Quantum Marketplace

I've been struggling with this sketch for a couple days.  The pigment spill exercise is from a Mother's Day visit with my daughter, where we sat outside on the lawn and worked our respective creativity.  She did her magic with silver, and I distractedly dribbled paint on wet paper.  Somehow the colors didn't work as well as I would've liked (perhaps they dried too quickly in the warm air), but that disappointment only gives me permission to play freely with it, then.  After all, it's already messed up, isn't it?  

I had a couple photos from a few years ago, when Jim and I visited Seattle for the day.  We'd wandered around the Pike Place Market and I took a couple shots of a fruit vendor offering slices of perhaps mango to passersby (not sure, I didn't take one).  I've been itching to use the figure in some sketch, so the sumptuous fruit displays made a great perspective lead-in, focusing on him.  I thought I'd just weave the scene around and in between the pigment blooms, eventually creating a Twilight Zone-ish bleed-through between realities.  Though the sketch is busier and more visually confusing than I prefer, I love the way it looks like reality rips and boils away amongst the seemingly normal marketplace activity.  Especially the dissolving of the fruit table on the lower right.

Curbside Horticulture, 5th Avenue

The colors and vibrancy of vegetation this Spring is eye-popping.  How could anyone not be out sketching, painting or photographing? I accompanied Jim to his physical therapy appointment for his vertigo problem, at the clinic in town.  Sitting in the waiting room, I had a clear view out the big windows, my little watercolor palette, a water brush and a little square of watercolor paper nearby in my kit.  They practically crawled out and shoved themselves into my hands.  

Next Winter, along about January, I'll pull this out and remember the glow of sun through the tulips and new leaves.  Purple shadows spilling across pavement.

A Little Devotional Humor

Digging through a dusty old box with brochures and old photos from the '90s, I pulled out this snapshot that Neil, my previous husband, had done of three clay monk sculptures I had finished painting.  They were drying outside, getting ready to be shipped to my fave gallery (Trios in Solana Beach, CA), nearly twenty years ago.  I still love the way they seemed to be sharing a quiet joke between them.  I wonder where all those sweet little dudes are now.  Sometimes I really miss them.