Orange bean soup-

The painting coming along-Pasted some candy wrapping paper-very appropriate-I am thinking-

But I am uncertain-
I know what I don't want- but I can't viualize the end until I get there-
I will leave this one in the back burner for a little while-meanwhile I worked on some little ones- new ideas flying all over the place-sometimes they fly away before I have the time to catch them...-

Then, huge piles of laundry-neglected ironing-

- daydreaming of some fast food place to take my hungry family to-

but I did,very sensibly, cook bean soup-at least it was a lovely orange colour-

there-

Inez Storer- here

and lovely Kylie is having a birthday-

Happy Birthday Kylie!!!!

Monday at the studio

Some are 'finished' and patiently waiting in their quiet, 'other' room-

Some have just started- actually not just. This started as a drawing in my 'accountant's sketchbook' a few weeks ago. I had taken Lucy and a friend to a school park and drew while they played. I loved what was happening on the page but I wanted to take it further ,so I cut and pasted some of the shapes on a wooden board. I drew some more. I really adore the figure of the child on the swing. I feel it works eactly as I would like it to. Which is rather rare, so I don't want to mess it up...

Saying that, I know that the first layers of colour are going to take me a few steps back because I will definitely mess it up and it will be horrible but there the challenge lies. How to keep that original freshness? how to keep the original story- lets face it -there was a story- but how can I take it beyond that story too?

That's when I have to 'stretch'- push myself to go beyond what feels safe-Whipe out a whole series of shapes because they are just that, isolated shapes and offer nothing to the whole-And then ask myself all sorts of questions about how do go further, and further yet?

So there goes a whole day of work and everything looks much worse than when I started off- which obviously is a good thing!(because I did take the risks and eventually it will come around and behave itself-somewhat...)

I also really want to say that I have been reading Alexandra's blog and I have come to really respect her fearless attitude, her clarity of thought and her passion about her art-

And one more lovely and newly discovered (by me) artist: helen carnac. She has a blog too but I haven't really seen that yet.

Hugs-