Yesterday I spent the morning with Monet (not the impressionist, and yes, that’s his real name), another artist friend of mine, and we had a really interesting conversation about how you make assumptions about an artist based on their work. Beyond influences and personality, I mean, and on into physical characteristics. It’s as though the art itself isn’t enough, we need to know something about the person who created it.

I have a portfolio on Trunkt, and one of their suggestions is to use a photo of yourself as your icon, that the statistics show that the portfolios with a photo of the artist are viewed more often than those without one. And Etsy says that their artists with blogs are more successful than those without.

Monet said I should have a contest, and give away a print to the person who best describes me. Since most of the people who read this actually do know me, that sort of dashes the double blind quality of the experiment. I would probably get a lot of stunningly accurate guesses. I suppose some people might go to the trouble of using a different email address and getting some minor detail like hair color wrong, just for effect. Seems like a lot of effort.

But hey, if the idea amuses you, and you don’t actually know me, then give it a whirl. In the meantime, here is the face that has been mocking me. Oh, sure, she looks harmless enough here, but I’m not entirely sure she isn’t making faces an rude gestures when I leave the room.

I’ve been so lax about posting that even the Russian spammers have forgotten me. I am posting from my laptop, so there won’t be an image. Entertain yourselves with a brief list of what is occupying my brain pan just now.

1. I am working on a piece that is refusing…simply refusing to come together. It mocks me every time I walk in my studio. Which is partly why I am sitting in the living room with my laptop. I am tired of being mocked.

2. I think I would do someone bodily harm for a Walker’s Shortbread just now. I am sure there are nicer shortbreads out there, but I have fond memories of those precious tartan packages.

3. I have agreed to do a solo show in March. Solo shows are like pregnancy. If I wait a few years the horrible memories fade, and I think it seems like a good idea to do that again.

4. I am not pregnant. Those horrible memories will never fade.

I can get rather attached to a piece of work. I spend a lot of time staring at these faces, and inhabiting these landscapes, so by the time I am ready to show them to the world, they have a life all their own as far as I am concerned. When someone buys one to hang in their house (or where ever) that’s fine. They get to form their own attachment. But when someone wants to use one for some commercial purpose it’s a whole different story.  Usually if something is going to be used as an illustration, I know that going in, so it’s a bit of a different process. Maybe like being a surrogate mother, I know it isn’t mine from the start, so I don’t get attached. Recently I had an offer for one of my pieces, and I balked. It was sort of like the feeling of sending your child with the “quirky, interesting” personality off to school. (Not that I’d know anything about that…no, not at all…) Because if I can’t control the context, then how is it going to be interpreted? So the only solution for me is to get busy and crank out more work, and that’s what I’ve been doing. Sort of replacing that piece in my affections, so that I can let it go. With this one for instance.

Creepy or beguiling? As with so much of my work, it could go either way.

Casino Night was less of a trial than I feared. There was an open bar with a decent red wine, and a few friends who are almost as snarky as me. For fun we hit the silent auction. One of the items was a bowling party,  hosted by two people who could not be more uptight and easily shocked. We appall them on a regular basis without even trying. So of course we bought the party, and intend to show up half in the bag and with at least one tranny, one overly tattooed biker friend, and one Jersey refugee in full Sopranos mode. We will not be happy until someone is scarred for life.

We have to go to a fund raiser tonight. When the invitation arrived, the hubs opened it (because I refused), and announced…”It’s a Casino Night!” I just about lost the will to live. I find the real Vegas boring and pointless, and charity events which proudly announce “Vegas-style Entertainment” should be banned as a form of torture. I know for a fact that these folks idea of Vegas style entertainment does not include bare-breasted showgirls. I can only assume it will be one of their own who fancies himself the Second Coming of Frank Sinatra doing a lounge act. Feel free to send a bullet with my name on it.

The fact that right now there are people in this town giddily looking forward to this evening and picking out what to wear makes me want to punch someone in the face.

Shortly after I wrote that last post about feeling unmotivated,  I was staring blankly out the window of my studio. At the top of our hill there is a huge old tree that has taken a lightening strike at some point in it’s long life and has a nice cavern halfway up that might be home to a pair of owls (I can hear them calling, but so far I have never been able to pin them down). What caught my attention was two rather huge shadows that swept across the ground, one right behind the other. I grabbed the camera and headed out toward the tree. It was a beautiful morning, and there were lots of squirrels and robins in the yard, and when those shadows crossed, every one of them froze.

Up at the top of the hill in the big tree, there was a pair of red-tailed hawks. I just love them, and I hope they mate and produce a nice brood of little hawklets. I got a decent shot of one, before it took off, but the other on would never turn to face me.

This one is up for sale at Miss T’s on etsy.

I need to work out, go to the grocery before we all starve slap to death, and get a whacking

pile of less than thrilling design work out of the way. I am unmotivated on all counts.

Oh, yeah…that I need to post something here every few days. And vacuum. That’s always good.

So I really took remarkably few photos on this trip. I mean, lots of pictures of my kid being goofy in the snow…but he’s not about being exploited for my purposes any more. Stinkhead. What’s the use of having kids if they won’t let you exploit them? Oh well, he will be picking out my nursing home one day.

Here is my favorite sign from Victoria. A retailer after my own cold heart.

Right after I bought some stuff at the Anti-christ sale, the sky looked like this.

Then I slipped on some slush and almost busted my ass.

Hmmmmm. Is it just me, or do the lower clouds look like a grinning skull in this picture?