I am busy reorganizing my collection of sketches which is threatening to bury me. Jim-Bob is helping out.

Back when I was trying to tell myself how little art really meant to me, I used to doodle people and animals as part of the landscape. living in the mountains, surrounded by nature, It’s almost impossible not to hear voices from the forest and imagine the spirits of people who are here before close by.

When I look back at those drawings now, however, I see something melancholy about them.

Last night, I was more than melancholy. I’ve gone to bed early thinking I’d get a full eight hours of sleep and ended up tossing and turning until almost midnight. I had me the classic mistake of looking at social media before going to bed, and I could not force myself to sleep against a backdrop of dread.

So I got up. I went to my studio.

I didn’t have any pictures I wanted to paint from, and I’d spent the entire day inside doing tech-support. For some reason I squeezed out a bit of yellow ocher onto the pallet. that I added white and orange and cadmium yellow. And I started to paint.

One of my old trees started to form against a sunshine filled sky, and I recognized or mild pieces. this time, however, there was no melancholy. There’s no ambivalence in my life about claiming my creativity. And that creativity, last night, had nothing to do with working as an artist, it had to do with art pushing away bread.

It had to do with blowing sunshine. And sometimes you just have to blow sunshine up your own skirt no matter how silly it seems.

Last night after work I went back to Bedlam Farm to finish a painting I had started earlier. The crowd had left for the day, so I walked around to Maria’s studio to see if it was okay to set up the easel. Her studio was dark, and, since I had texted earlier to warn them an art stalker might be setting up shop for a bit by their pasture, I decided not to knock on the back door and disturb the family. I had just opened my pochade and tripod when I heard Maria coming from the other side of the house.

“I thought I saw something go by the window,” she laughed. “You can come in! Abrah and Susan are still here!”

“Oh, thanks,” I said. I had dinner plans with my two partners in crime later in the evening, but I also didn’t want to intrude. “I’m just finishing up the piece.”

She laughed again and we chatted about the open house. It had been a bit quieter than previous open houses, possibly due to the increased number of events in town and the wet weather. Maria mentioned that one of my partners had initially described this open house as ‘lackluster’ due to the crowd size.

“I thought it was cozy,” I said. From my point of view it had been. There had been other artists making art, poets reading their work, and Jon and Maria’s sheep herding and shearing demonstrations which are always fascinating. It was like an incredibly authentic and intimate country maker faire. But I said, “I couldn’t get in the school house studio to say goodbye earlier. Remember, it doesn’t take a huge crowd to enjoy and sell art, just the right one.” Maria laughed and went back into hang out with Abrah, Susan and Jon until it was time for three of us to leave for dinner in town.

Abrah , and now Susan, and I are the girls you knew in first grade who had to be seated on opposite sides of the room for anyone else to get work done. Fortunately, for the other restaurant patrons, the three of us were seated between other people in our party at the table for 8. Other members of our party were uproariously funny, but it wasn’t until the three of us were standing on the sidewalk outside the restaurant that the volume on the laughter was in danger of alerting the Cambridge police.

“You are such a brown-noser,” Abrah teased me. “Blowing sunshine up Maria’s skirt!”

“I was telling it like it was,” I shot back.

“You were blowing sunshine,” Susan chimed in.

“Okay, it was sunshiney truth, because that’s what good friend’s do,” I said, sounding a bit drunk from my three iced teas and an afternoon of being around joyfully creative people. “They blow sunshine.” We devolved into first grade giggles and other uproarious debates about partners and theories about the shape of the earth. We broke it up by nine (i’m finding when you’re almost 50, nine p.m. is the new two a.m.)before anyone tried to tell us to clear out.

As I drove home, though, I decided, I was blowing sunshine at Maria earlier, and that doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. It had been a blissful afternoon for everyone I had met. People from all walks of life had convened to talk about making things rather than tearing people or things down. Artists and poets found receptive audiences, and, if this year is like other years’ past, at least one person in that smaller but happy crowd became aware of their own creative spark.

