Cultural Enrichment

The kids are fascinated by the piano. Lily is trying a cord and Rhett is making noises and even Kate is trying her hand.
When I was 10 I took piano lessons from a Russian lady named Nadia Kybort (not sure on the spelling of her last name). She had a big, dark, two-storey house and you went in through a gate off the sidewalk.
She had a little nervous dog with bad breath. She worked with my sister and me pretty hard and then there was a recital at Christmastime. The dining room table was covered with treats and when my turn came I played a one-handed piece. I think it was Bach. I can still remember it. How I wanted to play with two hands.
I remember her telling us to curve our hands and I was trying to show the kids how to do that. But my sister and I did learn a duet once and my daughter and I played it for the grandkids. The German exchange student who was present told me the name of the song in German. She knew it.
Then my brother came in and told us to be quiet because someone was trying to sleep!

A Commission

This is a commission I finished recently, although this is not the finished product. I forgot to get a photo of the finished product.
This is almost finished! It is for a friend whose friend (in the painting) just turned 50. This is from her birthday party invitation and my friend is giving it to her for her birthday.
I love the setting...not sure where it is...but it is funny enough to invite a painting.
First I did a quick study and her face looked pretty awful...this one I captured her face better, though not exactly. She has one of the sweet/evil faces...really pretty and looking like a handful of a girl at the same time.
When you try to paint from a picture you see a lot more than if you just look at it. You see little details like how the shoes are made and what the necklace is and how her hair is combed. I had to guess at the amusement park debris on the side. It was out of focus.
All in all a fun project and my friend was happy with it.
I was convinced I couldn't do it. My head always tells me those kinds of things. Some sort of self protective mechanism...but I was happy with it when it was finished.

Fann's Guest Room

I tend to ruminate. Although I have heard advice from other women not to ruminate. Sometimes I just stop and ruminate anyway.
This morning I was thinking about my grandmother's house. When it is quiet here in the morning I remember being quiet in her guest room.
She had what was once considered a large house. By today's standards it wouldn't be. It was a colonial style (having been built by a family from Kentucky to be like a house they remembered) and had two levels as well as a huge attic and a basement. It had two large white pillars in front coming up from a brick landing with stairs down to a large rose garden. There was a big magnolia tree on one side of the yard.
In the guest room upstairs you could see the magnolia tree looking in at you with its big white blossoms, which I never found particularly appealing in those days. They were okay but kind of big and strange to me then.
She had chenille bedspreads perfectly laid out over the sheets and blankets. If we were to take a nap up there those bedspreads had to be carefully folded down to the bottom of the bed so we wouldn't get them dirty with our feet. Our shoes were removed.
There were two twin beds, high off the ground with firm mattresses, the firmest I had ever been on. The windows would be open and you could hear the birds and hear cars passing on the street. Sometimes you would sleep and sometimes you would just lie there.
Sometimes the smell of dinner would rise up the staircase and you would be happy to know that soon they would call you. There was always homemade bread and homemade preserves.
I have very strong memories of these quiet times.
Once when my son was a little boy he said, "Everything is always okay at Fann's house."
Yes, all the drama and pain were behind them by the time I could remember. All was clean and quiet and well ordered. Dinner was always at a certain time, the dishes done, the lights turned off in the kitchen.
It was almost impossible to sneak in for a late night snack.

Oh it was a fast week. They all are. To slow time down, I should get a job where I sit and stare at the clock. It's 11 a.m., almost lunch; it's 2:30 p.m.; almost time to have a 3 o'clock break. That would do it!
Created art and sent art. Had a horrible postal clerk that made me feel small and stupid and irritable. I wanted to report her. But I sucked it up and figured it was just two crabby ships passing in the night.
The cold gets me hunched over and dried up...the holiday lights are appearing on houses and even a little Christmas music here and there.
I have a few presents. I am not as extravagant as I used to be. My children are grown up.
Business is slow everywhere in town and I can tell people are really worried. Ojai's only industry is tourism.
After Thanksgiving it will pick up: how much is anybody's guess!
Art keeps me going and I sold a few paintings this month and that really helped cheer me up! Thank you to lovely Tina for buying my Horse Rapture and the lady who bought the Angel and You Wear It Well...and a couple girls had mats cut...thank you..thank you...thank you!

Ghosts of Christmases Past

I did a couple of gratitude pictures along the way and they just came naturally. Cozy Christmases were still fresh in my mind with the candles, fireplaces, egg nogs, yorkshire puddings, presents, stockings, anticipation, gluttony, and just sitting around with real close family (and an added orphan or two).

Christmas isn't like that anymore and being that I am the elder now it could be me who isn't creating them...in that old-fashioned way...because a) I don't have a fireplace b) I don't have a large bank account and c) I have had trouble following tradition just because it is tradition.

But sometimes I really miss the elders who were my elders and who were really a huge part of Christmas for me.

