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Inspired
“Dragonfly” V1 and V2 were inspired by the little guy that landed on my screen door the other afternoon.
Larger versions of both can be seen on Sundrip.com. Please click here.
Happy
I totally blew everything off today and painted. I turned on some music and it was just me and the brush. I feel happiest with a paintbrush in my hand.
I didn’t upload any of the pieces I did because they’re too large for my scanner, however, there are several new digital pieces over on Sundrip.com.
Here are three of the newer paintings.
Love Your Garden
Satchel of Dreams
The Ladies Fare
If you click the images you’ll be re-directed to Sundrip.com where you’ll be able to see close ups and details of Love Your Garden and The Ladies Fare.
It’s been a good day.
Austin
Everything
I really have been out of touch. I haven’t even blogged in several days.
I don’t know, I’m so shut down right now. For a day or two I felt pretty good then got smacked really hard with some flashbacks. I think I’m right back where I started the other day with the whole withdrawing from everyone and everything.
A few new things - I’ve been getting postcard orders filled too. It paid off to show a few postcards to the people at the dental office the other day. One lady purchased 100 of them for retail purposes. I got invited to be a vendor at a Breast Cancer Awareness art show in Ohio.
My car is running, for how long I don’t know. I have to wait until the 3rd to insure it which means I won’t be driving it until then.
My neighbor made it out of his brain surgery well. I’ve been dashing over there to care for him and his three pooches. I’ll do that for the next 4 weeks. Grace turned 4 April 1st, Bella turned 2 on the 28th and Captain is working on not making it to 9. He keeps jumping the fence and running across the street to play with his buddies. These are the three pooches that I’m helping out with.
I was on the floor when I took this picture which is why they’re at this angle. A photo of them together doesn’t happen often.
That’s all for now.
Austin
Off the Mark
I usually handle the physical pain pretty well but right now I’m an irritable, angry mess. Add in therapy issues and poor sleep and you’ve got yourself one galactic bitch.
I’ve described chronic pain as a pair of glasses made for someone else that I’m forced to wear. I put them on and I’m to adjust my life to someone else’s eyes, a totally different depth of field and understanding of sight in general. I can’t see anything without it filtering first through those glasses. I can’t think straight in this kind of pain. Usually I do okay wearing someone else’s glasses, with my sight off the usual mark. But sometimes my vision is too distorted. My ability to function fails. My responsibilities fall to the way side and all I can do is wait for it to ease up. Usually I handle it pretty well. I go about my day, get stuff done and don’t complain outwardly. But add lack of sleep and therapy issues and I’m just pissed!!! I’m pissed, depressed and physically exhausted. That’s all I have to say about that.
My neighbor is having brain surgery. I’ll be taking care of his dogs while he’s gone. Three dogs, my dog and two cats and a bunch of me….this should be fun. Truthfully, I feel honored that he’d trust me in his home while he’s not there. He loves those dogs (he gives them beer but he loves them) and wouldn’t leave them with just anyone. They’re sweet. I enjoy my time over there. All I have to do is go over and let them out for a bit, fill their water bowl and feed them, that’s all. With my energy level the way it is it feels like a lot but really, I’m happy to do it. I know I just complained about pain and energy and everything but when someone trusts me with something precious I can’t help but accept the joy that comes with it. My twisted glasses do at least let me see that much.
Austin
This is a shot from the recent full moon taken from the backyard.
Off the Mark
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 – 12:16AM EST
Fear - Therapy Discussion
I’m feeling kind of closed off, isolating a bit I’d say. The last two week watching friends struggle has been difficult but then there’s my stuff too. I don’t know, I feel like I want to shut the PC off and just go to bed.
