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Pippi's Got A Gun
oil on canvas
10 x 30 x .75 inches
This item is unframed but ready to hang. 
(click on the image to purchase)


Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
​- AEROSMITH

Pippi Longstocking has become my poster child for dissent.  

Something about her straight-shootin' (pun intended) manner, her refusal to be put down by established ways of doing things and her feisty attitude toward rules and bureaucratic nonsense has her firmly in my pocket of protest.

 
And it is a good time for women to have strong role models.  Women who tell it like it is.  Women who say NO.  Women who give you that look (you know the one) when the bullshit-o-meter has gone up to ten (or eleven, if you're a fan of Spinal Tap).

The appearance of a gun in this piece surprises me, because I am not a fan of guns in general.  It gives Pippi power, maybe.  The ability to make folks listen. (I've been listening to her in the studio for weeks, and she has quite a lot to say! ) Perhaps the gun symbolizes the power of voice, of action and of intent.  A way of communicaing that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH ALREADY.  

A little more animation fun!  This time with music!

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Marvin Makes Messes
pen and ink on wood panel
8 x 12 x .75 inches
This item is unframed but ready to hang.
(click on the image to purchase)

Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived...Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation... Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend. What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here. - Anne Lamott

I am learning to be messy.

Messy should be the first instinct of humanity.  Get your hands sticky, get your feet muddy, get your hair tangled, get chocolate on your face.  Now smile. :)

As a child, the only thing I was praised for was my tidy room.  Because the one thing I was that my siblings were not was tidy.  They embraced the mess, celebrated it, perfected the art of messiness.  I cleaned my room.  

I now understand tidiness was my way of trying to control something​ in a situation that was out of control altogether.

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​Even now, when I am anxious or stressed, I start cleaning.  In the studio that means organizing supplies, putting gesso on substrates, rearranging things.  What it does NOT mean is painting or writing.  Lamott's point is solid - messes are the artist's true friend​.  It is a sure sign for me that I am deep in a good exploration if the studio is a mess.  Who cares?  There is paint to be flung with reckless abandon!

​​Where are you on the mess spectrum?  Are you a morning bedmaker?  Do you have a floordrobe?  Is there paint on your hands?  Briars in your hair?  Ice cream on your face?  Leave a comment below!  As a bonus,  you'll be entered in the June Reader Giveaway!  

"Rabbit Fighter" - oil on canvas, 15 x 30 x .75 inches.  Ready to hang.  Available here, at Artfinder and at Blue Thumb.


Shady politician in my bed
Tying bolts of lightning to his head
Call me Rabbit Fighter you know its true
'Cause babe I'll Rabbit fight all over you

Tramp king of the city he's my friend
Moondog's just a prophet to the end
Call me Rabbit Fighter you know its true
'Cause babe I'll Rabbit fight all over you
- from RABBIT FIGHTER by T. REX

Random rabbits continue to multiply in the studio, including this guy, who surely can hold his own in any altercation.  I'm pretty sure he just clobbered a few villains down the road.  Rabbits as home security?

​For all of us who are feeling a bit feisty, prickly and provoked by the state of things in the news, it is a good idea to have a rabbit fighter in which to park our inner brawler.  Each morning I enter the studio, give him my growing stack of grievances and let him go to work.  He never reports back to me, so I'm not quite sure what he has done.   But I feel better and he doesn't seem to mind.  :)

​I can't swear to it, but it is entirely possible he has grown a bit larger each day.  Hmmmmmm.

"Syncopation of Grief and Gladness" - oil on paper, 21 x 21.5  Available here, at Artfinder and at Bluethumb.

​Autumn is the season of ambivalence and reconciliation, soft-carpeted training ground for the dissolution that awaits us all, low-lit chamber for hearing more intimately the syncopation of grief and gladness that scores our improbable and finite lives — each yellow burst in the canopy a reminder that everything beautiful is perishable, each falling leaf at once a requiem for our own mortality and a rhapsody for the unbidden gift of having lived at all - THE MARGINALIAN

The reign of the random rabbits continues in the studio, where a fluffle of white lagomorphs choreographs a dance tribute to fall.

Even as the world and an abundance of unsettling, angst-invoking events and news crowd my brain and press my spirit into little boxes of anxiety, the process of imagining and creating releases the pressure and allows a deep inhale and exhale.   The rabbit hole of information saturation takes a twist and turns into an expansive cavern of color and movement and paint.  Oh yes.