This morning when I met my partners in crime for breakfast, we were still giggling about my new catch phrase, but even in the cold rainy light of day, we were all feeling a bit of sunshine from the weekend’s events. As I hugged Abrah goodbye, I told her, “I’m planning on blowing sunshine your way until you come back.”

It’s a silly mantra, but I’m a silly gal, and I think I’ll keep it.

So Blow Sunshine!

There are a couple of paintings that came home from the open house at Bedlam Farm. Three out of seven originals sold, so I was happy. The weekend was about selling art, but I was much more about sharing creative sparks and hopefully lighting them and others.

You can find the painting above, and if you other originals on my Etsy store here.

Prints and Mugs of this painting are available on Etsy.

I took a two hour break from my day job today to do a demo painting over at the open house at Bedlam Farm hosted by author Jon Katz and Fiber Artist Maria Wulf in Cambridge. The open house was already in full swing past the time I got there. Some people were watching a sheep herding with Jon’s dog Red, while others browses Maria’s Gallery, shopping for art by one of the ten or twelve artists she’s brought together for this event.

I had to be back at work promptly at two, so I set up my pochade box to get started. It took two seconds to realize I had forgotten the canvas. I panicked for a second, then texted the Thing1 to see he could bring me one. he was waiting for his girlfriend her to arrive before he came over to the open house, so I went searching for Maria to see if she might have a piece of scrap wood i could paint. as luck would have it, she had fence post it looked like it turned into a sign with raised lettering on one side. It was perfect. I took a few minutes to decide if I should paint on the side with the raised lettering or the flat plank but finally figured painting on board was enough of a new experience and dusted off the flat side start painting.

It was a new experience. The brush and would feel different, so I got out my pallet knives, which are usually use for tree leaves or grass but have never used to complete an entire painting. Are used a stiff brush to sketch out a little bit of a roadmap, and then begin mixing my sky.

I didn’t know exactly where I was going to go. My palette knife technique still needs work, so from the moment I slept first bit of paint on the board, the painting was an experiment. It was a series of what my favorite painter, Bob Ross, would call a “happy accidents.” The thing about letting happy accidents happen is that you start to let go of the idea that a painting needs to be perfect or even good, and just focus on the scene in front of you and trying to connect to it, trying to hold the connection.

it was amazingly fun, and different from what I usually do. I go with the philosophy that I may not be doing the right thing, but this is how I’m learning to paint, and actually kind of like the results today. If they still like it after having slept on it for 24 hours, I’ll be giving the painting to Jon for having giving me a kick in the figurative backside earlier this summer to get my painting back in gear and to Maria for being the fairy god-sister (she’s way too young to be a fairy godmother) to all of these creative people that she has brought together over the years.

I’ve watched a lot of watercolor videos over the years. Many of them tell you that you need to plan when you start painting so you know where you’re going to go. Even books and videos on oil encourage artist to create that road map, and it is helpful. What I found today, and what I found quite a few times in the last few weeks, is that the roadmap can be a guide, but sometimes you just have to get off the main road to learn and make something new.

Under the Apple Tree, Oil, 11×14

This weekend is the open house at Bedlam Farm in Cambridge, New York. It’s hosted by Maria Wulf, the fiber artist and best-selling author Jon Katz as a celebration of art and brought life.

It’s become a semi annual ritual for me, a chance to show and sell art and connect with other artists friends connected by a love of rural life.

Wednesday I started to practice paining because I’ll be doing a demo on Saturday. I’ve just started painting outside, and experience is phenomenal. I had the boys with me when I started this painting so I had to take a few notes with my brush and a bit of ultramarine finish the bulk of it at home.

One note I made sure to take what is a clump of orange in the middle of the field turning yellow and brown. It was a cloudy day, and it seem to be the main source of color, but, even three days before the start of the open house/festival, surrounded by artists arriving with their work and chatting with Maria who has been waving her wand and share in the work of local artists for many years now, the day seemed pretty colorful.

