Birdwoman

I worked on the beanstalks this week.  Here's a play by play:

Tuesday

Wednesday

Today

The week started out slowly, but I'm picking up momentum, so I'm not beating myself up too badly.  Today I also made this little fellow on this wooden egg I found in my studio:

He makes me smile.  I'm going to make him a mate tomorrow.  Also, my fingernails (or hands for that matter) never look this clean.  Maybe my camera filters out paint smears and charcoal grime from the subject.

I'm reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being and I think it's triggering a mild existential crisis.  What is the point of my work?  Does it even have a purpose?  Does it even matter to anyone but me?  Every once in a while I fret over these kinds of questions.  But I have an antidote tacked to my studio wall: 

This article by Mark Heath, a cartoonist/writer.  I've had this article so long that I can't remember where I found it.  Here's a little piece that I find particularly wise and soothing:

"At an art show last year I saw a painting of a bullfrog, a rather rubbery and benevolent portrait.  I never spoke to the artist.  As far as he knows, the portrait meant nothing to me.  But the painting lent the frog a comic dignity I can't forget.  it's shading my memory, and now it's probably shading yours, too.  If you believe in the chain of humanity that each one of us is meant to influence someone else–be it as a parent, spouse, friend or patron of frogs–then surely your art, regardless of recorded history, will strike a common chord of two in someone else."

–Mark Heath