Late Sunday afternoon

Backyard Cherrywood afternoon
acrylic on canvas
8 x 8 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

Here's a little painting of my backyard in the
late afternoon that I thought was pretty
dark and moody until I took it out of my
studio and photographed it outside.

I hope you are having the best Valentine's
Day ever, whether you have a special someone,
or you're being extra loving with family and
friends. I'll be thinking of you and sending
you hearts and flowers and super good wishes.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Have an enjoying-the-love-the-world-offers day.

Love

Boy thinking
8 x 10 inches
black marker on bond paper
Barbara Muir © 2010

Who do you love? Who Who. Who Who?

Who loves you? ... Today I'm posting a
sketch of a boy I painted a few years ago.
Why? Because he was 15 -- probably one of
the most powerful ages for romantic love.
Not that he ever told me whether or not
he loved, or even liked anyone.
Now all you Valentine's decriers -- try to
remember back to when you were 15, and
whether or not someone loved you was the
whole deal.

I told my class the other day that the idea
of love was well worth celebrating, and all
this talk about commercial takeovers ad
nauseum makes me unhappy. Because
hearts are pretty, and a day that honours
loving is a good thing. Argue back every
day should be for loving. Okay! My husband
and I give one another flowers for
Valentine's Day every weekend all year.
My point is people aren't always loving,
and a day that jolts the love vibe is not a bad thing.

Go back to your tender hearted 15 year
old, jealous, baby self and reconnect with
that passion. Now that should work. If
not I give you a pretty picture for Valentine's
Day. I love my life, my work, my family,
and my friends ... that includes you. There
is lots of love to go around. It isn't a pie.
But then you already knew that.

Have an enjoying-all-the-love-in-your-life day.

Moving around

Sunny winter afternoon on Cherrywood
acrylic on canvas
8 x 8 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

One of things I admire about plein air
painters is that they're gutsy. They get right
out there and paint in all weather. I am not
them. Sand at the ocean, grit in the city, wind,
dirt in my acrylics, rain, too much sun, not enough
...I haven't acquired the requisite coping skills.
But last summer I did porch air paintings out
on my front porch, and really enjoyed the results.
For the past couple of afternoons there has been
a glorious light. Robins and over observant artists
think it's the precursor-to-spring-type of light.
I haven't seen a Robin yet, and I'm grateful for
that because I love those birds and it is sub
zero weather.

But I have seen an artist getting all peculiar,
starting to sing with no provocation. So this
artist instead of sitting on the porch, now a wasteland
of icy concrete and bricks, decorated by permanently
on bad taste Christmas lights (the only lights
available two days before the event), sat inside.
I scoured the place for a perch, and decided on
my model's chair in the studio window.
So this is what I saw. You may recognize the
view done in a much more restrained manner a
while back. I might work on it a bit more, or
leave it as it is -- loose and happy.

I realized today that we don't have to go out
to get that plein air spirit, we just have to
be strategic, and careful and move around in
our own houses, (or other people's if they are
willing) to paint what we see. It wasn't comfortable
sitting on the arm of my chair in the window. But
was it meant to be?

Have a moving-around-for-a-view day.

Funny people

Journal sketches
(carrying on the theme from last night I found these
two sketches of Steven sleeping with a pillow
over his head -- in a journal filled
with writing about art, these are
the only two drawings)
black marker on notebook paper
9 x 6
Barbara Muir © 2010



Man sleeping
Journal Sketch
9x 6
Barbara Muir © 2010

Okay I forgot something when I talked about my
addictions the other day. I really, really love
humour. In fact it's one of the things I live for.
Sometimes it doesn't seem like such a funny
world, but funny people don't take long
at all to see the humour even in desperate
situations. So...funny is something I crave.
This preference gets me into trouble
when humour is inappropriate, which it
often is.

To that end I have stayed up way past any
sensible bed time to watch Jon Stewart and
Steven Colbert. And tonight talked on Skype
too late given my 5:45 morning wake up
for school, laughing my head off with a friend
who lives in the American southwest. It
is so different there it isn't even funny.

Except it is. What I mean is planting season
really never goes away, and people there
are getting their seedlings ready for
the garden. You could do that here, but
it's going to snow tomorrow and you can't count on reliable heat until
after May 24, and if we had a summer like
2009, maybe not ever.

