Studio Journal
Saturday, June 27, 2009 at 08:21PM 
We just love to float flowers Down South, and a gardenia in a martini glass is the quintessential symbol of the beginning of Summer when fireflies and candles light up air filled with the heady scent of Summer. Cheers to true Southerners who savor Gardenia Martinis in June.
Saturday, June 27, 2009 at 06:47PM 
I enjoy experimenting with a work of art to find new ways of looking at it with minor adjustments. This is my original watercolor scanned, shading worked in Photoshop using a regular brush with different levels of opacity, cropped, made into a duotone and a filter made of moss loaded. I use the moss texture in many of my works because I just like the softpress board feel.
I do not know what to call this piece except mixed media. Still I keep it in a digital painting category because it does involve actual painting with a mouse.
Friday, June 26, 2009 at 05:37PM Yesterday I heard a poem entitled Rapture on NPR's The Writer's Almanac. It amounted to conceptual rapture for me, worthy of serious meditation:
In the desert, a traveler
returning to his family
is surprised
by a wild beast.
To save himself
from the fierce animal,
he leaps into a deep well
empty of water.
But at the bottom
is a dragon, waiting
with open mouth
to devour him.
The unhappy man,
not daring to go out
lest he should be
the prey of the beast,
not daring to jump
to the bottom
lest he should be
devoured by the dragon,
clings to the branch
of a bush growing
in the cracks of the well.
Hanging upon the bough,
he feels his hands
weaken, yet still
he clings, afraid
of his certain fate.
Then he sees two mice,
one white, the other black,
moving about the bush,
gnawing the roots.
The traveler sees this
and knows that he must
inevitably perish, that he will
never see his sons again.
But while thus hanging
he looks about and sees
on the leaves of the bush
some drops of honey.
These leaves
he reaches with his tongue
and licks the honey off,
with rapture.
Sunday, June 21, 2009 at 08:08PM 
This is a work in progress made from a watercolor painting, scanned, detailed in Photoshop and filtered with diffuse glow. More work is needed, and I will post progress when it happens.
Friday, June 5, 2009 at 06:52AM "The Romans read places like faces, as outward revelations of inner living spirit. Each place (like each person) had its individual Genius - which might manifest itself, on occasion, as a snake."
The Poetics of Gardens by Charles W. Moore, William J. Mitchell and William Turnbull
************************
I have taken to reading places during the last few years and find myself usually reading alone. It does not seem to be a Western value to "read places" to find its "inner living spirit." So I am heartened to know that my "reading" of places is not indicative of a loose screw, rather participation in a tradition that dates back to the Roman Empire. Most friends dismissively flip that rational Western hand and pronounce that they do not "be-lieve" in that kind of stuff.
Still, how does one explain perfectly still chandeliers in a nave except for one lurching, swinging (first clockwise, then counter-clockwise)?
How can we understand how a place grips and exerts energy on the soul? What are the energies there, and how do we find words, much less appropriate responses, to the energies of individual Genius that claw or stroke our emotions, influence our thinking and alternately leave us be and take us over? How do we define these energies and determine whether they are friend or foe, out to nourish or destroy us? How many of us know the disguises of evil? Is the only way to be delivered from evil to walk through hell?
I don't care what Western hand flips in my face. I know the power of place, both good and evil, so I approach places with caution these days. I watch where I go because I do not only think - I know - that demons dwell in places of beauty, and knowing this keeps me from sitting beneath swinging chandeliers.
Are there any swinging chandeliers over your head? Have you been seduced lately?
