Tag Archives: painting

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Colored ink

I write every day, both in my journal and here and other places. Ok, the other places are not every day.

I love colored ink. My mother did too. My sister and I were raised “devout atheist”. We did not go to church and my parents claimed to be atheist, but my mother loved holidays and decorated. Christmas, Easter, and we did the elaborate eggs with layers of color then wax then a second color then more wax. My parents also held music parties for folk songs. They sang in big choruses too, so my bible education was all masses and the Messiah. My mother set up a creche at Christmas and hung gilded pears in her avocado tree along with a partridge. She scorned “modern” Christmas carols so we just learned the old traditional ones.

My mother was an artist. She did art every single day. She kept a much more erratic journal than me, but kept it for years. My sister and I had art supplies of all sorts and art lessons whether we wanted or not. I love color. I use my InkJoy pens and write every day. I switch colors each day. Sometimes I have stickers or stamps or drawings or doodles. Each journal is a different form. I have lots of fun with them.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: ink.

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Ride Forth

I thought I had posted this, but I do not find it.

Ride Forth

My grandmother
Packed all her troubles in her saddlebags
And rode forth singing

My mother
Packed all her troubles in her saddlebags
And rode forth singing

My father
Was the only one
Who ever saw the contents
He tried to drown them

My mother was loved
For her charm

I ride forth
Sometimes I sing
Sometimes I weep

My saddlebags are empty

Prayer flags flutter
Slowly shred
In the wind

I write my troubles
And my joys
On cloth
And thank the Beloved
For each

My horse is white
When I sing
Black
When I cry
A rainbow of colors
In between
The whole spectrum
That the Beloved allows

After I emptied
My saddlebags
I tried to leave them
But the people I meet
Most, most, most
Are frightened

A naked woman
On a naked horse

I had to leave my village
When I learned to ride her
Made friends with her
Beloved
My village does not allow tears
When she turns black
Their saddlebags squirm and fight
The people try to throw them on my horse

In other places
The horses are all black
The white aspect of the Beloved
Frightens them
And they attack

I carry saddlebags
And Beloved is a gentle dapple gray
And the illusion of clothes surrounds me
When we meet new people
Until we know
It is safe to shine
Bright
And dark

I hope that others ride with the Beloved
In full rainbow

I ride forth
Sometimes I sing
Sometimes I weep

Even the color lonely
Is a part of the Beloved

________________________

The photograph is of a watercolor of my sister, Christine Robbins Ottaway, by my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway.

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Daily Evil: X is for Xenophobic

Are phobias evil? A fear of strangers or of foreigners. I think a phobia can make someone behave strangely or dangerously and harm others. I think that the isolation of the pandemic has increased our fear, so it may well exacerbate xenophobia. Not only the pandemic, but inflammatory news and war and changing weather patterns and the news that one in five trees is dying in part of California, unable to survive the warming.

This is a watercolor, again no date, but I think it is of the Olympic Mountains. That means it was painted in the last four years of her life, between 1996 and 2000. She and my father bought five acres with a house and barn in Chimacum, off of Center Valley Road. She loved the views up and down the valley. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1997 and died in 2000.

The mountains look like they have a crosshatching, Xes to indicate snow and valleys and places where the snow can’t stick. Or has fallen down.

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Daily Evil: G is for Grumpy

Gruff, grouchy, grumpy and garden! The watercolor is a small one by Helen Burling Ottaway, my mother. She did not date any of the watercolor sketches in it. I think it is from the 1970s. I very much remember the pot that the tree is in. That is an avocado that she grew from a pit.

Is being grumpy evil? I don’t think so. I don’t think we should inflict our grumpiness on others, but we may have very good reasons to be grumpy. When I was having difficult things at home, I would give a heads up to my nurse that I was grumpy but not at her or the patients. That helped a lot, because I did not have a perfect wall about my emotions. I also hate when people are pretending to be nice when they are angry or hurting or frustrated or grumpy.

Sometimes people say, “I don’t like to be around people who aren’t positive.” Well, now, wait. Do they have to be positive if a family member dies? If they lose their job? If they are very worried about making ends meet when a car has broken down? That would be a fair weather friend, who is only present in the good times, and abandons me when I am stressed. That person is not really a friend at all. The true friends are the ones who notice I am grumpy but stay present anyway. And they ask if it is about them. They do not try to fix it or ignore it: it’s my mood, not theirs. Hooray for real friends who are present through thick and thin!

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abstract

This is a cell phone snap from a few days. It reminds me of Jackson Pollock’s paintings, all the complex colors and layers.

The tide was way way way out and it’s a snap of the green layer on the beach. Gorgeous. The beaches here are an endless wonder.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: wonder.

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Hurricane Ridge

This is my mother’s biggest watercolor painting. I have it hanging in my guest room. It is huge and gorgeous, nearly the width of the double bed.

I miss her. Helen Burling Ottaway. I will put more of her artwork up. She died in 2000, but I still have the art.

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Art at Quimper Family Medicine

I change the art at clinic, these for the summer. We had four reproductions up before, of alchemy paintings from the 1400-1600s. I thought they were creepy but also interesting and beautiful.

The painting on the left is by my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, of my sister, Christine Robbins Ottaway. On the right is an oil by an artist that I don’t know. It looks like my father. I inherited art, but I keep finding beautiful pieces. At least I can display a little and rotate them with the seasons…