You know what I mean....

Fire breathing dragon, art purchased from the 8 year old Ruby who lives across the street.
A sweet deal at .25cents
Ruby says: "I draw animals really well"
I agree

So I have been juggling many plates these days...work and work and life.

Aren't we all though...

I attended a memorial service this last week, and although no one likes to think about death.

It had me thinking a lot about death, mine, family lost and still here and my hubby.

Frankly, It shook me up pretty good.

I was thankful for a date that night with my sweetie to try

and

reset all my fears back up on a shelf and enjoy the present.

Murphy's law had a good laugh that night, as the concert we went to had a lot of songs about loss, heartbreak and untimely deaths.

I guess I needed to address my fears...or at least acknowledge them.

In light of this "eye-opening" experience, I have started to take vitamins again, had my doctor look at some funny bumps on my leg and am slowly walking away from bread and dairy....

slowly, I mean there is no reason to act suddenly don't need to shock the system or anything.

Gosh I love mint chip ice cream....

We have also begun to actively looked at when we can take a little vacation.

We had a little break this last July joining some friends at a lake, but hubs and I have not taken a good vaca since our "honeymoon" two years after we got married...so that would be 2004!

In the meantime, I have been making new work and submitting it where I can. As I told a friend, my goal is to make my husband a kept man...he has done so much for me it is the least I could do.

He thinks this is a fine idea as well.

I was lucky enough to see my friend Tiger Huang's exhibit at The Ojai Center for Art.

It was an amazing exhibition of traditional Chinese paintings of animals and landscapes mixed with his current loose figure work. Tiger studied traditional calligraphy in China and the central installation piece at the show was an amazing display of this tradition.

the piece started with a large rectangle of paper on the floor that had line after line of character brushwork, on top of this lay practice books splayed open and face down on these papers, surrounding a wooden box that was filled with meticulous lines of characters that were pulled from the box and pulled over the ceiling supports. The size and detail in this piece left me silent, to me it displayed such discipline and focus and love for his art. I was inspired to find a greater focus and purpose.

Still silenced from this work I wandered home slowly and found a lovely meditation spot but a mere couple miles from home.

A reminder to grow and plant ideas and water them.

I am a sucker for a good garden what can I say...

plus there were baby goats!

I have made a few new pieces one was just accepted into a juried show that offers Art Advances, this means I am in a drawing for possibly winning some cold hard cash as well as selling some work!

I submitted three pieces but am thrilled with the one they chose:

"A Sense of Something" 2011

this piece has all my hallmarks:

Phone poles, clouds, my scratch thru with the ink and it is PURPLE!!

Hopefully someone will love it and take it home

Until the next epiphany, I am going to be in the garden grounding my thoughts

 and pulling weeds, it is good for the soil and my soul.