sit a spell

after Matisse

stolen view

As the new house reared up next door,

I watched my view up and disappear.

Nothing left now but a memory.

So I painted over my in-progress landscape
with a house.
It looks awful, too.

tangerine man

Happy Friday.

meanwhile

I noticed on my stats page

 that this blog is close to flat-lining.

I am still here, painting away.

And always sketching.

I know... it would help to post.

martian

George Nick once said,

"Paint more like a Martian."

So I did.

barn door sunset

A simple iPhone Drawcast sketch 

out the barn door.

Dog People at the Dog Park

shshshhhhh!

a Mardi Gras self-portrait

studio elf

Do any of you have studio elves?
Or is it just me?

Elves are hard to peg.
They ride the fine line in between things.

So while you may not necessarily
want them on your team,
you sure as hell don't want them
playing for the other side.
Just sayin.

I inherited this one.

He previously lorded it over two other studios that I know of.

I am the only surviving artist.

Hmmm...

Meet MoJo Jim.

fish on the floor

After forty-four years here,

my oldest best Boulder friend up and left town.

Put her dog and her cat and her fish into her car

 and moved to Apalachicola,

 of all places.

The fish were so thrilled,

 it took one of em just a couple of days

to launch itself up out of the bowl

and onto the floor.

I used Caran d'Ache pencils 

to memorialize the poor little tyke.

mask raid

blind alley

vision quest

Two days ago,
Ken Elliot generously posted a YouTube
 about the blind artist Sargy Mann.

I'll see you and raise you, Ken,
 with Lennart Anderson.

WK

When the sumac by the garage turned,

we started calling him Wolf Kahn.

WK for short.

the reefer door

In our house, there are few photo albums.

Any image worth saving winds up on

the refrigerator door.

Once there, it becomes a part of an ever-changing collage,

Now and then, I take a picture of it.
The top right one was of an especially fine door. 

Here's part of this week's incarnation:

I think every reefer door should have 

at least one piece of kid's art on it,

In this case, the artist is my grand niece, Julianna.

The Zappa bumpersticker 

is the only political schmear I can stomach.

What's on your reefer door?

heart of the matter

This is the heart of one of our heirloom tomatoes.

Here it is, past the middle of October, 

and we still haven't had a frost,

so the garden is producing like a jungle.

Strange fruit.

Not to belabor the point, but I still can't see well.

Next week, I have an appointment with

 a corneal specialist.

I'm hoping he can get to the heart of the matter. 

As they say,

 the emeffing saga continues.

the dark side of the sprinkler

Not a painting painting yet,

just proof I'm still here.

seymour

I know it's corny,

 but he says his name is 

Seymour.

He popped out of the depths

 of this last underpainting.

I'm hoping he's right.

piece of cake

Shelley Smart grew up just up the coast from me.

Or down the coast, as they say on the coast.

I never met her there. Still haven't.

That's because I met her here in blogland.

When I had mentioned Day's lobster rolls in a post, 

she popped up like clam squirt.

Said she grew up with the Day's kids,

went to school with them,

while I was growing up on their lobster rolls. 

Wicked small world.

Shelley comments that she's also having 

cataract surgery in a couple of weeks.

If I were there (Oxnard, I think), we'd do lunch.

 I'd buy you a lobster roll, Shell, 

and tell you it's 

a piece of cake.

How ironic... there's an eye in the window.

facing the day

This underpainting will have to do for now.

Actually, I think I like it as is.

Best not touch it.

I don't know... 

near as I can tell, it looks fine.

Yah?

tenacity

One month after cataract surgery,

my right eye is still wrong. 

In addition to blurry, it's now also red, itchy and swollen.

Turns out I'm allergic to the eye drops.

Tenacity 

will keep me hanging on until I can see again.

This simple reminder is my gift to you:
Take nothing for granted;

get grateful now!

just another rainbow

I know, I know.

A rainbow.

But it's never just another one

when it lands in your yard.

Stranger than strange

when viewed with 

a clear yellow eye and a blurry blue eye.

Sort of an experimental

 twisted sister color school.

new blues

Last April, I switched to abstract.

Just as well.

I had cataract surgery this past week.

Only my right eye, this time.

My left-eye vision looks old and yellow; 

the right eye shows bright new blues.

Didn't Monet see new blues before his lights went out?

Now Google insinuates that my account's been hijacked. 

Never a dull moment.

sugar plums

Midsummer dreaming...

A neighbor's artful Barbie collection

 hangs on her garden fence

so dogs can dream 

of dancing sugar plums.

Makes my dog

positively lecherous.

Halle-agua!

After spending the last 10 months

waltzing with the waters,

pumping and drying and digging,

running from it and chasing it,

the new well up at the ranch is finally in

 and there's finally water in the house.

Did I say "finally"? 

Finally.

Sing halle-agua!!!