Well, I made it thought the 30 in 30... had so much fun, learned quite a bit about my current painting style, color palette, brushes I use, painting small (which frankly I am sick to death of...) and just how much my family and friends support me. I know I have talked about being thankful... and I find that the longer I live, the more thankful I become. Lucky for me, I have heard "recent studies show" that being appreciative in life seems to go hand in hand with happiness. So woo-hoo..... :)
Anyway... I have a lot to be thankful for, in fact, too much to list here and besides, this isn't a Thanksgiving post... Just sayin', I am thankful and if you know me, hopefully you know that you are someone I am thankful for... But I will say this. I am so grateful that I can make art. And I don't just mean physically, although that is a big part of it. But I also mean, I thankful that I am able to 'legally' create whatever I damn well want to create on any given day. There are too many places in the world where freedom of expression is not a given, where you can be tried and put in jail for stating your opinion, making the 'wrong' image or saying what you believe. I am forever grateful that I do not live in an area of the world like that! I hope that someday in my life I will witness the transformation of those countries that do oppress freedom of speech into a place of freedom for all.
That being said, my painting today is titled "Je Suis Reconaissant, (Reverie)" for several reasons... No, I have no particular fondness of the French Language, but there is a reason for it being in French... Je Suis Reconaissant means 'I am Thankful' and it is in French because of the image reference I used as the background to my painting. The image I took this from, (and I did... I took it..) is from a famous lithograph by the artist Alphonse Mucha. It is an image that I love dearly. I had an image of this when I was a child and I can remember looking at the image, burning it into my brain for all times... I chose to super-impose a buddha on top of the image for no other reason than I love the image..and I love the symbol of the Buddha. I want to pay homage to the artist who created the original image, the title of which is "F. Champenois Imprimeur-Editeur" and was made in 1897, but for a time was apparently also known as "Reverie". I love this, because if you look up the meaning of the word Reverie, this is what you find... "A state of dreamy meditation or fanciful musing", which is what my Buddha is doing... So, there. Thank you if you are one of those who has followed me through the 30 in 30! I have had so many nice and complimentary comments, I have sold 5 of my paintings so far (!) and I know lots of you are reading my blog (which is incredible to me) because over the past month I have had over 1,000 page views! Amazing to me! So... THANKS!!! And just fyi, I'm not stopping painting! I may not be posting every day because I plan on painting bigger, but I will post, so I hope you check back from time to time... If you don't want to miss a post, please sign up to follow my blog. It is easy and maybe even fun... just enter your email in the spot under the elephant on the right and you will get updates when I post.
Alright... here it is.
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| Je Suis Reconaissant, (Reverie), 9"x12", oil on panel to purchase please click here |
And here is the Alphonse Mucha image, courtesy of wikipedia
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| "F. Champenois Imprimeur-Editeur" Alphones Mucha, Lithograph, 1897 |
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