Balancing Energy, 48" x 72", double canvas with acrylics and pastels by Tammy Vitale

Here is the complete picture (see below right down a bit for the initial sketch in).  I finally made a space last night to sit down with paints and brushes and see what came up since my mind’s eye wasn’t being any help at all and I had no idea where the painting wanted to go.  You can’t really see the pastel lines in this photo, but I took pictures of the canvases separated, also, since my intent is that they work alone or together, and you can sort of see the pastel lines – if you click on the photos and enlarge, they become visible.

Here they are separately, and some of the pastel is evident.  I sprayed it over last night but the pastel didn’t set so I guess I’ll just have to be careful with them.  At any rate I finished in time to load in to the Calvert Artists’ Guild show at Annmarie Garden this morning at 10 – whew.  And the car is loaded with the rest.  Whew again.

So today’s program is  10 a.m. load in, come home and play in the studio – did I mention I made more Ugly Fish (check out the album in the left hand column titled, appropriately: Ugly Fish) the other day?  Bigger, thus I will up the price a bit.  And the popularity of Totem:  Three Women Dancing (below left), which sort of designed itself out of what was to have been an abstract work, has led me to intentionally make some more dancing women which can be combined on a totem or hung alone.  I am hoping they will take off.  They are easy to make so I should be able to keep their prices at $50 and under depending on their size.  Again, my focus is finding places that can sell the higher price points as opposed to loading up with lower price point retail shops.  Especially if I am going to stay at this part-time job, and I plan to – because despite the stress level that accompanies it, and the loss of free time, I’m loving the stretch of working back in the left brain.  Some balancing out of all the right brain work I do with art.  And it’s good to remember that I can use ye olde left brain and it actually works very well given half a chance.

Oh yes, back to today’s schedule.  After some studio time or a nap, whichever comes first, take some replacements for sold items up to The Gallery at Friday’s Creek, and from there to ArtOMatic for Artists’ Night.  And home by around 10 or 11 including the 1 hour drive back from ArtOMatic/Crystal City, VA.  And I woke up at 4:15 – something I seem to be doing regularly.  I stayed in bed until 6:15 trying to get back to sleep but didn’t even doze, just rested.  Hence the possibility of a nap later today to have an energy recharge.

This evening Heron’s Way Gallery is participating in (and was the impetus behind) a Friday Art Crawl in Leonardtown East and West. The Gallery principals are working to create the recognition of all the art spaces in that area – and this is their start.  Bravo to them for taking care of us, who hang there, so well!  And looking to an increasingly bright future for all of us!  Make no mistake, this kind of thing does not happen without an inordinate amount of time and negotiation behind the scenes.  This is no small feat and I send them Kudos galore!

So art is swimming right along, no longer upstream…in fact if the current rate of sales keep going, pretty soon I may feel like I’m approaching rapids.  Not complaining, just readjusting schedules to make sure I have product available.  And I have to order clay.  I cannot believe I am down to 4 boxes of clay – that’s about two weeks work of focused studio time.  So I guess I better pay attention to that, too.

Life is good.

thought for the day:  In the past few centuries of industrialization and urbanization – leading to our current technostructure – we have strayed so far from home we have almost no idea what Nature is.  The closest we get to comprehension is to say we ought to realign our lives with nature, as though this were an option.  As though we were separate.  As though we have dominion over the miraculous biosphere that designed us from the molecule up. …Nature is no longer real to millions and millions of people in the West.  We have stopped believing somehow that we live in Nature, and see it instead as an inconvenience represented by the day’s weather, while we hustle about in our temperature – controlled capsules, breathing recycled air.  Many of us think of real Nature as a vacation destination, or a romanticized oddity on the Discovery Channel – not occurring where we live.

There is no other world:  Nature is the world.  And we are Nature, in it, of it, and totally linked with its fate.  Isn’t it obvious by now?  what we do to the earth we are doing to ourselves: what we do to ourselves we are doing to the earth.  Christina Baldwin, The Seven Whispers

yes – I realize I didn’t list five ways to do anything.  I was just practicing making up one of those headlines that is supposed to create interest.  Of course when you don’t deliver it is supposed to do just the opposite.  Call me contrary.