Before Daybreak

"It is a habit of my life always to be out of the house before daybreak. There are sights and sounds, there is a glory on the world then that it hardly wears at any other time. And I treasure the memories of things seen and heard then." Archibald Rutledge from Home By the River

I totally agree with Mr. Rutledge. I can count on one hand the number of times in a year that I miss the sunrise on any given day. It's the loveliest time, so quiet not even the birds are awake yet. It's a hovering between two worlds not unlike the ebb tide; a suspension of time almost mystical.

Down By The River Side

This week I've been taking every road I know that crosses the Ogeechee River trying to find a 'Kodak moment' for an exhibition coming up at the end of May that'll benefit a local organization called The RiverKeepers. They're dedicated to cleaning up our local river, and our art association wanted to draw attention to them and raise a little money in the process.

The above three are the best ones so far. Each person can submit up to three works of art for entry into the exhibition. If they sell, a portion of the proceeds will go to the RiverKeepers organization. I love entering these local contests! Wish me luck or good providence.

I'm On Instacanvas!

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My photographs can be seen and bought now on Instacanvas. Check out my gallery, and if you see something you can't live without? Well, you know what to do!


https://my.instacanv.as/gallery

Xanadu Gallery-Scottsdale, AZ

www.xanadugallery.com/Art/ArtistGallery.asp?ArtistID=3336.

Check out the above link as I am now officially included in Xanadu's on-line gallery. I'll be adding about one new piece a week. I'm pretty excited to be included, so check it out!

Photographic Redos

I consider myself more of a photographer than a painter, but painting just won't let go of me. One of my favorite things to do is to take one of my photographs and change it.

Here are two paintings that started off as photographs. The one of the ruins is the Old Sheldon Church off Highway 17 in South Carolina; pretty close to Beaufort. I've photographed it several times in different seasons. If you go anytime of the year, any season, take a container of potent bug repellant. The tiny mosquitos about carried me off last time! I was holding my camera with one hand and making flapping motions from head to foot with the other. It makes for some interesting photographs, that's for sure!

So for this technique, I took my original 4x6 color photograph,copied,and enlarged it onto gray watercolor paper. I then recolored it using watercolor pencils. The result is a finely executed watercolor painting. Since my drawing skills are pretty poor, this is a good way to let my photograph do the drawing for me.

The second painting is a watercolor using my image of a foggy morning in Virginia as a guide. The finished painting is a 5x8, so it's pretty small. I like to paint small so I can finish a painting in one quick sitting. I really don't have the patience to work on a piece for hours or days at a time. Instant gratification is the ticket for me!

I've tried many different techniques combining photography with painting which I'll share as the mood strikes. What different techniques have you tried, and were you happy with the results?

Instagram Fever

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I've only been posting, at the most, once a week. I was thinking about this and wondering why, and it dawned on me; I've joined Instagram! It's my new obsession. Does anyone reading this post on Instagram? I'll tell you, it's addicting. It's like a mini-Facebook only way more fun.

You take a photo with your smartphone and then post it to the Instagram app. You may write a descriptive sentence if you'd like. People who are following you can see your photo, like it, or make a comment. It's just another way to connect with people in cyberspace. I'm only following a handful of people, because I don't want to be consumed with looking at everyone's new posts all day long. Mostly it's friends and friends of friends that I follow, although I am following a few unknown photographers just to see their beautiful photos. They inspire me.

What's your favorite social media on the internet? For now, mine is definitely Instagram.

The Artist's Duty

"The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world."

*Tuscan Landscape painting is by my friend Barbara Akins.

- G. K. Chesterton

Fun With Postcards

I'm participating in a postcard art swap. Here's how it works. You send in five postcards with your artwork on it. They can all be the same or five different ones. I'm sending in five different ones. It's easy to do since my medium is photography.

When the coordinator gets everyone's art, she mails our postcards to other participating artists so we receive five new postcards from around the world and one from the coordinator (she's an artist, too). That means we'll be getting six in all. I can't wait to see where they come from and what medium the artists will be using.

The clever person who thought of this idea is Kat Sloma. Her blog is Kat Eye Studio. I can't get the link to work, but you can look it up on Google. Sorry! Her blog has some good ideas for photography. She's generous and likes to help people. Check her out!

Simplicity or Multiplicity?

More from Gift From The Sea: "Life today in America is based on the premise of ever-widening circles of contact and communication. It involves not only family demands, but community demands, national demands, international demands on the good citizen, through social and cultural pressures, through newspapers, magazines, radio programs, political drives, charitable appeals, and so on. My mind reels with it. What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. It puts the trapeze artist to shame. Look at us.

