Sunflowers and smiles

January 23, 2023.Reading time 1 minute.

A local craft shop owner makes votives in yellow and blue with sunflowers on them and all proceeds go to Ukrainians. A BC retailer saw her work online and ordered 100 candles, selling them at $5.00 each. Ryan Reynolds saw the effort and doubled the intake. She sent much of the proceeds to a non-profit […]

Last on the Card for 2022

January 1, 2023.Reading time less than 1 minute.

One last sunset and a year end doodle for Bushboy’s Last on the card challenge.

Life as Art Form

November 2, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

Art is an act of intentional attention. The poet invites the senses, observes the flow and twist of words, injects emotion and insight. The painter studies colours, the nuance of shadows, looks for focus and textures, creates a tone. The musician listens, attends to harmonies, gathers rhythms and composes. The photographer selects details, alters the […]

Pause for Art

May 13, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

For the first time in weeks, I took a break to create. The volunteering threatens to be all-consuming, but I am determined to find balance. Weeks ago, when I started this venture, I was hoping to connect one displaced Ukrainian family with a host family in my area. Quickly, the requests poured in and soon […]

Drawing Sunflowers

March 18, 2022.Reading time less than 1 minute.

I find my ability to concentrate is lessened by the heartache of what’s going on in the world, and even here at home. I need a focus to calm and carry me through, so I’ve decided to learn to draw sunflowers. Sunflowers, whose symbolism is now so vividly connected with hope and resilience. Here’s where […]

Making space for introspection

February 2, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

Culling through old journals, and blog posts has me feeling introspective. Pausing and processing. I feel change tugging at my edges. Time to rethink the purpose of this blog. The camera has been tucked away until warmer weather and better health permits more exploring. In the meantime, I’m studying the art of drawing and playing […]

Old Dog, New Tricks

January 26, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

This old dog is determined to learn something new, so I’ve been practicing drawing faces. If nothing else, it’s fodder for laughter. The featured image is me, sans lunettes. I ran it through a digital filter to de-emphasize the amateur quality. The drawing below is my husband from a photograph. When I showed it to […]

Mucking About

January 5, 2022.Reading time 1 minute.

The original photograph was dull – a cloud of crows dispersing at my interruption – and I almost tossed it, till I saw an hint of possibility. Played with the colours, added filters to give it a painted finish and found a graphic of a man holding a camera. Et voilà, my dull birding photo […]

Art Break

December 8, 2021.Reading time 1 minute.

The more I create, the more I mourn what I missed all those years that I thought I didn’t have a creative bone in my body. Now I climb over mounds of doubt, clearing paths to forge ahead. I hit roadblocks where all I see in my art is what is lacking. At these times, […]

Street Art

October 20, 2021.Reading time less than 1 minute.

For Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Street art

Origin

Anxiety burnsan acidic devouring confidence impaled –mind wanders to childhood dreamsuncovers fear’s origin. (Tuesdays, I borrow from Twitter @Vjknutson. I came across this tanka written in May/21 that seemed to match with the image I recently posted on my other blog. I decided to pair them here.)

The Last Train (Sonnet)

We wait at the station, Mother and I,one final stop for her – painless she prays;I busied at bedside – prolonged goodbye –memories and regrets filling our days. “We live too long,” she wearily proclaims“Why must suffering linger till the end?”I plea and bargain, call angelic names,yet the will to survive refuses to bend. The […]

Mouse Massacre

There are mouse bitssplayed across the sunroomstuck to my favourite throw rug and great globs of glue The trap my husband setto catch the recent invasionapparently lured the hunterfor she, stiff legged andface matted, is skulkingelsewhere I stepped on a gluey biteyes not yet openbefore notingthe disarray Hard to concentratewhen a tail detachedfrom a thigh […]