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Sunday, February 13, 2011

inspiration stretched over canvas...

Sometimes inspiration flows like a never ending waterfall, with ideas pouring over the rocks of my mind with crystalline clarity and I never see the white of the canvas in front of me only the flowing of colour and light.  Other times inspiration seems to have dried up and I add colour to blank paper looking for design and attempting to find that hidden waterfall.  

What I don’t do with enough frequency is to reach out and join others in the creative processes.  Instead of sitting alone in the dim glow of lamps and strings of champagne coloured Christmas lights draped along my bookshelf, I need to get out.  I need to watch the passion of others the freedom of creation for creations sake.  I need to look at the world again.   To peer out beyond the grey sheets of rain that tumble darkly from the sky, creating a world of damp darkness.  If I can push back that watery curtain and find again that which is hidden from view I could again find that place of colour and light and bring it forth to capture in paint.

Last Saturday I embarked on a Creative Jam session with inspired folks who came to sing, and write and draw together.  In a well lit but ghastly yellow room I put acrylic paint on canvas while watching the creative motions of others.   If colour had been dormant... it was so no longer.   Acrylic is a medium with which I am grossly unfamiliar, however on that particular day colour again bloomed under my hand.
And so I present to you 3 new works on Canvas. 


Macrocystis

Swaying in oceans currents this algae can grow two hundred feet long, at a rate of two feet per day. It is harvested as a food supplement but also used as an additive to salad dressings, ice creams, sauces and toothpastes...
Which goes to show... you never know where you might find your next meal.

© RiverWalker Arts





Kitson Island

Isolated on a small island facing the grey quicksilver pacific ocean, sits flanked by mainland mountains, that rise majestically out of the ever present mists.  Those mists rise up and hem the island in eerie drifting cloaks of pale moisture.    It rains here.  The type of rain that pours down on the world and fills up the earth, the ocean drinking what the land cannot hold.  
© RiverWalker Arts






Dancing Medusa

With no heart, bones, eyes or brain, Medusozoa are made up of 95% water, and yet they are still a remarkably efficient ocean predator.   Gently pulsing in ocean currents these predators are in balance with the large predator fish of the seas.  With overfishing the balance appears to be tipping in favour of these transparent and graceful but deadly predators.

© RiverWalker Arts

Thursday, February 3, 2011

I refuse to believe that trading recipes is silly. Tuna fish casserole is at least as real as corporate stock.

I’m thinking of putting all the little recipe cards I have together... I’m thinking of compiling them into a book.   I’ve started some mock-ups of what a page in this short little book might look like.

I’d like to share.. and get any feedback you feel is useful.  

Most of my creations look remarkably unappetizing in photographs.  I really do consider myself a passable cook,  but the aesthetics of the meals I concoct are clearly less important that the taste.  I’ve yet to find the skill for turning what DH so lovingly calls “slop” into some image of beauty and artistry... so I figured that even though I like a recipe book with photos.. maybe my home made version could be free of photos that might dissuade potential cooks from making something that looks so much like a dogs’ breakfast

Anyway here are a couple samples I’ve thrown together....  (click images for larger sizes)







Recipe:  A series of step-by-step instructions for preparing ingredients you forgot to buy, in utensils you don't own, to make a dish the dog wouldn't eat.  ~Author Unknown