Tree1 & Tree2

One of the things I’m loving about oil is how easy it is to fix things you don’t like. If you don’t like a fence, paint over it. If you don’t like a shadow, add a little light to it. If you really don’t like a painting, put the canvas to the side to be painted over and made into a new clean slate. If you set one painting aside and try to start over, you may even end up with two paintings for the work of one.

Both of these, and a few of their friends, will be for sale next weekend at the Open House at Bedlam Farm in Cambridge, NY.

Sunday after work, I grabbed my DIY pochade and headed out towards West Arlington chase the last bit of light for the weekend. It’s almost sweater weather, the sun was filtering through leaves it up just begun to turn, and Vermont looks like a fantasy land at this time of year.

I was having hard time deciding, so I finally pulled into the parking lot near the Norman Rockwell covered bridge walked by the nearby church to set up my easel. I knew I had about an hour before the sun dove behind the mountainSo I started blocking in color quickly, trying to keep the leaves of the tree in front of me between me and the setting sun.

A Leaf peeper Wandered over to my spot and murmured, “Lovely color.”

“Thank you,“ said, smiling but can you bring my brush moving.

“Oil?“

I nodded. She smiled. “I paid with oil too.“

We started chatting about oil and watercolor and the fall colors coming in. She was up from Massachusetts for the day getting ready to head back. Exchanged names and I got her card. She asked if I was showing my work anywhere. Then, looking at the sun sinking quickly, she realized she needed to go.

I had about five minutes of sun left after our little exchange, So I painted in the mountains and the closer hills as quickly as possible, knowing I have to do the barn at home.

It was my first time trying plein air. I wish I’d had more time, but standing in the cold all night by the river chatting with a complete stranger about things that were completely non-technical and apolitical, I knew that one hour well spent was worth as much as an entire day painting in the perfect spot.

I was a kid when my first #metoo episode came at the invading hands of a boy who was almost a man. I did tell, and the people I told believed me, but nothing else happened. Years and another #metoo moment later, I asked one of those people I had told why they had said done nothing.

“That’s just something guys do,” he said.

This week, as the debate about the veracity of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations Intensified leading up to her testimony, I heard people of good faith honestly questioning her story. I know my own experience biases me in favor of listening to other potential survivors, but I can accept that, absent any physical evidence, these cases do come down to the credibility of each party. What I refuse accept is a familiar claim – that this is something all boys do – that has echoed as the debate has raged, .

Thirty years ago, my reaction to hearing the rationale “boys will be boys” — at the tacit expense of the girls — was impotent rage at a society where girls and women are supposed to accept that some of us will be collateral damage. Scrap.

A little over 18 years ago, I was pregnant with Thing1, having learned would be a boy. It was barely a decade since I’d come to a reckoning with my past, and the Big Guy was one of the few men whom I trusted.

I had always secretly hoped I would have a little girl, but the moment I found out a little boy was on the way, I knew I had to change my feelings about men. I couldn’t raise a man if I saw good men as the exceptions to an archaic rule steeped in privilege that dehumanizes women and infantilizes men. I had to start seeing every man as an individual with the same capacity for good and evil as women. I had to tell myself and, through my actions, my son every day that the bad acts of a few men did not define the man he would become, let alone men in general.

So when I heard yet another commentator on one of the news channels repeat a version of that toxic mantra, I felt angry for the women and girls who been and will continue to be collateral damage. I was also, however, angry on behalf of the wonderful men I’m privileged to know who would never see the act of violating a woman’s autonomy and humanity as a masculine rite of passage.

Most of the men I know have emphatically rejected that idea in person and on social media. Much has been said this week about how damaging that mentality is to women, but as a mother of men, as a wife of an imperfect but steadfast and caring man, I found the conversation has not only fueled by my own memories of trauma but anger at the idea that there are some awful things that boys just do because that’s who they are.

Some boys do, but I think most boys are better than that.