A New Day

Feeling good after some necessary down time. Down time is a thing that, in general, is hard for me. I tend to feel guilty about it—even beat myself up. Today I had the realization that a lot of that has to do with the fact that I feel such a tremendous commitment to Scot’s work. It’s like having a little baby now, there's a lot to do to take care of it—including discover it! There are some things I don’t particularly like doing—like making follow-up calls and that kind of reaching out—the metaphorical changing of diapers. I’m looking for a gentler motivator then the ‘beating up of self way’. I realized now that I can get a lot of energy just by focusing in on how excited I am about Scot's artwork and music, and how amazing it is that I in charge of it.

Several years ago, I took a weekend workshop with Jean Houston. Jean Houston can portray the goddess for me anytime. She draws a lot upon the wisdom and energy of Athena--she even looks like Athena. She’s extremely tall and statuesque to the nth. She’s a Shakespearean actress who grew up having conversations with Teilhard de Chardin. She has many brilliant, beautiful books, and I recommend them all. Thinking of all the stuff I have to do, that I kind of don't want to do, I remembered this workshop, and how JH had suggested that we try creating a detailed character in our minds, who would LOVE (and be good) at doing the jobs we don’t want/like to do, (here's the trick) and then ‘begin acting’ like that character. Brilliant! …It’s terrible how many brilliant things I’ve forgotten.

Today’s artwork, is an easy gentle piece done 1999-ish, entitled, “New Day.” This piece is from a series of paintings done on 20 X 24” canvas. The line work was done with a brown permanent marker. Once again, all the main elements were painted with transparent acrylic. The gradated backdrop and 3-D shadowing effect came after Scot digitally photographed the canvases and then loaded those images into computer files, for a whole new round of manipulation. This image was always very popular, in part I believe, because I think people were resonating to the idea of starting off fresh.

Today's music is a tune from the "Folklore" opus. "Folklore was around 1989 - 1990. The band line-up, for those just joining the blog, was: Scot Halpin - guitar/vocals/songwriter, Edward Bachmann playing bass and Johnny Law on drums and other percussion. The song is a Scot Halpin original, called "I Want the Light."

I will fill in the holes from last weekend (and elsewhere) as I go along. I also see now that this blog is a living, breathing thing—with its own high qualified needs. But I also realize it is all up to me, and for a while, I’ve been pushing pretty hard. The last couple of days, I’ve been down with the chill, but you know I will fill in the nil.