What's your January color craving?

I painfully admit I can get into a pinning frenzy and not savor some of the gorgeous images I curate. So I loop back around sometimes and spend time soaking up the beauty I so quickly tossed on a board. I thought you might enjoy some of the pinks I've fallen, once quickly, but now deeply for. What's your January color crave?

Image credits are top Karla Black, below are John Hoyland, de Kooning, Comme Des Garcons, Laura Burton and Ann Woo.

Pink Air

It's happening. 
The air is starting to change.  
Fresh paint this week 
of how it seems to me.

A bit from Mary Oliver-

It was what I was born

for-

to look and listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world-

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy.

What Makes Me Paint Today

I find that observing rather than recording what I see works much better for me when I paint. What's on my daily observation list today? I get lost in the water in the shower, rain coming off the roof, puddling in the driveway, little gems on the spider web and the river a walk away, as it goes back and forth to the ocean. Here's some work that's come out of past observations. Some of this will be available as prints at my sale on July 20-21.

Fresh Landscapes

I've been working on some more abstract landscapes. These are still in progress, using oil bars and poppy seed oil paints. Big inspiration in the backyard from peonies, new baby RI red chicks and spring rain that turns everything bright and pink and acid green. Can you tell Helen Frankenthaler has been an inspiration lately?

Pinkscapes

Landscapes from Dongchuan Yunnan, China. Pretty crazy. These images are from Tcyuen on flickr and to view more you can go here.

Brindalyn's Performance Inside a Whale

Brin Webster's project MASS VENTRILOQUISM, performed at Göteborg’s Natural History Museum in Sweden, beautifully draws our attention to the connection between Jackie Kennedy, public service and (here's the best part) a taxidermied whale. The well appointed salon inside Carolina the antique whale, was the setting for this staged reading by 15 Swedish women who interact with the public daily. The video, available on Brin's website here, gives us a rare intimate peek inside and the history of this quirky extremely large object that is now only open to the public once a year, on voting day. Be sure and listen to the footnotes at the end of the piece. They tie all of these seemingly unrelated topics together and at the same moment give you a new admiration for two first ladies, public servants, our right to vote and the world's largest mammal. pssssssssssst...in all fairness for those readers who don't know, Brin is my youngest daughter, an amazing artist, writer, listener, and pickler.

James Turrell Makes Art with Sky

A remarkable by product of art is our connecting with the rest of the world. "If I love Mozart and you love Mozart, it's likely we won't try and kill each other" my badly paraphrased quote from Milton Glaser. I think that's what James Turrell's work does for anyone who sits in front of, beside or beneath it. A man with more tenacity than most of us, Turell has for the last 30 years been transforming an extinct volcano into a celestial observatory.  Taught meditation and the search for inward light by his Quaker grandmother as a small child, his fascination with the phenomena of light is driven by the search for mankind’s place in the universe. If you can't make it to his crater for some introspective time, I'd like to suggest your local Quaker meeting house. For some reason I usually reap the benefits of a Sunday meeting on Tuesdays. Sitting in a silent meeting with a small group of strangers for about an hour is a powerful thing. Below are some images of Turell's work and to read more on him you can go here. He's also included in the PBS series, available on netflix or Hulu called Art in the 21st Century.

Love Poem for Monday

Self love, the most difficult love affair to have, seems to be where all love needs to begin. But we run so fast from it. Galway Kinnell's poem, St Francis and The Sow softens me to the idea every time I read it. Wouldn't it be remarkable if we didn't need to reteach ourselves our loveliness? Photo from one of the best journeys to self love ever made, Babe.
Saint Francis and the Sow
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and
blowing beneath them: the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
-Galway Kinnell

My Friend Janice Floats

Janice Kelly, a friend who combines wit, taste and charm like no one I've ever met, has just launched a wonderful business that will make you smile. She designs and installs giggley giant balloon sculptures. Dale Chihuly with a really big smirk. To see more of her designs and to contact her go here.

Poem for Monday

Is my soul asleep?

Is my soul asleep?
Have those beehives that work
in the night stopped? And the water-
wheel of thought, is it
going around now, cups
empty, carrying only shadows?

No, my soul is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
its eyes wide open
far-off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence.

~Antonio Machado

-Painting by Yangyang Pan

Opening the Kimono a Bit More

A few more beauties from Jenna Goldberg.

Poem for Monday

I Take Master Card

(Charge Your Love to Me)

-Nikki Giovanni

I've heard the stories
'bout how you don't deserve me
'cause I'm so strong and beautiful and wonderful and you could
never live up to what you know I should have but I just want to let you know:

I take Master Card

You can love me as much as your heart can stand
then put the rest on
account and pay the interest
each month until we get this thing settled

You see we modern women do comprehend
that we deserve a whole lot more
than what is normally being offered but we are trying
to get aligned with the modern world

So baby you can love me all
you like 'cause you're pre-approved
and you don't have to sign on
the bottom line

Charge it up
'til we just can't take no more
it's the modern way

I take Master Card
to see your Visa
and I deal with a Discovery but I don't want any American
Express 'cause like the Pointer Sisters say:  I need a slow hand. Nikki Giovanni

The Grownup Side of the Rainbow

The site colourlovers is a fun resource for looking at palettes in a fresh way. Great place to go for.. I never thought of that. They ask readers to interpret and submit versions of color combos. Here are samples of the rainbows colourlovers came up with. I have to admit I'm loving the ones that titles give you as much of a smile as the hues. Mature Clown? To see them all go here.

A Few More Beauties From Local Pottery

Some Little Bites of Pink for Friday

For those of us who struggle with proportion, some decadence for the weekend just the right size. Little cuties from hey cupcake, sprinkles, karascupcakes, and hellocupcakeonline.

I'm Pregnant

Sorry, couldn't resist. Pregnant with an idea. Right now. Inside my brain or in that pink aura of creativity around me floats the magnificent answer to the logo I'm struggling with this week. I'm twitchy about a deadline right now. The date is looming for a presentation meeting, I have 8 more days, 5 more days, two, 6 more hours to take the rough scribbles, assorted illustrator parts, bits and bobs and turn them into the most timeless, on strategy, breathtaking logo I've ever designed. That the client will fall head over heels in love with. That's all. Somehow the logo, the best solution always arrives. It's the creative process I know and find true every time. 1.) Collect the information. Gather the ingredients. Pump my head and eyes full till they burst. 2.)Then put a bunch of bad, tired ideas up on the wall. 3.)Think I'm brilliant. 4.) Know I am not. 5.) Say aloud. I am a hack. It will never come again. It's over. My career. My reputation. 6.)Think about looking at other people's solutions for a similar problem. Decide not to. 7.) Go grocery shopping, load dishwasher, feed my chickens, walk, flickr around, paint 8.) Ping! It comes. Be shocked. Act surprised. Show it to the client. They smile. I smile. Simple as having a baby.
Photo from a series of watercolor eggs I did in San Francisco, June 2008. To see some of the logos I've designed go to alyncarlson.com