30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 10

"Blooms" - mixed media on reclaimed wood, 

​FATHER: One day, lad, all this will be yours!
ERBERT: What, the curtains?
FATHER: No, not the curtains, lad. All that you can see! Stretched out over the hills and valleys of this land! This'll be your kingdom, lad!
HERBERT: But, Mother--
FATHER: Father, I'm Father.
HERBERT: But Father, I don't want any of that.
FATHER: Listen, lad. I've built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. All the kings said I was daft to build a castle in a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. An' that's what your gonna get, lad -- the strongest castle in these islands.
             - from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Scene 26

Florida.  Our castle built in the swamp.  Much of this part of the state was reclaimed from the Everglades.  Irma wants to return it to the gators and otters and mosquitos.  And right this moment, I would gladly give it back to them in exchange for safe passage outa here.

What do you do to pass the time in hurricane limbo?  Thanks to modern technology, we can prepare well in advance, then hunker down to wait.  One of the games my husband and I are enjoying right now is called "Let's Move to Nebraska."  In this game (which we entirely made up, just today) we plan what it would take to move us to higher lands where there is no risk of Irma or any other watery wench messing with our homestead.  Every commentary on the conditions outside now ends in "but not in Nebraska!" which causes much laughter and stress reduction.  What do you think?  By the end of this hurricane I just might have planned our first trip scouting out potential towns.

In the meantime, let's make lemonade in a storm, shall we?  This piece was inspired by the artist Staci Swider and her article in this month's Cloth Paper Scissors magazine, in which she describes how to use the dried up paint skins in your palette to make flowers.  I use a full sized metal painter's tray for my palette (it hooks nicely onto my work table) and it had thick layers of paint dried in it.  I scraped them up and used gel medium and a chopstick to skewer the pieces into flower petals.  What fun!  (In truth, I created this piece in advance of the storm, knowing my supplies would be safely tucked away.)

At this very moment, hurricane winds swirl around us, the lake water is rising and debris is flying.  Tornado warning alerts are dinging on our phones, and we scurry in an out of our safe room between them.  We still have power (for now), but the wild bronco ride has officially begun.  Yeeehaaaaaw.