It's occurred to me that I haven't done much painting this past year (I have been house painting, as meditative as that can be, it's not the same!) I'm still recovering from the nerve pain of the Shingles that I came down with back in April (yes, STILL) so being on pain killers all the time is making me feel a bit dull at times, but I try not to complain - I'm a tough old girl, so I work around it. I'm trying to remember the last painting I made, but recall that it wasn't really that good - I was feeling a bit tapped out at that time. My contribution to the 2014 Sketchbook Project was my "big project" at the tail end of 2013 that overlapped into the early days of 2014. I loved it so much, it was hard to part with it. I just signed up for the 2015 Project, so I'm very excited about that! I'm a little stuck on which theme to select so I'll have to think about it. It's a fun thing to do, I look forward to it every year...I highly recommend it for anyone to do it...link here:
https://www.sketchbookproject.com/
I can't say that I haven't been creative at all, I've been taking a lot of pictures with my SONY NEX-7 that I bought with money from the sale of four paintings two years ago...my being a photographer is another part of me that I've been revisiting using digital cameras - the Fuji A900 point n' shoot was a fine little camera to start with (such a simple little thing, I love it! I recently bought another one to keep in reserve should this one ever die.) I haven't been in a darkroom processing film since college, even tho' my dad had a darkroom in the basement at home, I didn't follow through on the invitations to use it...yes, I learned photography at home from my father. It was his
hobby, and he spent a long time gathering what he needed to take photographs
and to develop them; very often, he used my bedroom closet for threading the
film into the reel for the developing tank. Later, when he finally built the darkroom in the
basement, he had a place to go (his "man cave") and long ago, when I was very sick with rheumatic fever, he gave me
something to do when I was bored and unable to go outside to play with my
friends. I was always a sponge, looking and absorbing the world—so, seeing it
through the lens of a camera was a new way to look at everything I saw. Once I
learned the basic mechanics, I used it intuitively, while my father fiddled
with light meters and followed the directions to the letter.
My father, was
a quiet and patient man with an incredible sense of humor, and an awesome
laugh, when he passed away on July 13, 2014, I lost the physical person who had taught me so much, but his spirit continues to live on, especially every time I pick up my camera, which now has the strap from his camera attached to it. Clearing out his darkroom has been a very
personal moment in my life. I miss him very much. For now, I'm following my bliss while pursuing the images I find through the lens...
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| Nightshade |
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| The Weeds |
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| Natural Arrangement |
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| Birch bark |
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| Delicate Lace |
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| Sunbeams |
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| Morning light in the barn |
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| Mullein |
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| Sunflower | | |
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