mystery

by Rain Trueax 

The reason why I write paranormals, despite not having a clear genre where my work fits, is my curiosity as to what might be, a belief that we don't know all we think we do, and my own experiences-- along with the challenge of exploring mystery with characters where it's imaginary ...or is it? 

Mythologies, the stories through which each culture determines the meaning of life and often rules for behavior, don't necessarily have to be imaginary. They could be a remembered history and are part of human life on this planet. In human cultures, some mythologies are more accepted than others; but if it isn't in history or happening now, it is mythology and fits into the world of the paranormal-- that which (despite arguments to the contrary) we cannot test and prove by something currently out there. It is a fascinating realm for those open to wonder and open to going where questions take them.

Painting Myth #2: I make mud continuing to paint after the surface is covered.

 I was happy, for a short while, with the directness and freshness. This would be a fine painting as is.  But early on I started to lean towards greater representation.
 Earlier I  posted about this imperfect painting with some parts more realistic than other parts. Then I stated making thumbnail sketches for ideas for other paintings.

As well as starting a new painting, I worked on an empty boat in the foreground. Then Elenore took her boat out to go fishing: I was enchanted as I have always been by Elenore.  So without staging the whole painting for her, I quickly added her.
 

At home I started out to minimize the boat into an unrecognizable shape. I didn’t have a palette knife so I used an eating utensil - a knife with a serrated edge. But for a happy accident, I was about to remove the boat and Elenore. Now she is a little more recognizable from a distance and in keeping with the way I abstracted the trees in the background.

I thought I would do a portrait of Elenor.  I will do a portrait of Elenore and her boat but not now. I continued to bring the eye to Elenor and at the same time created a movement away into the background.

When I continue painting even after the paint covers the canvas pleasingly, many things happen. Sure the colors can become more neutral but mud has more to do with indecision of the movement of your tool where the staccato is missing. When I continue to paint, I am apt to have a learning experience; Serendipity enriches me.

Dreams-- the night kind

by Rain Trueax

Generally my dreams are prosaic--rarely nightmares, just ordinary activities. When surprises come, they are from who is in the dream. These days, other than family, they are often people I only know online. I think the characters in the dreams are placeholders. 

Once in a while, my dreams are movie dreams, like watching one in Technicolor. Again, anybody can represent the main characters. I had one of those dreams this week, full of color, interesting events; and when I woke up, I rethought what I'd write for this blog. 

The reason I changed my mind is, I intended to write about mystery and how it works into my books. I had two blogs planned for the topic. Then came this dream and it seemed a good way to begin that series.

Metamorphas of dragon paintings

The viewer might see the dragon

Before adding a few cues

 

Favorite dragon painting
 of me embracing my dragon

"Sunshine" is a vase dragon that sold

This is a painting that might morph

Is good housekeeping possible when my home is where I make art?

A smaller house means there is less space to expand. Right? Wrong!  A ranch style house of 1,200 sq.ft. with few closets means there is plenty of wall space to have a rotating exhibit. The reason I was enthusiastic about our purchase of a smaller house was because there is less surface to clean and more time to paint. I thought. But do I have more time to paint when I run low on space to hang and store paintings? My dear husband worries I spend way too much time moving my paintings around.

Recently the new painting of vases was in the community show at Guistina Gallery, LaSelles Stewart Center on the OSU campus. When I brought it home, I considered taking it out of the frame because there was no space for it in my storage bins. I was depressed.  Retiring a painting so soon was against my rule of thumb of  keeping it around for at least ten years before recyling.  I didn't want to just take it out of the frame to shelve it with other archived paintings. I needed to have it up to inform paintings that I will do next.


Before

After

 I took action. When I will it, there is always a way to rearrange my paintings so they will fit. I am amazed at how hopeless it appears but I always find a way at least so far.



The new vase painting was done on a recycled unfinished painting from a series of vases I was doing in 2007. The other four paintings are completed paintings from that series that I will not paint over.   The ceramic vases under the reading lamp also came from that period. I shaped vases with a theme of what friends and family said they valued most. The ice cream cone symbolized generosity.

My arrangement allows me to think about whether or not I will continue the vase series in the next paintings I do. In my ranch style house even the most mundane tasks become a part of my painting process. So the amount of housekeeping may not be less than in a big house.  I  rearrange my work so often, my efficient use of time is probably poor.  But restricting the size of my collection requires creative choices like painting makes the tasks of living interesting. I just might have to rethink my retirement from selling.  Back to dreaming about my symbolism of vases and wondering where my next exhibit will be.

These two are loaned back to me
I so like seeing my old paintings,
I am willing to take them back
as loans, trades, or
have them designated in wills
to be returned to me.
 

Serendipity enters. A large 4' x 5"  painting that I never expected to sell sold. And two paintings of dragon vases  that the buyer took down so they could hang their new one are loaned back to me for the purpose of my exhibiting them in one of my shows.

I really, really enjoy my retirement from actively trying to sell my art. The exhibiting of these loaners will wait. They will inform my new work. Happy to see them more. I'll find a way to incorporate them in my home. Right?

new dragon painting, "Venting"

Tomorrow I will post how "Venting" morphed plus more dragon paintings.

predators

by Rain Trueax

For years, there have been those who argued that cougars weren't actually dangerous to humans. They brought up the point that no cougar had killed anyone in Oregon (though they had to concede they had in other states). In 1994, this viewpoint led to a ballot measure, passed mostly by city voters, to ban hunting cougars with dogs-- about the only effective way they can be hunted. 

