Click on it to increase the size. A history of a painting... where it's been before it got to where it is. There are other histories, like 'where,' 'who,' 'why,' oh and perhaps most important, 'what'- :)

When do major shifts occur? In small moments soon gone?

It's still and always a dance, of colour, form, energies, bodies.

This technique is not the same as paint on canvas, and I'm learning that.

I'm not, well, no, it's not, well, sometimes the idea you had in your mind and what emerges aren't, and, well, it's about acceptance. Dancing a new dance that is always different from all the other dances you've danced.

Still learning the ways watercolour pencils and paper work together; yes, her back is a little 'rubbed over,' but I don't mind that. Aren't all of our backs a little 'rubbed over' with life, what we carry, what we prostrate in our spiritual practice?

I don't know why the Fauvian slashes of colour.

This series (these pencils, this place of residence, my relationships, both in daily life and on line) I'm calling, "Enfolded Luminosity."

Willow Women was splattered this morning by a coffee spill. Maybe I'll throw a heap of water on it and see what happens... it can't be an unwetted drawing anymore.

Dance, Dream, Disappearing into each other is sold; it went quite quickly (thank you beautiful man, dear Bill); there were email exchanges with a few interested people (can I call you that, Mary? it's hardly a fair description of you, your work, our connection), and then the watercolour drawing got betrothed and is awaiting it's suitor now. These pieces are for sale, and thanks, Jean, for reminding me to be more clear about that. Now that I have a working relationship with a woman who manages a print shop, I can also offer 'art prints' on satin finish photograph paper of anything you see here...

This doesn't exist in the world. It was between a drawing and a scribbling colouring episode. It only exists digitally. The water that the figures are washed under would have dried anyhow...

It's probably part of my series on temple art, the celestial dancers...

Bowing: a bent, curved, or arched object.

In Canada, we have a minority government! Harper leads, but hopefully his hands are mostly tied:

"During the lengthy winter campaign, Mr. Harper focused on issues like tax cuts, crime and cleaning up government. He also vowed to resurrect the gay marriage issue and pull out of the Kyoto Accord on climate change, but also said he wouldn't look to change abortion laws."

However, he was born and bred in the extreme right - the Western Conservative party has roots in the Reform and Alliance parties; we could be facing some difficult times ahead with Charter rights, abortion issues, education (a Conservative government in Ontario a few decades ago pulled loans from graduate students, effectively crippling higher education in this province), and other threats to individual freedom.

But I project fearful imaginings. It is a minority government. There is no strong leadership at present and we await the emergence of Canada's next leader... I'm betting, down the road, on Michael Ignatieff (I'm all for intellectuals as leaders), and Justin Trudeau.

It is election day here, National ones. Because I haven't done last year's tax return yet, and so haven't informed the government of my new address, I wasn't on the voter's list. But my landlord told me all I needed was proof of address and something with a signature, so I took a bank statement and my passport. With my dog in tow, I took my place in the cardboard booth and, whew, voted. It would have been the only national election that I would have not voted in in my entire adult life. I'm hoping for a minority government; if Harper gets full clearance and becomes our next Prime Minister, I fear we'll be joining the States next year when it attacks Iran, and begins yet another unwanted and wasteful war. Why hasn't the Bush administration been charged with war crimes over starting a war in Iraq on false premises? Oh, I am charging at the bit tonight...

It's probably the slowest drawing I have ever done. Is it my 'style'? No. I like to draw a figure or figures, arrange the canvas and paint and water, and throw everything together and let it create itself. Fast. This drawing is the opposite process. Perhaps that's why it seems a meditative exercise in itself. The colours have to suggest themselves out of their own resonance. Waiting for them to emerge takes time, and can't be rushed. Surely like some aspects of our lives.

Sometimes we have to weigh options, and choose carefully. Allowing our choices to come out of a natural inclination. It's an intuitive process, yes, but one that's not foolhardy. All colours, or all options, are carefully considered, and then the one that both 'thinks' and 'feels' right is applied. At first carefully, just in case, and then deepened.

At this point in the process of this drawing I'm considering how we make decisions. Isn't it a lot like the way we create art?

Musica mundana, humana, practica. Conciliance, interconnectedness, unity. Gestalt. Impure purity of the mixture of everything. When the mess appears in the picture of the place, when the angry, bitter edges aren't hidden by the smooth surfaces of the portrait, where the blood courses beneath a fine veneer of skin. Get in close, see the pores, the pulse beneath the eye, the browning teeth. And let go, in that place of closeness, heart beating on heart, where it is dissembling, the sharp smell of breath on the body of desire. Ecstasy accepts where it is collapsing, what in us is repulsing, with the coming towards, where edges melt into, the disappearing. Light sweeps the universe without discriminating. The whole is greater than the parts. Even Apollo weeps. A music of the spheres, more than speculation. Quivering theoretical strings sing. Feel our bodies. We are pulses of electricity, energy, and chemical processes, an organics of living. Think of it as a masterpiece, the orgasm.

If I lighten the paper so that it's closer to the cream white it is in real life, the colour washes out, even with enhancing. Today I only used the colour cast option to make the paper less blue. So the colour of the figures is stronger, closer to what it is here, in this room, in the light from the window. My camera is ready for pick-up at the Sony store: luckily I had extended warranty, and it was covered. Hopefully the photos will be less grainy now.

Where am I at with this watercolour drawing today? Floating land mass; floating sunset; three women clothed with the sun (but no diadems under their feet).

And I, myself, in my aging body, which doesn't know it's not young, bleeding, just like always, for far too many years. Cramps, tired, drawing in spiritually to where death meets life, where rain falls on frozen ground, the winter of my monthly cycle, time for rest, deep meditation, feeling my body fully, celebrating womanhood in quiet solitude, awaiting the end of the process of cleansing, and a return to normal energy. This is an opportune time to explore the depths of my embodied spirituality; and I do try to honour this gift, even if into my fifth decade it becomes wearisome.

It's not easy to post a work-in-progress, especially when I prefer to wait until something is finished before showing it to anyone. But aren't we all works-in-process in our blogs? This format allows, nay encourages, us to forge ahead with our wayward ideas and stray creativities. It all pulls together eventually. We are creating whole bodies of work here. In draft form, in finished form. So I post the progress of this little drawing, wondering myself where it's going. It's quite gaudy today, and much of my 'art' is about saving what are turning into messes, 'saving' it to the point of livability. When I can live with something, and perhaps I'm seeking bold and sensitive, polished and raw, confident and wavering, manifesting and disappearing, in whatever way that happens, then it's done. If I can 'look' at it without jumping up to 'fix' it, then it's done. There gets to be a point when you can almost look at your work as if you didn't do it. You remember the emotion of your life at the time you did it, where you were in your inner journey, but are no longer involved in the traceries of line or paint or design. It has become something in the world, and not part of your inner landscape where you are busy scribbling, drawing, painting, composing, revising and continually re-orienting your life into the work of ongoing art that it is.