Curiosities

Number 20 Complete

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Yes, 20 booklets filled with writing. A rather long one this time, lots of skipping due to having a hunk of lung chopped out. I did, to my surprise complete four books. I wholeheartedly recommend all four.

And while I’m recommending, Morning Pages, from Julia Cameron, is also recommended. For people who want more creative work in their lives. It doesn’t need to involve writing or other things normally thought of as art. It does require commitment.

With the upper left node of my lung gone and I’m now 37 Days without a hospital visit. With both of those in place, I’m working on beating the 366 day streak. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s pretty normal. But for me, it’s big now.

Clyfford Still Museum

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Big Reasons to Go:

  • Clyfford Still MuseumYou’re a fan of Still’s work
  • In-house art-making space with encouraging and helpful staffer
  • The museum shows a progression of Still’s work – this is a great help if you don’t “get” abstract expressionism but are curious
  • Quarterly rotations of the displayed works
  • Great gallery rooms with beautiful lighting
  • The most helpful museum staff I’ve ever met. The guards aren’t there just to scold you away when you get too close.
  • They’ll fetch a chair if you want to sit and contemplate when the benches aren’t where you’d like to sit.

Find out more about it on their website, Clyfford Still Museum. I went last summer and remembered the pleasures.

Warning: First Draft

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Everything here is First Draft status. It has to exist more than it needs to be right. (Austin Kleon idea, stolen and badly paraphrased.) It is just more important to get things out there, out here, for me to have in place, unforgotten.

From Painters, When They Talk

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“I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.”
~ Vincent van Gogh

“I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.”
~ Frida Kahlo

“Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? No. Just as one can never learn how to paint.”
~ Pablo Picasso

“When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.”
~ Pablo Picasso

“I want to paint the way a bird sings.”
~ Claude Monet

“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”
~ Edgar Degas

“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”
~ Claude Monet

“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.” 
~ Plutarch

“I want to be famous but unknown!”
~ Edgar Degas

All from 26 Painting Quotes By The Masters To Inspire You

Nudging the Direction

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A few days ago I wrote On Caring, about paying attention to the US elections, so far in advance of our selection. Why is our selection process so long? Part of it goes back to Kennedy who was considered “too Catholic” when he announced his candidacy. Now we have fringe candidates pushing their (our?) pet peeves. One example is Governor Jay Inslee’s pushing about climate change. His candidacy did not continue, but his ideas do.

I’m now caring and have supported Andrew Yang. He shares with former Vice President Joe Biden the ability to attract Trump supporters. That’s a winner of a candidate’s position. Yang also has a simple, like Trump, slogan, MATH – Make American’s Think Harder.

Will he win? I don’t care. I do care that his positions deserve more attention. He more attention he gets the more his positions will get. He puts Humanity First. Where it belongs.

Here’s a light headed review of Yang’s positions.