave any window of time for backing out . . .

Fortunately a friend who believes in me purchased a boat load of glass dishes to help encourage me to break through the sneaky resistance thought of “I don’t have enough glass dishes.”

I gathered the glass dishes…

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