The Best Days

The Fool - Catherine Meyers

I painted for five hours today. I can't paint steady for that many hours straight, nor should I, because it's not good for the 'ole bod'.
My friend interviewed Mary Pratt not long ago, whom I love, and she was all crippled up with arthritis from sitting for so many hours continuously. It's easy to loose track of time when you are engrossed in painting, and before you know it, hours have passed. Once you get going it is hard to pull yourself away. But the best thing for me is to pace myself.

I like to paint in the afternoon, I write in the mornings and sometimes later at night, like now. My routine is to I always listen CBC Radio and have done this for many years. It's what I love about the radio you can always do other things, much better than T.V.

This first painting of my series 'The Fool' is taking longer than I thought, which is fine because I don't want to hurry the process, and I'm not on a deadline which feels good. I think I forgot how long egg tempera takes using my itsy bitsy painting brushes, and tiny marks. But I am getting anxious to finish it. I have more things to fix and add, which I will start tomorrow.
It was a good day today.


"The days you work are the best days"...  Georgia O'Keeffe

Serenity and the Storm

I've been in a creative funk. I have needed to re-evaluate the art work I am doing. I have had to make a firm decision to change my focus on what I want to do. My heart isn't in what I had thought I was going to undertake for a series.

I did a Tarot reading the other day for a very wise elder. She said some poignant things to me. I don't remember now for the life of me what her exact words were, but I know I was listening very intently with my heart, and I know it was  very important wisdom she was sharing with me. It had to do with following your heart, and following your purpose in life in order to help others. I got the same message from another wise woman last week, who said the work I was doing was "soul work ".  I also got a confirmation of this message today in the daily reading I just finished.
Truth be known, this is the kind of work I want to do, soul work. It's not a good feeling when you are can't seem to make a decision and you are stuck in a kind of limbo and chaos.

I took an inventory of myself today, and admitted I had been doing somethings that are not good for my over all well being, or perhaps I was not doing the things that I know I need to do, in order to keep my mind clear, and not muddled. Not much wonder I have been feeling stuck and frustrated. I turned it over today, to the God of my understanding, and tried to do God's will.

Today I felt hopeful, I felt Spring in my bones for some reason. In spite of the past week being really cold and my pipes freezing upstairs and downstairs even in the kitchen yesterday morning. I was not impressed. Actually I was mad as hell and was feeling like the Ice Queen had put some sort of curse on us.

So when my pipes finally thawed upstairs this afternoon, I sat down in my rocker, and I began to journal. I thought I'd feel better perhaps, as it had been almost a month of not journaling, less one day. This is unusual for me, as I never go longer than a seven days without journaling. I also do daily readings that I had gotten away from over the past month, and I was really becoming derailed so to speak.

I decided I needed to get back on track, and began writing in my journal. After a couple of pages, I suddenly I heard an unusual noise, and thought, that doesn't sound like the water pump downstairs and did not recognize the sound. Then I thought it must be one of the taps in the downstairs bathroom that I must have left open. The temperature warmed up today and so along with upstairs taps thawing, I figured the downstairs bathroom taps did as well. When I walked into the bathroom the tap had blown clear off and a gusher of water was going straight into the air, almost hitting the ceiling, all over me, onto the floor and into the basement. Woooohoooo! I went into a panic. I've been doing that lately.

Fortunately, I had a moment of clarity some how, and thought to turn off water with the shut off valve on the PV pipe under the sink. Problem solved. So I need to replace the washer, that was stretched from being frozen and if that doesn't do it, I'll replace the taps.

When I sat back down I finished my writing, and then did my daily readings. It was a confirmation that I need to keep faith and turn my will over to the God of my understanding. I can't expect to ask God for help and then proceed to take my problems back with worry and confusion, and thinking I don't have to maintain my conscious contact with the God of my understanding to keep on the right track, doing what I want to do. It  never worked before, and why would I think it would work now.

" The willingness to give up my pride and self-will to a Power greater than myself has proved to be the only ingredient absolutely necessary to solve all my problems today. "

" My level of comfort is in direct relation to the degree of willingness I possess at any given moment to give up self-will, and allow God's will to be manifested in my life. " - Daily Reflections

 I think I started to do this today. My worry and fear has been transformed into serenity.

I saw the Beaver today that I share my land with. He had a message for me I'm sure. Here is a Poem I found that sums it up.

Busy, busy, as the beaver,                
Busy, busy, as the beaver,
Persistent in my work and fun,
I plan and labor toward my goals
Until appointed tasks are done.
Beaver, show me how to use
The things at hand to reach my goal,
Balancing my work and pleasure,
My mind and body, and my soul. 

Pamela Coleman Smith and Alfred Stieglitz

Last week I was asked to do a Tarot card reading as part of a performance for the end of  an Art Symposium. Unfortunately I was unable attend. It led me to learn more about the woman responsible for this very well known Tarot deck. I have been reading Tarot cards for approximately three years now. I was amazed to find out that Pamela Colman Smith was a very talented artist with a very fascinating life. Here is the write up on one of the cards I have in the deck I purchased four years ago.

" She was born February 16, 1878, in Middlesex, England to American parents. Her childhood years were spent between London, New York, and Kingston, Jamaica.

During her teens, she traveled throughout England with the theatre company of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. Thereafter, she began formal art training at the Pratt Institute of Brooklyn, graduating in 1897.

Although American by birth, she returned to England, where she became theatrical designer for miniature theatre, and an Illustrator, mainly of books, pamphlets and posters. 

Around 1903, she joined the Order of the Golden Dawn. In 1009, under the guidance of Arthur Edward Waite, she undertook, for a token payment, a series of seventy-eight allegorical paintings described by Waite as a rectified tarot pack. The designs, published in the same year by William Rider and Son, exemplify the mysticism, ritual, imagination, fantasy, and deep emotion of the artist.

Despite occasional art shows and favorable reviews by critics, the continued slow sales of her works and rejections by commercial publishers left her deeply disappointed.

She never married. She had no known heirs except for an elderly female companion who shared her flat. She died on September 18, 1951, penniless and obscure. There was no one funeral procession to honour her life. There was no memorial service to touch upon the impact her work  would one day have upon her admirers. She died disappointed that her paintings and writings failed to achieve success, yet she never stopped believing in herself. 

Pamela Coleman Smith would have all but be forgotten except for the seventy-eight tarot paintings known as the Rider-Waite Tarot pack. She would no doubt be astonished and gladdened to know that today the deck touches the hearts and emotions of millions of people.''

I found it to be intriguing to learn that Pamela Coleman Smith was friends with William Yeats and had done art work for him. As well she was the first woman artist to have her painting shown by American Photographer and Modern Art Promoter, Alfred Stieglitz, in his gallery, Little Galleries, which up until this point only photographs where ever exhibited.
Her successful show marked a turning point between the old era of Stieglitz as revolutionary promoter of photography and new era of Stieglitz as revolutionary promoter of modern art.