Oh geez.

Coffyn might have peered into my mind and witnessed me seeing myself in the mirror.  Laugh lines like a hyena?  Yup.  Gleaming stripes of stretch marks? Yep.  Rooted canyons (impervious to wrinkle cream) - heck yeah.  In a world of airbrushed beauty and AI generated models, it is so tempting to find fault with all the physical evidence of every season.  But myself hears everything I think and say, and I am becoming more and more convinced that all of that self dialogue ought to be positive, accepting, celebrating and loving.  

​​Because it is all intertwined with the sediment of youth.  Young me is there.  She is the foundation of all this.  But me at 62 is the craggy, many layered cliffside with fossils poking out and compressed rock formations. built atop that sediment.  Impressive, imposing, weighty and weathered.  A triumphant monument to a full life.

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"Rabbit, Vexed" - oil on yupo, 12 x 18.5 inches.   This item is unmounted and  unframed (click on the image to purchase)

​People look at me like I'm a little strange, when I go around talking to squirrels and rabbits and stuff. That's ok. That's just ok. - BOB ROSS

Hello, shiny new year.

Let's begin with rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.   Rabbits in all their fur-clad peculiarity.

I think everyone knows about this superstition to begin each month, but in case you don't, here's the scoop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_rabbit_rabbit

Here at Malarkey Central, we have a rabbit ritual of our own: mainly, when overwhelmed by the world, use the AI bot to create images of GIANT ANGRY RABBITS and watch the worries float away.  It is quite cathartic and also results in a big folder of art inspiration images.

When your studio wall is filled with wet paintings of ballgown bots and angry rabbits, it is pretty hard to be sad.  It's the oddest party of all, and I highly recommend it.

I'm certain I say this every year at this time, but where has the year gone?  ​

It has gone into over 135 paintings, 50 blog posts, a bazillion social media posts, vats of oil paint, gesso and walnut oil.  Dozens of demolished brushes and chopsticks, rolls of paper towels, reams of butcher paper, craft paper, stacks of canvases, Yupo sheets, wood panels and more.  And that's just in the studio!

Here in the blog we've tackled a ton of tough trains of thought sprinkled with malarkey and dappled with hope, exchanged heart-felt words and connected over the waves of cyberspace.

​In the wide world, things are tumultuous and still roiling, which sends this introverted turtle scuttling for her shell, mulling what really matters.  Bodett says it well - love, purpose (something to do) and hope.

Perhaps I've stumbled upon some of these things later in life (the last third, as we say here at home), but here they are and holy wow they are gooooooooooooood.  Mmmmm, mmmmm good.  And they are an armor of sorts in a world of anxiety and unrest.  Love, purpose and hope.  A formula for happiness.

This is the final post of 2024 as our wee tiny family will be adventuring for the holidays.  Wishing you and your loves big happiness during the merry season and beyond!

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"Between Atom and Dust" - oil on copper panel, 12 x 12 x .25 inches.  SOLD

This, then, is the agreement: Learning to live is learning to love, and learning to love is learning to die — the imperative in the inevitable that renders our transience meaningful and holy. The price of this holiness is absolute humility: There is no pact to be made with the universe — we die, whether or not we agree to it, whether or not we have learned how to love in the bright interlude between atom and dust. - MARIA POPOVA

Winter is coming.

The rains and cold have settled in and made themselves right at home here in the Pacific Northwest.  The leaves have fallen, the crows are gathering at sundown and the light is soft and brief.  It's a good time to contemplate and to create.

We lost one of our crows recently (to avian pox, we believe).  He chose our home to spend his final days, perched right outside our window where we spoke to him gently and offered him treats.  And as this little loss settles into my bones, it brings back other losses, whispers of the brevity of all things and the importance of making it all count.

If Adam Picked the Apple
There would be a parade,
a celebration,
a holiday to commemorate
the day he sought enlightenment.
We would not speak of
temptation by the devil, rather,
we would laud Adam’s curiosity,
his desire for adventure
and knowing.
We would feast
on apple-inspired fare:
tortes, chutneys, pancakes, pies.
There would be plays and songs
reenacting his courage.


But it was Eve who grew bored,
weary of her captivity in Eden.
And a woman’s desire
for freedom is rarely a cause
for celebration.  - Danielle Coffyn
​

Try as I may, I cannot stop the world at large from encroaching on my peace of mind.  And perhaps that peace should be disturbed given, well, everything.

The number of women (and, honestly, men of reason and knowledge and general humanness) who are raising their voices, eyebrows and hands over the growing marginalizing of females (not just females, no no no!  But women are my focus here today) is a growing cacophony to which I add my own voice and art.  

I have been learning to fully experience and express the grief of my own experiences recently, and serendipitously it is not just my own personal grief now, but the world at large.  And it is more than grief - there is a simmering cauldron of anger.