Still Life

I want to paint a still life and I am going around the house looking for something simple but pretty to paint. There are some little groupings around the pad but I think I will have to compose one just for a painting. Fruit, cloth, a knife...a typical still life, just for practice.
This is one of my current groupings: my mom's glass lamp, an artist's tea bowl with thread, an old watercolor, a box of playing cards and a doll made from a black sweater...
I painted one wall olive green...just for fun, but being that I am in a small space I have kept the rest of the walls pastel. I would love a graffiti wall...
Like a subway wall or something I imagine in New York City, with writing and murals and so on.

Kate

Being the second child there are not as many pictures to choose from. This one is from August when she and her mom were at Fiesta in Santa Barbara.
I had the honor of staying with this little girl overnight on Sunday and all day and into the night on Monday while the rest of the family went to Disneyland.
She is so happy and chatters in her own language like a little magpie. She understands me but every word I try to teach her comes out just about the same in her language.
She loves to eat and point and sing and go for walks. She is different than her brother...her intensity only shows when she gets in her crib and then bangs her head on the mattress when she isn't ready for sleep. Her brother was a very alert and demanding baby...irresistible as well, but different. I believe he was identifying bottle brush trees by her age! It was a game to see how smart he was at all times...(he has mellowed on the smart factor).
Kate has the whitest skin, like a redhead, and pointy feet...she walks on her toes......she is sturdy with a broad back and her shoulders are always back...her hair is an in-between color...sort of blond, sort of brown, with a reddish shine. Her eyes are a greenish brown with a brown stripe in one of them. I study her for genetic clues...where is the Shacter? The Selby? The Harbison? The genetic mix that has produced another little human child...
Oh the pleasure of it! Holding and hugging this happy little bundle of new life...Singing and playing with the simple toys...reading the simple books...eating scrambled eggs and avocados and pears...and of course the milk. Always the milk.
I think this is the grandmother's compensation...to have this contact with new life...
But as a full time job?? Whew! I'd be exhausted.

A Collection

There is a table in my kitchen that seems to collect things. Right now it has the small lamp, the clock that needs a new battery, a brass candlestick that my dad gave me on my 50th birthday, a banana or two, a potato or two, an apple, a small framed photograph, some shiny beads for Christmas, an acorn ornament I bought for grandson who loves to collect acorns, a pomegranate, a white onion, a Christmas cactus and a tiny vase made by a friend...a loose photograph of one of our co-op members (Justin, the handsome drum maker) and a business card. And a vase of mums.
And I think I am a minimalist?

Painting from a Postcard

My cousin Mary saw this in person...she took the kids, stayed at the Plaza, and walked the park. She must have given me a postcard and I painted a picture of it. That means she came to visit me soon after her trip. I remember her happy, smiling presence in my house and her big Ipod, which was later lost.

Suicide and Guilt

I am a single woman, 60 years of age. That is a funny number: 60. It sounds so much older than my mind, and yet I am an old soul and always have been.
Some people have said that I am not what I think I am and that always confuses me because are we what we think we are? All we have is what our mind tells us we have and yet there are outside forces to remedy what we think we are.
For example I had a dream recently wherein I received a compliment. It was a compliment that came from another source other than my own mind. I have had a few dreams in my life that felt like that: that what I was dreaming came from without rather than from within.
When my children's father died in 1999 I had a lot of guilt. He died from a drug overdose and had been in the hospital not too long before he died for another suicide attempt. He had come to our son's wedding in Las Vegas looking like death warmed over, literally. And yet with all the emotions of having a son get married in Las Vegas, meeting the bride's parents, rushing to the chapel, dealing with social awkwardness and hotel room keys, we all just acted like everything was okay. The man could hardly stand up and yet his personality was blithe and boisterous and it was all just pretty awful when I think about it.
The next day we saw him get into a taxi with his carry-on bag and his leather jacket and we never saw him again.
The torture of what we could have done, could have said. The what-if's like could we have kidnapped him and taken him home and gotten him well? Could I have said, "Please don't leave us. Soon we will have grandchildren to enjoy and I will need you then."?
As it stood life went on and I had decided not to do a Christmas dinner at my house that year. I can't remember why. I must have been dispirited with my dad's Alzheimer's disease or something like that.
I called my ex-husband to cheer him up (at the suggestion of his cousin Mary). As I was leaving a message, a policewoman answered the phone. Much to my shock and grief, she said, "You are too late." He was dead.
I will never forget that night. I immediately called our daughter, who was alone at the time, and told her. I should have waited until her then-boyfriend got home so she wouldn't have been alone. I went over to my father's and I took a Tylenol PM. That was the only drug I could allow myself. It didn't do much. My father and his friend went out to dinner anyway and left me alone in their house. They had little sympathy for me.
I called my sister in Hawaii and she didn't seem to care either. She just started talking about herself.
I was very, very sad. I remember crying more for him than for my own parents when they died.
A few weeks later I had a dream. He came to me in the dream. He looked young and healthy. He was tan and exuding the stuff of life. He was also dealing drugs and he let me know that I was not responsible for his death. This came from outside my own mind.
I was convinced that I had killed him. I had married him when I was 17 and had treated him poorly. Not too long before he died I had written him a letter that was a bit angry. I was angry at him for his ideas about my family and my father in particular.
The letter was never found. He had thrown it away and I had to love him for that.