In therapy Dr. D and I again discussed the picture I drew of myself as a little girl showing what I might have felt like had I been afraid. We talked about how I don’t really remember being afraid. Now that I think about it I can remember 3 specific incidents where I was afraid but mostly I remember being angry, feeling like a deformed misfit in that family. I remember a lot of pain but I don’t remember feeling a lot of fear. I felt sad, alone, hopeless but afraid isn’t something that comes to mind when I think of my childhood and early adulthood. Perhaps I was too busy thinking instead of feeling, planning to stay one step ahead of her instead of feeling. Well, I felt but I guess fear didn’t show up too often. I felt ashamed to be me. I felt disappointed in myself for not being able to please my mother. I felt ashamed of being what I felt was a disobedient and wild daughter. But fear? I don’t know, not that often I don’t think, not that I recognized anyway.
A Different Day
Today is in stark contrast from yesterday. I woke up feeling refreshed, almost peaceful. Funny the difference a day can make.
This painting is called Daydreaming. She’s similar to the painting Rainbow Child.
Please visit the Innocence Gallery on Sundrip.com for more paintings celebrating the imagination, wonder, play and song of childhood.
Color Outside The Lines
A comment came in on Redbubble from a fellow artist who says that my artwork has a sweetness to it and that I must be at peace with the world. I’ve gotten comments like that before, saying that my artwork is joyful. Someone went as far as to call it refreshing. I suppose it’s always confused me that anyone would see such a thing in my art seeing as how I don’t experience a lot of true joy or true peace in the world. I got to thinking about it though and replied to the gentleman that since I don’t find a lot of peace in this what is left to do but create peace through art?
I often paint fantasy worlds with high colour and lots of movement. Paintings like Dreamscape (shown in this entry) Teach Us How To Grow and Looking Forward are good examples of fantasy worlds I’ve painted but they are nothing like my personal world inside. I suppose they are an expression of a world I’d rather see and experience.
Most of my artwork has some touch of my past in it, some issue relating to individuality, rebellion, bucking the system and going outside the norm. I express a fragile state of mind, a humbled existence, fear in the form of colour and silence in the form of dark swirling lines. Unless I specifically said, this means this and this means this no one would ever imagine how much healing work is done in my artwork. It just comes off mostly as joyful and sweet. I don’t begrudge that though.
Even still, everything from Willow Child to Rainbow Child to Longing Flower and even Raindrops has some emotional significance, some healing angle to it. Then there are images where I refuse to pay attention to 
the normal way of composing an art piece. Images like Face It and Eye Sore are perfect examples of chaos, a clear reflection of life inside my head. Looking at the painting She’s Green depicts just how out of place I feel in the world, how alien-like, how homesick I feel amongst strangers. I’m pleased that people like her and enjoy the colour. I’m pleased that some have said she’s adorable and that I’ve sold a few copies of her. But never have I said until now that she’s green because she’s different, she’s a foreigner and a misfit.
On paper and in Photoshop I can go places in my imagination that I dare not go other times. I’m not too good at fantasizing. I was always told that it’s wrong, that it leads to sexual thoughts which are wrong. So when I hear the word fantasy I feel a slight sting and want to retreat to a reality that I hate.
As a child I was told I was too smart to play as the other children did. I was told I was too smart for TV, too smart for toys, too smart for anything a child does. Children use their imagination but mine was held back or directed and molded according to someone else’s idea of what I should dream. I find it difficult now to day dream or fantasize. But I’m taking chances and choosing when I want reality and when I’d rather slip off into a world of fantasy.
I’m learning to colour outside the lines.
Me
Color Outside The Lines-Sunday, April 06, 2008
How Are You Today?
I haven’t seen my therapist in about two weeks but I’ll see him in just a few hours. I planned to do nothing much in the way of therapy and I think I’ve accomplished that. I certainly didn’t expect to get sick (who does). I planned to bum, paint, hang out, chat and mess around. Of course stuff comes up cause who really gets a chance to take a break from their healing process? When “stuff” popped up I kicked into the art therapy side of the healing process. This is pretty much all the therapy I’ve done in the last 2 weeks.