This piece was inspired by combining the worlds of Edgar Degas and Fritz Scholder, a mash-up that delights me in a similar way to how hearing a mash-up of songs makes my heart jump gleefully.

​After all, jumping is what rabbits do best. :)

READER PERK ALERT!

Take 50% off any one item now through November 11 with coupon code READERPERKS50.

 (The big ONCE-A-YEAR SALE begins mid-November, and this coupon lets you grab your favorite piece before anyone else even thinks about it.  Hooray!)

The reign of random rabbits in the studio begins.

They stomp their feet, elbow out the monsters and assert dominion over the paint.  Who am I to argue with assertive  lagomorphs?

​As it often happens, the painting revealed itself after completion.  As I absent-mindedly searched for words of rabbit inspiration, I happened upon many references to this book, The Constant Rabbit.  (I have not read it, but now I must!). The quote jumped out and grabbed me by the shoulders, and said LOLA! TO TRAVEL JOYOUSLY IS BETTER THAN TO ARRIVE!  Rabbit wisdom was just what I needed.

Tralala (or nhffnfnfifh) off I go, traveling joyously without worrying about where I am going or if I shall ever arrive.

"Once Upon a Time When You Were Queen" - oil on cradled panel, 18 x 24 x 1.  Ready to hang.   Available here, at Artfinder and at Bluethumb.

We've arrived at the penultimate post from Wonderland.  It has been a long adventure down the rabbit hole, where Alice whispered inspiration in the artist's ear while the Queen of Hearts meanly criticized all the work and made impotent threats.  

But you well know, creative humans, how Alice and the Queen are always playing tug of war with our insides, even if they aren't the subject of the creating.

Some consider the Cheshire Cat to be Alice's spiritual guide in Wonderland - illuminating, pointing out the mysteries, leading to the answers.    Perhaps as creatives we've got our own flashlight kitties helping us navigate the choppy waters between inspiration and execution (a double entendre there - is execution the process of painting  - or the inner critic's 'off with her head'?)

​If so, this particular cat has been softly purring, languidly pointing and randomly spouting quips that somehow, somehow kept the path cleared from too much debris and allowed the body of work to build and grow.  

​And so, there will be one more, and then off we go to explore...somewhere else.  

Where has July gone?

Our celebration of wolves, women and art runs for one more week - A Song For The Hunted ends July 31.

In appreciation of all of you who commented, supported, encouraged, collected and shared our art and stories, all remaining show pieces are now 20% off!  And, as always, domestic shipping is free.

Thank you so much for supporting our annual collaboration!

We're back in the rabbit hole with Alice today.  And she's quite serious and stern.  Formulating and then reversing her opinions, fiercely defending her right to change her mind about things.

And it is important to be able to change our minds (hearts, habits, lives, professions, directions, positions and beliefs).  To be otherwise implies we already know everything and cannot possibly learn something that might make us say "AHA!"  It is an old adage, for sure, but the more I learn, the more I know just how little I know.

And that includes our Alice.  Whose creation story is perhaps laced with unpleasantness and undertones of possible impropriety.  The deeper we go, the more that is revealed.  She feels it, this particular Alice.  She stares us in the eye and demands to be seen.

The long passage down through the rabbit hole has landed us at the feet of the Queen of Hearts. 

She's terrifying, absolute in her rhetoric and yet, ultimately, just a playing card - powerless to actually harm anyone.   Kind of like the inner critic, yes?

​My inner Queen of Hearts shouts "off with her head!" over many things, both professional and personal.  She's very loud, rather bossy, and takes up a lot of space between me and the other side of whatever she's yelling about.  It is a challenge when the thing that trips you up is your own inner villain.  Looking at this piece helps me shush her - I can replace her stern visage with an image of my inner cheerleader.  Who might look something like Alice. :). More to come.

It's time for the JUNE READER GIVEAWAY!  Leave a comment below about how you manage your own inner critic and be entered in a chance to win a small piece of art FREE!  

The Caterpillar and Alice have captured the essence of transformation in this conversation - we are not the same at the end of the day as we were at the beginning.  Nor the week, the month, the year, the lifetime.  And good thing, too.  We can grow, change, adapt, morph and meander into the beings we are at this moment, even as we are moving into the next iteration of ourselves.  I am not myself says Alice.  Herself (and myself) is not a constant.  It is (we are)  ever flowing, ever changing.  

​Let's go back in time - take a look at the first ever Alice movie (right).