“Hilary Holding the Baby” is mostly finished. It will dry for a while before I do anything to it again, if ever. I re-worked the baby’s dress and added highlights to Hilary’s hair. I also added some lighter skin tones in the baby’s face to round it out a bit.

The baby is the much loved and prayed for adopted daughter of our dear friends, Joan and Kevin. Every time I see her I am amazed at how much she resembles her parents.

A few Sunday’s ago, we visited the St Paul’s United Methodist Church where Hilary sings in their choral scholars program. During the service, there was a baptism. Reese and I were especially moved by the congregants response, which I would like to repeat over this precious one.

“With God’s help, we will so order our lives by the example of Christ, that this precious one, surrounded by steadfast love, may be established in the faith, and confirmed and strengthened in the way that leads to eternal life.”

On Monday and Tuesday, all housework was abandoned in favor of painting. It dawned on me that it was the first time using my new pallette. For Christmas, Reese had a glass top cut to fit the desk in the studio. The entire desk top can now be used as a pallette. It’s great. What’s a little sad, though, is that it’s been so long since I last painted. Two months (since I last painted) is too long to wait.

This painting will have some wispy highlights added to the hair of the young lady, and I am thinking about changing the color of the baby’s dress. Even though I generally avoid adding details in my paintings, this one will need a few other minor adjustments before it’s finished.

There was a modest internal struggle over whether or not to post this photo since it’s a work in progress.

Reese and I just got back from Austin. We went to the Cactus Cafe to see Honeyboy Edwards play some good old fashioned Mississippi Delta blues. Honeyboy is so old that when we first got wind that he was scheduled to perform, we held our breath hoping he would live long enough for us to see him play. He was live all right. With the added inspitation of having just won a grammy, he played for two hours straight. It was hypnotic, like being in church. Deep down one knows the preaching is good, and even with a few amens one’s soul is lulled — takes a breather — like a good afternoon nap on the Sabbath day of rest, and heavy eyelids start to droop.

My roots are deep in Mississippi soil. Hearing Honeyboy play was a comfort….like going home. This music must have floated in the air, on the river, and grown in the soil of my childhood home. Honeyboy’s music nourished me deeply; I am satisfied.

I’ve been debating whether or not to publish my newly refined artist statement. Please don’t copy it without my permission.

“Art is beauty in ordinary moments.

My work is most accurately described as postmodern, except that it is not limited to figurative work. It has been influenced by the Impressionists, Neo-Impressionists, and Post-Impressionists. There is a realistic quality to my work, but it is more about a moment, rather than getting bogged down in details. I purposefully leave out details in order to tell a better story with my paintings. My work is slightly messy, utilizing bold strokes and bright colors. Even so, the general impression is one of tranquility.

Subject matter for my paintings is propelled by my personal belief that common moments are beautiful and worth capturing in a two dimensional format, in my case, oil paints on linen. My audience is people who appreciate being gently reminded that daily life is full of small beauties….as simple as holding a child, practicing the piano, the clump of trees at the end of the block, or even flowers gathered from one’s backyard.

A luxury of being a self-taught artist is picking one’s influences. Being a long time fan of the Impressionist movement of the late 1800s, and of Cezanne and Matisse, it would hardly be a stretch to say that my style has been heavily influenced by studying this group of artists in books and museums.

Above all, my life as a stay-at-home mother — taking my daughters to museums, the park; eating supper together nightly; laughing and growing together — has been the greatest influence on my work. Having the full support of a loving husband has allowed my creativity to blossom in all areas of life. It wasn’t until I started painting, though, that I found my heart’s desire.”

Just shy of two years ago, I started my third mosaic project. Honestly, by now I thought it would be finished. But with more pressing art commitments, the mosaic project got put on hold. First, it languished in the studio. Then it was moved to the study, which was completely out of everyone’s way…except for one thing. We moved into this house when our daughters were ages 6-12. We never had babies living here. But I love babies, and encourage all of our friends with babies to visit often. It never fails that something somewhere is not baby proofed.

All the tiles were in place for what my overactive imagination thought was a masterpiece. Isn’t it amazing how much little humans are fascinated by small prettily colored bits of ceramic. One event at our house with more than two little bitties, and the great work was but a distant memory.

Settling into my studio again after the holidays, it dawned on me that the timing was perfect for finishing (starting) the mosaic project — again. Enter Helen. I met Helen when Reese and I went to Palacios for an afternoon. She came over yesterday for coffee, and when she found out that I needed sky tiles for my mosaic, she just so happened to remember that she had been saving some broken plates and bowls…and three of them were blue! She very generously gave them to me. Who else in. their. right. mind. would get so excited to receive someone else’s broken dishes as a gift? This is a very rough photo of the beginning of the tweaking phase of this motley mosaic. It’s still a long way from being finished, but I see blue skies ahead.

