Found this website through wordpress called American Gallery,   http://americangallery.wordpress.com.  Suzay Lamb, the creator of AG, is passionate about finding and posting for all the world to enjoy, the works of artists from the 1700's up to the present day.  There is such a wide sampling that there is something for everyone.  I've been working my way through the artists alphabetically, starting with the letter H - just to be different. 

Perhaps it's not entirely ethical but when I find a painting I like I use it as a desktop for a day or two so that I may study it.  Don't save them for it is the unauthorized use of someone else's work but I don't think any artist would mind someone adimiring their creation for a few hours or a few days.  The problem is I always find something more beautiful than the last which I must have as a desktop.  

Since writing I've completed a pencil sketch of a galah and have amost finished a pastel drawing of a tiger cat leaping.  It's drawn in such a way that it is as though one was lying on the grass looking at the sky when this cat jumped through your field of vision.  There is nothing but cat, blue sky and a few clouds.  I'm okay with the drawing but am disappointed with my use of colour.  When I look at the Navajo Indian chief I drew back in the 70's I am amazed that I so obviously seemed to know what I was doing.  The nap of his heavy winter coat looks real.  His skin looks like skin.  Granted I was copying from a photo (Natinal Geographic?) but I still had to have some skill in order to pull it off.  This cat I'm drawing from memory and the help of Natalia who can't understand why I keep turning her over to have a look at her abdomen, although she graciously purrs and allows me a quick peek, it being too cold to remain stretched out for more than a minute.  The problem is I've overloaded the paper with pastel.  The real problem is, as usual, I changed my mind partway through.  I painted a brilliant sky using the entire paper.  Perfect gradation of shading from the darkest blue at the top to the paler blue at the bottom.  Then I started to draw the cat on top of the blue thinking the blue would come in handy as shadows on the dark side of the cat.  And it does but the tooth is already so full that any thought of drawing lifelike fur is out of the question.  Even with sharp pastel pencils.

 And that's another thing.  I'm quite disappointed with the Faber Castel pastel pencils.  Compared to the cheap Montmarte they are difficult to apply and the colours are insipid.  Perhaps the Montmarte pastels show up their inferior quality by not staying fresh, by losing their colour over time.  I don't know but I know when I want vivid true pigment that goes on even over pastel sticks, hard and soft, I reach for a Montmarte.  I should send this blurb to their advertising department.  I paid big bucks for the Faber Castel and don't like them.  Paid $24 for 36 Montmarte colours and enjoy using them.   Maybe I'm just a victim of artist snobbery. 

Took the cat outside yesterday afternoon and 'fixed' hell out of it.  I like the way fixative makes the colours darker.  Haven't done anything to it today except look as I go past.  If I'm very careful I may be able to salvage it.  If not I've even thought of having another go.  I never do a picture more than once.  Succeed or fail, once I've had a go it's lost its allure.  But the cat?  I like the whimsy of it (isn't whimsy just a wonderful word?).  To pull it off really well would be lovely. 

In other news - haven't had a trace of dizziness or vertigo for over a week now.  I breathed  through it.  Breath has become of vital importance since I quit smoking.  I'm frequently filling my lungs as full as they can get and giving thanks for that breath.  Sounds funky but there you go.  Without breath, we're dead.  Probably one of the most substantial gifts one can give thanks for.  Naturally after 44 years of smoking my lungs are not instantly restored but I do notice a micromillimeter of improvemet week by week.  And breathing through things, breathing to heal, breathing to calm, breathing to love.  It's all one and the same.  Breathing to remember who I am.  I had reason to write to someone this week who is going through emotional hell.  I asked that he remember who he was, who he really was.  We teach best that which we most need to learn - or relearn.  I need to remember who I am too.  I get caught up in the trivia of day to day living and forget that I'm here because of a divine spark animating this collection of proteins - and that divine spark is renewed every time I breathe. 

When I take that huge breath, especially during a section of my yoga practice which is devoted to breath, I sometimes feel that connection, that divinity.  So what happens when we die?  I think we take that final breath, which is both physical and metaphysical, and it feels that we keep taking it, that we become so imbued with breath that there is finally no separation between the inhale and exhale but the breath is All.  Physically we take that final breath and the breath leaves the body taking the divine spark with it.   Well, that's my guess for today.  Tomorrow I may have another theory.