Walking into his office should be interesting. I have to wonder if I’ll recognize him. Sometimes I do, sometimes he has to approach me to let me know he’s the one I’m seeing that day. I know why I’m there but I’ve gotta try and place who I’m there to see. The first five minutes of therapy are the most uncomfortable. He asks how we’re doing. We say fine then everyone plays reverse musical chairs. It seems everyone in side scatters and the one left sitting has to face the music. We scatter so fast. There’s no telling who will be there. There’s very little sense in planning for therapy discussions because of our tendency for flight. If there’s something he needs to know it sure as heck better get written down because by the time we walk through his door we’ve done the revolving door thing. We’ve switched so much it could make us dizzy. By the time we take the short walk to the sofa we’ve more than likely switched again. Sitting down doesn’t stop the panic and running away. But about 5 min in the loser of musical alters “gets” to talk. That is unless Robert shows up. That’s when the whole “how are you” “I’m fine” BS gets skipped. He has to be out before we get there for that to happen. He’ll go right in and say, ‘Hey, lets skip the pleasantries all right? They’re just a formality. I’d rather not do it.” He’ll then go right into what he has to say.
The question, “how are you” really is a stupid one. I mean come on, how am I? Really? After all your schooling you still ask that question? Asking that at the beginning of the session is in fact a formality, it’s polite, it gets things rolling. Therapists know we’re going to give the same hollow untruthful answer. “I’m fine” or “I’m alive.” I suppose if my therapist can put up with never being sure which patient he’ll treat in a given session I can put up with that stupid question. I think I’ve just reached an agreement with my therapist. I suppose I’ll clue him in on this agreement sometime. I just have to figure out who will lose at musical alters. That person can tell him about our agreement.
“The Darker Me” by Milwaukee age 12
“Earthly” by Joan of Arc age 28
“Low Bloom” by Maureen age 19
“Thinker” by Joan of Arc age 28
“Walled Man” by Milwaukee age 12 (This piece is old but still meaningful for us. The whole point of Walled Man is that some of us will fight tooth and nail to make this life worth living but others feel defeated and have stopped trying.)
Pneumonia - Not A Girl’s Best Friend
Pneumonia is not a girl’s best friend but sunflowers are. Too bad I didn’t get sunflowers instead of pneumonia. I can’t believe this either. So, tomorrow I go IP so they can pump me with their voodoo medicines and probe me with their crazy machines. Captain Crunch will be with his babysitter and the girls will be here with my roommate Barney Fife. God help them!
I figured something out. Pink makes me feel better, as do sunflowers. So I grabbed my pink blanket, put on my pink fluffy slippers, grabbed the pillow with the pink ruffled sham and plopped on the love seat. Happy camper I was. I’m about to make some tea and go right back to the love seat.
First let me introduce to you “Flower Basket”. This little picture here was done a few days ago. She’s just holding a basket with purple buds in it while standing in a field. She’s just come from picking wild flowers in her private paradise.
Later tatters, I shall talk to you all in just a few days.
Austin
Sundrip News
I just put the original of Huggable up for sale a short while ago and he got snatched up already. How cool is that?
I personally like the original version of Huggable better than the digitally enhanced version so I’m probably going to redo it to make it closer to the original or simply provide prints of the original instead of enhancing it via photoshop. Who knows.
Also in Sundrip news, there are a few new art pieces. Because of the new art pieces a 4th gallery has been opened which includes Birth, Night Gaze and a few others so be sure to check them out.
Sundrip.com
Where you’ll find detailed views of art work as well as commentary, poetry and creative writing and of course art galleries.
Art Galleries
Gallery 1
Gallery 2
Gallery 3
Gallery 4
Postcard Gallery
Shop
Fine art prints available through the Sundrip galleries and can be purchased with a verified PayPal address. When purchasing prints from Sundrip.com the print will arrive signed, dated and in a protective sleeve.
You can also purchase prints from my Redbubble site. Prints on Redbubble can be purchased in small to poster size prints as well as laminated, framed and/or mounted. Please contact me with any questions.
That’s it for updates and news,
Austin