Bless the little children for “messing up” my previous work. This is so much better than what I had before.

Remember playing freeze tag as a kid?

The words in my brain are bouncing off the walls. It’s been a week of constant word tweaking and form filling and question answering and more word tweaking and editing and contemplating to the point of brain frazzled exhaustion. The first stage of grant writing is complete; now it’s time to gather the final documents, which might be impossible.

One of the things one has to do for a grant application to be considered is to prove citizenship in the city of Houston. They ask for 24 consecutive months worth of utility bills, or something to prove that one has lived within the city limits for at least two years. The first problem is that I am not that organized to have ready access to such records. I throw things away constantly, and only keep one month’s worth of records before I destroy/shred everything. So I called the city of Houston, to see if they would provide me with documents from the past 24 months saying that I have lived at this current address. VERY graciously, a city employee gathered one year’s worth past water bills, and a letter certifying that we began water service at this address in 1993, but the utility bills are in Reese’s name. All the bills are in Reese’s name.

So it’s very likely that my grant application might be thrown out on a technicality. I am a citizen of the city of Houston, but can’t prove it.

Lately, my time has been focused on putting together thoughts and words preparing to write a grant proposal. Most people don’t realize how much paperwork goes into being an artist. Just this last week, when a new friend found out I was an artist, said,

“Oh! That must be so peaceful….to paint all the time.”

To which I replied,

“It’s a lot of hard work.”

Sure, some days the paint seems to find it’s own path, and it feels like I’m painting in the zone. But by and large, it’s persistant hard work. Not only is the act of painting a job in and of itself, but the life of an artist requires paperwork out the wazoo; case in point, the grant proposal.

My friend Carrie very kindly wrote an article about my first big solo exhibit a year and a few months ago. As a thank you, I promised her a sketch. She gave me some photos of her kids, we met at at least two different playgrounds for me to take photos of her kids, and then I lost all those images from my camera card…well, it took a while to get everything in order to draw this for her.

She came over yesterday to help write me this grant proposal. If the grant isn’t granted, I don’t want it to be because it wasn’t well written. Words are powerful. Her skill, another friend’s advice, and my thoughts could be a winning combination. If anything, it won’t detract from what the committee accepts. The idea is that the merit of my art will show through and be enhanced by a well written proposal.

Back to Carrie: She was walking through the house looking at all the new art on the walls while I was gathering the little people for Hampton to play with, when I heard a scream from the studio. She had seen this drawing on the easel and it stunned her…in a good way. It’s the only image I had left to work with after a year’s worth of various mishaps. It’s a pastel on linen drawing of Carrie, her son Hampton, and daughter Eliza reading a book. She liked it so much she began to cry.

Around the supper table not too long ago, we were discussing the pronunciation of names. Last week, Sol brought over some friends, and when the guy introduced himself, he said,

“My name is Lewis.”

So I called him Lewis.

Later in our conversation, it came out that his name is actually Luis, pronounced Loo-ees. Why, I asked, would he introduce himself as Lewis when his name was actually Luis? To make it easier on the people he met, he opted to go with a more Americanized pronunciation. Nice.

My own mother-in-law, God rest her soul, was very particular about how her name was pronounced. Her name was spelled Elise, but pronounced Uhleeze. Best not to forget that one.

In the deep south, my name is pronounced either Say-rah, Say-uh-ruh, or Ser-uh. In Mexico, it’s more like Sah-dah.

So then Joy pipes in, and says that when she is in Mexico,

“My name is Yoy.”

By the way, this is the third time I’ve changed the background and shirt on this painting of Yoy.

Yoy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, Yoy to you and me!

A year and a half ago a friend of ours Skipper-sat while we went on a short jaunt as a family for a few days. As payment, I promised her a drawing. The first image she sent me had copyright issues…and then time flew by….getting ready for the solo exhibit, and all the art related business that comprised most of last year. It’s been a very busy year of art stuff.

Even though a sketch is what I promised, I really don’t like drawing that much—there’s too much detail to bother me. Painting is preferable, which is technically sketching with paints and a paintbrush (isn’t it?).

To make a long story short, I have finally gotten around to “drawing” the long promised sketch, though I did it with oil pastels. Oil pastels are like a chalky crayon…which was an unusual medium for me, considering this was my first time to use it. The problem was that since I chose to draw on a linen canvas, it was hard to fill in the bumps in the linen. So I put some oil on the end of a paintbrush and kinda sorta painted everything together.

Now the issue is will my friend like it and consider the debt cancelled?