MUSING OF AN ARTIST

I started out with paint by numbers in the hospital when I had my tonsils removed at the age of five.
Every year after that my Mom would buy different art mediums charcoal, oils, pastels watercolor.
I painted up to the age of twenty two after losing my maternal Grandfather to lung cancer I no longer had joy in painting. He was the one who encouraged me in my endeavor as an artist. I set aside all my supplies and put all my energy into motherhood.

In my late thirties I found myself in a depressed state of mind, never having a career and free time on my hands , I began doodling which in turn became sketch's. I had rediscovered my creative side. Wanting to do more I went out and bought watercolors dappling in those for awhile. When one day after rummaging through my closet I found my Rembrandt pastels that my Mom bought me when I was twelve.
I fell in love with the soft buttery texture and the feathery effects you make by using your hand as a tool, much like finger painting.I was on a roll creating landscape to portraits using the pastels, entering art contest and winning ribbons and getting articles published about my work.
I started my professional pet portrait business Heartstrings after losing my beloved pet Kinney. After many years of commissioned works I began to feel stifled and very uncreative.

I challenged myself into making abstract works for the life of me I could not understand until I began to play with color and found movement in the formation of colors touching color. I was hooked. I found a liberating form of creativity, a mindless joy of working with color.


I rarely have preconceived ideas. I just start painting and my mind eye see
something that I just follow.
I have no training nor am I interested in learning.
I just paint for me.
When am happy,sad,lonely or confused art helps me become focused.
I am able to clear my mind of unwanted thoughts
Art is a creative force which frees the spirit, we make our own world when we paint I like to think mine is a world of color and feeling.

BIRDS OF ZEN original art painting Lovely birds perched on a limb

If the world was made of metal it would be a shiny place, until drops of water began to invade it's pristine armor. From shiny steal to multi hues or red,orange,and hints of blue until it's eaten away into lovely russet. Copper would lend it's self to multi hues of green and blues until it is eaten away to turn a lovely powdery teal.

In this series ZEN BIRDS I have a depicted a eroded world of of beauty where once it would have been viewed as a world of dying. I see life in it's ever changing evolutions. From seed of the tree, from egg of the bird, ore to creation metal. What man creates nature erodes leaving in it's wake a beautiful impression of color.

ZEN BIRDS honors nature.

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Moms last wishes

My Mom has asked me to buy her dress she will be laid out in. Her underwear and slippers too, for her final farewell.
It must be navy blue with long sleeves because, she spoke of how terrible her arms are now, once muscular and strong are now flab's of hanging skin.
Lump in my throat tears building up I said yes. I can't show the pain I am feeling at the moment, I have to hold it in until my drive home. Longest trip home I have made, tears blinding my sight I made it home.
The next day I shopped for her by taking pictures with my phone showing her the pics the following day. We finally agreed on a style.I found a dress I thought would fit at JC PENNY.
She tired it on over a sweat shirt and jeans coming up 2 sizes to big. She says keep it, you know it will cut down the back and fitted. Boy that lump in my throat felt like a tennis ball at that moment.
My Dad walked in at that moment and she began to cry, I could not hold it in nor could Dad we had a group hug and the tears be fell us. She said the dress was perfect. Later calling me to say Dad thought it looked very nice on her.

I know each day Mom is working on making her final farewell easy for all. She has chosen who will speak at her funeral, what biblical verse she would like read, what music she would like played.

It's hard being her only daughter, knowing I will no longer have a special friend to share all my good with. Like the granddaughters I have and her great that we share.
Her Mother never got to know her great granddaughter, my daughter because she had a stroke and could longer walk or talk and passed away before my daughter turned one.
For my Mom becoming a great Grandmother has been her greatest joy.She always felt her Mother missed out on what would have been her greatest joy too.

She is growing weaker each day and the pain never subsides now, she looks at her feet every day to see if they are turning blue, I finally told her yesterday what the signs where for death and told her she has none. She is a fighter, she wanted to make it through the holidays and did. Then she wanted to see the tulips and they are breaking through the ground now. She has decieded she wants some mushrooms (morels)which may be up in a few weeks. Now she has decieded to be here for the month of May, she does not know why but wants to make to that month.

She has only the strentgh to get up eat a breakfast, make her bed then off to the couch to too sleep through day with pain killers. The slight relief she gets from pain is sleep, the whole time bemoaning in pain. I hope if anyone smokes that you cut back and realize that it can kill you through a long painfull journey.

Where tears fall

What is life ? Birth and death one from flesh one from spirit. Human life goes on no matter in which order it comes,young or old we die.
I am coming to terms of losing my life creator my Mother. Her beauty has waned her spirit is weak. A fragile shell is what exits now, how cruel our bodies can be by are eating it's self.
A weak vessel the body is, the spirit is the fighter. Enduring searing pain to see just another moment. Generations we seek to live, creating another form of ourselves, hoping each one will be better than our self's. This is how I see life, now that my life creator is entering the realm of ever lasting peace.

Great Grandmother and Great granddaughter my heritage speaks it's native tongue our spirit names have not been given to the young one yet.

Blooming Color

Blooming Color
It's name says it all. Beautiful primary colors in encaustic medium.I enjoy expressing myself as an artist with encaustic medium I like the finished look of ceramic tile.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/johnniebelinda

BLOOMING COLOR

Blooming Color
It's name says it all. Beautiful primary colors in encaustic medium.I enjoy expressing myself as an artist with encaustic medium I like the finished look of ceramic tile.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/johnniebelinda

I have wings free forming
Butterflies,and angels
I do see
Bursting colors
My eyes do see
Delighting in reds, teal and dreamy greens
merriment I do feel looking upon this painting in which I created

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If today where to be the last goodbye

If today where to be the last goodbye.
How would I feel?
There have been no resolutions.
Mother and daughter as we are.
I call to say how much I love you.
Can I be of any help this day.
I try to find happy memories from the past, where are they?
There are so few.
I know once the last last goodbye is said they will come rushing in like a flash flood tormenting the land.
Eroding all the bad that was in it's wake.
I wish I could be a little girl again.
Looking up from your lap into your eyes.
Seeing merriment once again in them.
To hear your voice strong and sweet like a song in it's self.
My hand in yours so small and weak.
With our hands together I feel your love.
In the last goodbye
Your lap is to weak to bare my weight
Your eyes are longer filled with merriment ,but pain
your voice weak and brittle like a fall leaf
Your hand small and weak in mine,I love you Mom is said in that hold.

Yes my Mother is still here in the living, yet she stands at deaths door.She Say's that big angel while be there to take her. She dreamed of it once, it told her it was not her time. She said it was the most peaceful sensation she has ever felt to be in it's presence. She had a dream the other day where her family, mother, father, and four sibling where gathered in a room she was not it yet she knew her presence was in it. She knows her time is near. To walk through the door of death. Into world of light filled joy where she will once again will sit upon a lap,see her Mothers merry eyes,sing songing of her voice,her hands once again in a loving hold