Enough though. Fatigue does kill humour.
I shared some laughs with friends in the
neighbourhood tonight, and then went
home to talk to USA. Funny artists need
one another, because we've all suffered
through art school classes with pompous
self involved people cranking out Mozart
and insisting on silence while they work
at their oeuvres. We confuse oeuvres with
oeufs here in Canada - eggs, and serious
people silently painting to classical music
sometimes trigger unappreciated fits of
laughter.

Have a loving-what's-funny day.

Juice

One way to get "juice" into your work.

When I walk into a writing class I put the word "juice"
on the board in huge letters. You can teach all the
grammar and structure you want, but if writers don't
have juice - power, vitality, vision, punch, oomph,
excitement, no one will read what they have to say.

In painting the juice in your work is what gets you up
in the morning, makes you think about a painting all the time,
lets you see flashes of colours and solutions in your dreams.
Juice matters. You can look at 30 landscapes, beautifully
executed technically, and the one with juice will grab
you and won't let you go.

It's been snowing here, and people think that's a good reason
to abandon their spirit, to look downcast, to feel
deservedly irritated. But snow happens, and many
communities have way more, tons more snow than the
couple of inches that fell here. Snow, parking tickets,
filling in forms, waiting in line. Once again juice is the
answer.

One way to get your juice back is the one recommended
by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way, and before her by
Natalie Goldberg, in Wild Mind, and that's to write in a journal
daily. The blog is like a journal, but less intimate because it's
broadcast to the world.

In your journal you can describe your fears and even ask
questions to a theoretical imaginary artistic power and write down
the answers. You can mention your petty worries, and
make lists. The possibilities are endless. You can go all
high end and have superb sketches and great prose, then
publish! (Hey you can do that in a blog too.)

Enough. I'll let myself speak for myself.

Have a writing-your-thoughts-in-a-journal-for-juice day.

Talking on Skype

You're only a day away
Skype drawing
black marker on bond
9 x 12 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

We are reaching the middle of the semester
and like most teachers I get tired at this
stage. I have to remember to boost myself
with lots of positive self talk, cups of coffee and
tea, time with my excellent and funny novel
(I can't read grim at the moment, so please
don't recommend anything even bordering on
sad). And one of the best ways to recharge
is to talk to family and friends.

How wonderful Skype is! I talked to my sweet friend
Tamara, in Holland today. We met in Florence, and got
along immediately. She is spectacularly pretty,
so I worked on drawing her tonight.

Now I am folding into sleep in a minute, to bounce
back up and paint and teach again tomorrow. Coupled
with the fatigue I feel an intense excitement about ideas
I want to try out. So... it's passing that delight in life
on that is my biggest job. Thanks for sharing your
wonderful ideas and beautiful work with me. I
cannot tell you how immensely inspiring I find
your fantastic art to be. It is for sure the colour on
the icing on the cake of my life.

You know what? It's finally snowing and I hear the sound
of a shovel outside. The whole rest of the world has been
deep in snow this winter, and so far we've escaped. Aha.

Have a shoveling-out-the-walk day.

Monday's obsessions

Daily fixings
8 x 8 inches
acrylic on canvas
Barbara Muir © 2010
(What I need to get through the day --
a book, a notebook, coffee, some
romance and great conversations.)

I woke up this morning with an idea for a little
painting. Does that happen to you? Lately my
brain has been on fire, and I think it's because
I feel like we're moving towards spring.

I was thinking about my vices. Do I have any?
Well of course I do, but they're not the
standard ones. I am not a drinker, although
I'll have a glass of wine if we go out for dinner.
I never got into smoking, and now the smell
drives me mad. I don't do drugs aside from
aspirin, and Valerian to get to sleep. So I
wondered for a second or two, maybe the silly seconds
when you wake up from a dream -- what are my
obsessions.

I did this little painting of a still life to illustrate
the answer. I am obsessed, maybe even addicted
to reading. I feel best when I know there is a stack
of new magazines, and books beside my bed.
And I would not like to live without coffee. I am
trying to cut the number of cups I drink a day down
to two -- but those two are vital to my happiness and
joie de vivre.

Plus I do love to write and draw. I really love the
red spiral bound 5 x 7 inch notebook I bought in
Italy. The heart represents love -- and I'm crazy for
romance. The red heart is a votive candle holder
placed on the table for Valentine's Day. Talking
is my other distraction -- and the yellow sticky
pad is handy when I'm on the phone and need to
keep a name or number.

I may work on this little painting a bit more
tomorrow. It's an early day, so I hope you have
a good Tuesday.

Have a facing-up-to-your-passions day.