January 5, 2009

Car Ride
2005
acrylic on canvas
36" x 36"

Today was the making of a painting.

If the Ups delivery person had looked in the window of my daughter's apartment, they would have seen nothing more than a black and white dog sitting guard and two women folded around each other wrapped in faux cashmere blankets, sitting in front of a lap top surrounded by 1/2 empty Chinese take-out cartons.

Today my daughter and I traveled the world researching a fantasy trip we plan to take a place that feels unique to where we live. First we open a page for the currency calculator and starting with "a" any country with a good exchange rate was further researched. Our next screening was if there was a traveler's advisory that country was 86th (sorry countries). Next was food. I am a vegan and my daughter is getting very close and can't eat gluten so we have to go somewhere that has some options. Kazakhstan was removed because of their diet of strictly meat, bread, dairy and fish. I was willing to go to a veiled country my daughter not so much and the wars in Africa make her nervous and we discarded the options to visit the entire continent. Maybe some other trip. I said no to the Bahamas because of their negative attitude towards gays as well as another country-forgot where. They had a penalty of life in prison for homosexual activity.

Most likely it will be a small vignette, part of a larger story, larger painting...but maybe not.

Peace Always
Sharon

May 28, 2008

Today was one of those days where painting just flowed. I knew exactly which colors to put where. I recognized which parts of the painting did not work more readily and had painted for a few hours feeling only minutes had passed. Unfortunately the weather outside was also fabulous and it was impossible not to spend some of my day soaking up the rays while hiking with my dog Sophie and mowing the lawn. Around 6pm my daughter stopped by for our "Wednesday night take-out" date-(she gets Korean and I Thai). Since we live in rural Pennsylvania we have to drive to town, using precious $3.99 a gallon gas to collect our booty. On our car ride she was discussing an upcoming dance performance that she's involved with.

Although our disciplines are different there are many similarities. One time we were discussing the cycles of liking /dislike of our works. There's the initial excitement when you come up with an idea inevitably followed with the ebbs and flows of like and dislike as the dance/painting progresses. Today she told me that she usually works out issues through dance very much the same way I do. We brainstormed a potential dance to express her thoughts about being allergic to gluten but the ideas we came up with were either too obvious and dumb or appeared to be racist in nature. Discussions such as ours illuminate the similarities of all art disciplines once they are torn down a bit and analyzed.