We run a tight rope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head.

This is not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of. It leads not to unification but to fragmentation. It does not bring grace, it destroys the soul. And this is not only true of my life. I am forced to conclude, it is the life of millions of women in America. I stress America, because today, the American woman more than any other has the privilege of choosing such a life.

Woman in large parts of the civilized world has been forced back by war, by poverty, by collapse, by the sheer struggle to survive, into a smaller circle of immediate time and space, immediate family life, immediate problems of existence. The American woman is still relatively free to choose the wider life."

She really knows how to nail a problem, doesn't she? I'm truly glad that we American women have choices, but for me, I have to choose simplicity. When I widen my circle too much, I get fragmented and frazzled. None of my pieces are beneficial to anyone. If I want to be whole, I must have a simple life, and that mostly means staying at home.

Ever since school has been out and I've been able to stay home more, the difference has been amazing! I'm much calmer and can actually complete a thought. Maybe I even get to write it down in a journal or blog post. This is the way I need/want to live.
I'm going to spend July and the first two weeks of August getting my heels dug in so that when school starts I can hang on to this way of life.

And to think Anne wrote her book BEFORE the internet and social media were invented. I wonder what her book would say if it were written now?

More Images From the Amish

Reflections

We don't need thousands of photographs of reflections. We need thousands of moments to reflect in between each photograph.
~ Jim Austin ~

Oklahoma!

This week we're visiting our soldier son and his wife at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. I've never been to Oklahoma before. I'm surprised at how much it reminds me of Colorado. We've got one more day here and then we'll start the two-day trip back home. I read one book on the way up and hope to read the one for my bookgroup on Friday on the way home.

More images to come...

Williamsburg Watercolor

I took this photo at the Powhatan Plantation outside Williamsburg where we usually stay. As ya'll probably already know, I'm a sucker for fog and impressionistic images.

Here I tried re-creating it in watercolors. I haven't viewed them side by side, but as I'm looking at them, I didn't capture the right colors of purple that was in the photograph.

I also felt that I had to make the road more distinct or the whole thing would have been a dark blob. I'm still happy with the outcome. After all, I wasn't striving for photographic realism. It makes for a good excuse, anyway.

Lambie and Monk Monk

I had this sweet little two-year-old living with me all last week, so of course we had to do a photo session. I've taken photos of his older three brothers legs around the same age, so it was his turn. There's nothing sweeter than chubby toddler legs. His 'monk monk' got in the photo, too. His favorite thing is to sniff the tag. Kids are so funny!

His mama had a favorite lamb. She liked to put it's left ear up to her nose and breathe through the fabric. I replaced the pink lining of that ear three times.

One time at her house I asked her where Lambie was, and she said, "In the attic, I think?" I told her in no uncertain terms to go rescue Lambie right that minute and put it in the nursery for her children to love.

Lambie and I have been through a lot together. He's been left in Tennessee at my parents' house, and we had to go back after traveling for an hour. He was with Laurel when she drank poison, and some got spilled on him. A kind friend's sister washed him until the chemical smell could only faintly be smelled. He helped in Laurel's recovery by staying by her side day and night.

I carefully took apart that left ear three separate times, shopped for the perfect matching fabric, and remade it so she wouldn't know the difference.

Yes, Lambie and I have been a bond. Relegated to the attic indeed!

Books Read in 2011

I've been keeping a list of the books I read each year for a long time. This year's total was 75. Not too bad, I guess.

Some of my favorites were:

The Pace of a Hen-Josephine Moffett Benton

The Year of the Great Grandmother-Madeleine L'Engle

Shakespeare by Another Name-Mark Anderson

And the Miss Julia books by Ann B. Ross. I read several of them. They are so Southern and so funny. I was always laughing out loud. I especially enjoyed listening to some on audio as the accents are hilarious.

I'll post soon about my reading goals for this year. I'm still trying to decide some things.

Around the House-Part 4, Final Installment, Maybe

As I was shooting all these photos, I realized that I like hardware and furniture with swirly things. Every dark piece of furniture, either cherry or mahogany, has flourishes on it.

And yes, that label on the bookcase, 270 CHURCH HISTORY, is a Dewey Decimal System number. I admit it...I have my non-fiction books arranged in that system. I had the greatest fun organizing it, too. I'm a book nerd and order freak of a high order! I'm not ashamed.