Subway Stories, mixed media on paper by Leah Piken, Creative Every Day

Sometimes you just have to have a piece of art.  Leah was working on this piece during last November’s Art Every Day (if you click over you’ll see the originating idea sketch-how cool is that?!), which is actually how I got to know a lot of the readers of this blog and writers of blogs I visit.  I fell in love with it instantly! 

Anyone who follows Leah’s blog knows what lovely work she does – much of it is very mystical (to me anyways), with undertones of feelings and lots of trees. (More here at her new website:  blue tree art gallery) Okay – this one doesn’t have trees, but a close up shows snippets of what each person is thinking about written across their person – that’s what got me – the outlines are so evocative and the words such a story in themselves – I have wanted it for a long time.  Leah uses a piece of this picture as the banner for her blog.

ArtOMatic was the key.  I did well enough that my art could pay for buying her art.  And so I did.  And now I have it in my office.  Not yet framed, but I’ll get there.

Thanks, Leah!

thought for the day:  …enraged at myself.  Or not at myself – at this bad turn my body has done me.  After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is, clamoring about its own needs, foisting upon us its own sordid and perilous desires, the body’s final trick is simply to absent itself.  Just when you need it, just when you could use an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do.  It falters, it buckles under you; it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much.  Two lumps of coal, an old hat, a grin made of pebbles.  The bones dry sticks, easily broken.

It’s an affront, all of that.  Weak knees, arthritic knuckles, varicose veins, infirmities, indignities – they aren’t ours, we never wanted or claimed them.  Inside our heads we carry ourselves perfected – ourselves  at the best age, and in the best light as well:  never caught awkwardly, one leg out of a car, one still in, or picking our teeth, or slouching, or scratching our noses or bums.  If naked, seen gracefully reclining through a gauzy mist, which is where movie stars come in:  the assume such poses for us.  They are our younger selves as they recede from us, glow, turn mythical.  Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin.  [Note:  Atwood has written a tour de force in this book – the language is amazing if dark and resentful][I’ve no finished it yet]