In thinking about the 36 years it took Diana Nyad to achieve her #XtremeDream I started thinking about other projects I admire that took a long time to come to fruition. A major one that comes to mind is The Gates project by Christo & Jeanne-Claude. It took 24 years of dealing with buracracy & funding to make The Gates happen, but they persevered. In the end it was a called "a gift to the city." The following year The New Yorker even ran the art pictured at the right. It makes me think about the possibilities of large scale projects, but then I consider the logistics (which take so much time away from the actual work) & I happily return to my desk to continue painting on 7"x10". Diana Nyad has this amazing dream: To swim from Cuba to Florida. This weekend, in her fifth attempt, at the age of 64, she is doing it! She chose a goal that is in her words "almost unobtainable." As someone that loves the water I get really excited by what she is doing, but more than that how she hasn't given up. This fierce, almost crazy determination is what I find admirable. So may the currents be with you Diana!
If I was the type of person to believe in such things I would certainly believe that faires lived under this mushroom. We have had a prodigious bloom of mushrooms, in the area, in recent weeks. Last week I rode my bike past a lawn & saw where the huge satellite dish designers got their idea from. It was amazing! The mushrooms even tilted at an angle that perfectly mimicked in my minds eye how the satellite fields in the movie Contact look. I am ever more convinced that I cannot paint, print, or design anything that I have not already seen in some iteration. This does not mean that I should stop painting, printing & drawing, but increase my awareness of what I take in & chose my influences carefully. Happy Monday Y'all! I have been working on writing with watercolor. And my dad says this funny sounding phrase a lot. It means that you have your opinion & I have mine which might be completely opposed to yours, but we are connected, in it together, flip-sides of the same pancake. It helps me remember that the person who seems so different from me in attitude, temperament, & ideals is just another person trying to find their way thru life. So with that in mind I wish you a Happy Monday! Hope your week goes well! Working on my banner skills & thinking about recent events in America that have made me really consider how our freedoms sometimes impede justice and what should be done about that? Would I be okay with less freedom if it meant more justice? I think so.
I think this image would make a nice greeting card. The red one at Christmas time & the green one as a sympathy image.
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