puptrait

Sometimes I paint a puptrait

of my dog.

No, really...

joe

Our good friend Joe Kennedy,

 archeologist extraordinaire of all things Polynesian,

especially all things Hawaiian,

died in his sleep a month ago.

Considering Joe's larger-than-lifestyle,

 my portrait is not exactly a likeness.

But it's close enough to remind me of him.

Besides, he'd be glad to see the pounds gone.

scarecrows

My neighbor has scarecrows

in her garden,

so crows come from all over

 to feast their beady eyes on them.

The crows scare them,

 and they run for cover.

That's why we call them scarecrows.

in the key of blue

Yesterday in his blog, Casey Klahn published 

an "Ode To Blue". 

I thought I would, too.

Performed on my iPhone 

"In The Key Of Blue"

chair

I put a chair out in the garden.

So far, no one has sat in it.

I will paint whomever does first.

red dawn

Now that the Olympics are over,

 the media has remembered that the West is burning.

Giant wildfires rage in

California, Oregon, Nevada, Washington and Idaho. 

Even here, the air is thick with smog, 

and the moon is orange. 

At dawn, the red sun rises

in a rare puddle. 

 Cool picture.

I love the abstraction.

Hmmm... what if I flip it?

Or, how about?... 

Just fiddlin' around over here 

in Nero-Nero-Land!

wavelet

The big waves get all the attention,

but even a wavelet is tsumatic 

to someone.

me and magritte

My reflection in my studio window.

The small square is another window

on the far side of the studio

 looking out on the far side
of the garden.

No smoke.
No mirrors.

julep

Julep,

from Middle English,

from Middle French,

from Arabic julab,

from Persian gulab,

from gul rose + ab water.

I love etymology.

And mint juleps.

high tops

I'm surrounded by stacks of trashed paintings,

scrawled notes, muddy colors and high hopes.  

Like this guy, I'm waiting for the next bright idea.

In other words, I'm stuck.

peachy

I planned to take a picture of 

this gorgeous Kokopelli peach

before I ate it.

That's been my plan all along,

all the way through the past first dozen or so.

Well, now that the season is well underway,

I'm not promising nuthin.

lunatique

rain

When the rain finally came back, 

everybody smiled.

Still are.

100 artists

Think you can't come up with a creative idea?

It might be because Shea Hembrey

 has used up all the good ones.

name that hue

I've always wondered about the people 

who think up all those names for colors.

You know, like the names on paint chips

or nail polish

or pastels.

Are they poets or painters?

Cat people or dog people?

What do they wear?

Are their living rooms beige?

Do they do drugs?

What do they eat? 

I think about them and their stories a lot.

As I look down at my toes, my mind wanders.

I mean, seriously...

just imagine the person who named this polish,

"Melon of Troy".

ending

Just when you think
there's no end in sight,
the ending of the fire without end
finally appears.

Which I suppose is
the next beginning.

hot cold push pull

Am I holding things up

or being hauled up?

Now that I think of it,
this is a better illustration of me
trying to be cool in this insane heat.
Ack!

apptitude

It's 95 degrees,

a dry wind is blowing 50 mph,

and the High Park fire continues to rage 

20 miles north of the ranch.




I'm still painting canvases,
 but I'm too distracted to finish one.



It's easier to knock out these little paintings
using the DrawCast app on my phone.

While flowers are feverish here,

I dream of the cool trees in Maine.

Apptitude is everything.

karma

http://dave6.posterous.com/dont-honk-at-old-people

whimsy

Though of unknown origin, whim is obviously a fairy word.

One dark and rainy afternoon, we decided
 on a whim
  to go for a walk around the island.

We hadn't been back since the Patriot's Day storm
 had destroyed much of it five years before.

Here is what we found...

Following the yellow

brick road

to the path around the island,

I looked into what the storm had left of the forest.

At first, it looked like a Boy Scout bivouac.

But wait... what does that little sign over there say?

Oh.

Then I began to notice little piles of
this and that here and there;
 building materials.

Looking through literally acres of trees,
I could see signs of construction everywhere.



And I mean everywhere.
No matter how nondescript, closer inspection revealed
that under almost every rock and stick and foot,
* WATCH OUT! *
 some tiny person dwelled.

Beneath a roof carefully tiled with oak leaves,
pine branch rafters spanned
a dining table made of shale.

A peek under a curl of birch bark
across a patio made of mussel shells
exposed sophisticated architecture.

Like wee hippies,
some preferred to live au natural,
in a little treehouse.

This next one cracked me up.
Apparently, some fairies live in trailers,
watch TV,
and probably microwave their TV dinners.

It always paid to scooch down to peer inside.

 

There were thousands of abodes

scattered throughout the forest.

Some were big

Some were tiny



Some had front doors

and back doors

Though privacy is to be respected,

I couldn't resist looking through the windows.

Some were charming.

Others were obviously charmed.

Offerings had been left at several.

I'll spare you the hundreds more pictures.
If these few aren't enough magic,
here's one more special sight.
We suddenly saw a tree
so unusual and powerful,

it had rightly been adorned
from top to bottom.

It's a whole story unto itself.

A story for another day.