“Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment.”  Rumi

I will always be a learner when it comes to art.  I love setting aside what I think I know and taking a fresh look at ways to make art.  It never gets stale for me that way. I think sometimes I am more in love with the process than anything else.  Most recently, I enrolled in Lynn Whipple’s online class called “The Essence of Still Life” (Carla Sonheim Presents) which has been absolutely delightful.  Lynn is one of my favorite instructors.  Her approach to making art is always free, colorful and fun.  In this particular series of 6 lessons we learned to draw simple shapes of our favorite objects, jumble them around on the panel and then created wonderful layered still life works that do just hint at the essence of of each object.

I learned a new art term that I really love: “Pentimento” – which is actually where an artists covers a previous layer or body of work and you see hints of it in the new layer or work.  It’s something I have always loved to see in my own work.  Like a little ghost of another story that was being told.  I thought the Latin breakdown of the word pentimento would come out to be something like “small” and “remembrance” – which would make love sense and who doesn’t like a small remembrance.  However, turns out its Italian and means something like “repent”.  I think I will stick with my Latin guesswork since it sounds so much more pleasant than to repent or be regretful.

The techniques I learned in this class will definitely show up in future works as their own “Small remembrances” or Pentimentos.  Thank you, Lynn.

Goals are set for the year!  I always start out with a long list of things I plan to accomplish each year, and get going with a bluster of excitement.  One of the top runners on my goal list this year is a new website and getting on top of my blogging.  I am giving WordPress a try as a format for my site.  I am sure I am going to have to upgrade the level that lets me customize my site a bit more, but this will due for now.  More of the techie stuff will come later.  Yikes!! and HELP!!

I generally can find my way around this stuff and muddle through some basic design elements, but I want my site to be colorful with some whimsical-wowza.  I want it to say “I am an artist who has fun creating”.  Thank goodness my kids are pretty savvy.  Heck my grandchildren are more savvy than me and they are only 3 years old.  If I wait a couple years, they will have this “formatting a template site” stuff down.  I think it’s taught in Kindergarten now.  No cursive handwriting for that generation, but binary code…sure!

I appreciate your patients with the site, while I get it into tip top shape.  Please come back often to see my progress.  I can’t hold out until my grandchildren can help me, so onward I trudge.

Peace,

DKM