​We are a seething mass of probability.  And probably I love you.

Stone's words just grab me by the shoulders and beg me to STOP! LOOK! FEEL!  The very thing which I find so challenging to do when the world around is groaning.  But I am doing it, moment by moment.

 "Feeling is to be avoided!" my inner defenses shout.  Feeling will heal you and help others is the whisper from the wiser parts of me.  And so I am sitting in a heavy-bottomed way, a Weeble (remember those?), wobbling in the feelings but I won't fall down.

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​"Remember Everything" - oil on linen-wrapped canvas, 26 x 32 x 1.5 inches.  This is unframed but ready to hang. (click on the image to purchase)


​“I don’t want to lose a single thread
from the intricate brocade of this happiness.  
I want to remember everything.”― Mary Oliver, FELICITY


There are many of us who are leaning toward becoming unraveled right now.  The temptation to lose the thread of our happiness is palpable.  

It's easy to understand.  I confess there are days I watch the metaphorical spool of thread rolling down the sidewalk, twisting and tangling in flotsam and jetsam until I feel discouraged - it is so much work to untangle and rewind the threads of our connections and beliefs.

​And yet...underneath this roiling maelstrom of dystopian events is a growing undercurrent of connectedness, compassion, feisty rebellion and hutzpah.  The intricate brocade of this happiness​ will not be so easily unraveled!  There is Kelly with her blue bracelets of safety, Helaine with her megaphone of DANGER WILL ROBINSON and Thea with her bottomless well of encouragement.  There's Liz with her community of rebellious artists, Erica the queen of crow memes, Sara of the tender heart and also my own husband's optimism and intellectual parsing that keeps my inner Calamity Jane at bay.  Dotty who asks "what if" and keeps her own blog readers curious and asking questions, Carl whose Herculean work ethic reminds us there are things to be done - no time for wallowing!  All of these and so many more who are glimmering, sparkling and glowing in the world, lighting up the exits and pointing the way forward.

I have the feeling my ball of twine is no longer at risk of unraveling completely.  Thank you, dear readers!

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"Crow Conspiracy" - oil on cradled wood panel, 16 x 20 x 2 inches.  This is unframed but ready to hang.  Click on the image to purchase.
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"The crow cawed again overhead, and a strong sea wind came in and burst through the trees, making the green pine needles shake themselves all over the place. That sound always gave me goose bumps, the good kind. It was the sound an orphan governess hears in a book, before a mad woman sets the bed curtains on fire."
- April Genevieve Tucholke

Our little crow family is becoming feral again - less friendly, more raucous, ready to rumble in the big flocks.  They conspire, caw, whisper and chortle.

The seasonal gathering of crows (a murder) is sometimes considered a symbol of death, but I prefer the alternate theme: change, or the death of something to make way for something new.

And those of you who know me know that murder season in the studio means buckets of gesso or oil paint and the destruction of my own creations.  To make way for the new.
​
​Normally I wait until January to begin murdering canvases.  This year, the upheaval in the larger world spilled over into the studio and one artist with murderous intent is already on the loose.  We're all mad here at malarkey central.  Muwahaha.

And so the annual event in my shop begins today.  Grab them while you can! I am channeling Brian Rutenberg big time - "A brush is not a sacred implement that makes precious marks, it is an extension of my fist. Anything precious is self-conscious, and that kills creativity. "   Creativity will not be killed here.  But preciousness?  It's history.

This land and I are rewilding.
A bird I don’t know, but follow with my still living eye. 
The day before me undresses in the wet Southern heat:
flower mouth, 
pollen burn, 
wing sweat.
I don’t want to be only the landscape: the bone’s buried.
Let the subject be
the movement of the goldenrod, the mustard,
the cardinal, the jay, the generosity.
I don’t want anything,
not even to show it to you--

the beakgrass, bottlebrush, dandelion seed head,
parachute and crown,
all the intention of wishes, forgiveness,
this day’s singular existence in time,
the native field flourishing selfishly, only for itself.

The Rewilding,  ADA LIMÓN
​

Here at Malarkey Central, we've got a thing for rocks and for bones.  Hunting for, gathering, oohing and aahing, cleaning, polishing and displaying these treasures in rather large quantities.  And for climbing on the ancient bones of mountains where we find so many of these relics.

But this affection for the spines of things is also personal for me.  My own bones are no longer  the strong inner framework they once were.  I sometimes wonder if it is my own tenacious living skin​ holding me together.

And so, while some folks may have spirit animals or celestial guides, my own talismans are stony and bony - oozing strength, resilience, solidity and groundedness.  Some of those stones, the agates, are also translucent.  A symbol of my becoming more worn with time so the light shines through (a Mark Nepo-ism which I embrace).  Because there is a silver lining to most everything, in my rose-colored lenses.  Even the slow eroding of the mountains of our own bones.