The ban has led to many more cougar in rural areas, such as where I live. Sometimes there has been concern when a cougar is seen hanging around a school, but in general the view has been the same-- cougar danger to human is not that big a deal and much exaggerated.

The photo is from a wildlife cam about a ridge over from our farm. It's not common to see five cougar together. This might've been a family.

Where we live, on the edge of wilderness, it is not uncommon to see cougar tracks or their kills. I've seen a cougar in the wild when I was a girl but not here. When we still had teens at home, they had been hiking on the hill above our house, heard the sound of a branch cracking in the brush. They then had something follow them down the hill. They didn't ever see it, but a cougar was most likely. 

Cougar will track prey quite a ways as they are waiting for the right spot, but they are also curious. More recently, neighbors told us they saw one walk up the gravel road in front of our house. That's beside our mailbox and about fifty feet from the front door.

Sometimes, we observe our cattle herd bunching instead of their more casual way of sleeping-- with their calves in the middle. They know something, but so far, we don't think we've had a calf killed by them. The herd has enough size to protect itself.

Locally, their kills are generally deer, but the house up the gravel road lost a ram to one. Because our sheep are kept closer to the barns, we don't know we've had a cougar kill one. They could take a lamb with them. They like to cache their kills. The thing to remember is they have to kill to live. They are predators looking for opportunity.

Camping has had us in their country, and while hunting deer, my husband went into one of their dens in Eastern Oregon. Seeing them in a zoo, I very much appreciate their physical beauty and grace but never forget-- they are predators.

This week, Oregon has a new story regarding cougar.

 Mt. Hood Hiker killed by cougar

Here's the thing for those folks who thought a cougar would never attack a human. Why wouldn't they? If we don't have weapons, if they don't have previous experiences of being threatened by us, we are prey species. Yes, we are also predator, but where it comes to teeth and claws, we don't have much to offer in the way of defense. Despite that, there have been many confrontations with cougars that ended with the cougar backing off-- far more than kills.

So, if confronted with one, make yourself big, don't run, look them in the eyes, yell, and if it attacks anyway, fight back. The sister of the woman killed said the authorities told her that her sister had wounds indicating she had fought for her life, but it wasn't enough. It's one of those times where you can't guarantee an outcome.

Easy to mix paint on glass palette smorgasbord makes my day

 I got frustrated with the confines of a lasagna pan palette with parchment paper inserted with masking tape that wouldn't stick.  Every time I needed a new color, I squeezed a little from very old hard or messy tubes with caps encrusted with dried oil color. Yikes what a mess I had until I squeezed the tubes until they were completely rolled up. Some brands the neck of the tube pulls apart to release a blob of paint. My lasagna pan was so full there was no space to mix.

With no idea of which painting I would work on today, I put a 22" x 28"  glass on our dining room table.
Even without a painting plan I just transferred some cobalt blue and started mixing in white making  four values I did the same with thalo blue.


Then added alizarin crimson to the cobalt blue and yellow ocher and a few other colors. Painting indoors because the air quality from forest fires was bad, I used walnut oil, no solvents, and palette knives. Started painting with the bright salmon square. Abstraction of landscape came to mind so made off whites near the top and dark values near the bottom. The palette knife lent itself to rectangles and I saw basalt and trickles of water.

 

 

 
 








At the end of the day, I decided I had been working under a big handicap. I've got to improve my palette for working outdoors. A cookie baking tin?

Saturday

by Rain Trueax

If you are a religious person, you will likely see this differently than I do. 

Life is not fair. 

I know how people want to think, but life is what it is. That's the best way to see it. Do what you can to make it better for yourself and others; but in the end, recognize-- it's not going to be fair. I don't even know what fair would mean.

Second look at the myth #1, "Stop before you ruin your painting"

"Ritner Creek 2017" is the painting from which a detail is the banner for the Rainy Day Thoughts blog. Maybe I should have kept theis painting as is. I destroyed the semblance of an impressionistic representation after visiting the creek in July and I discovered that the sappling tree had no leaves this year. Also the creek was shallow, warmer and the muddy bottom was visible.

First change

 

 

At this stage I became critical and wanted it to be more about the struggle of the dying or dead sappling



 

This is nearly like my general symbolic conception of a struggling sappling. The sapling was symbolically painted with broken bleached white limbs.  But it didn't satisfy me.  I chaned my mind about the painting earlier because the very thick imposto was limiting my gestures and in some cases I had to scrape the thick paint away. I wanted to at least recapture the fact that I was painting a sapling because it looked like a mature tree.

 

I hoped to challenge my last week's wisdom that it is brave and not to fear ruining your painting. I was sure I could work very hard and long and actually ruin the painting. But in the course of striking out some mark and replacing it with another much is learned with ideas for future paintings.  

 

 



This is my solution. Again  the sapling is made smaller
 by making the leafless bush larger, almost as tall as the sapling.
The sapling painting is more interesting to me but not at all sure
it is any better than the one I started to change this year.

Took over 20 years to paint "Owyhee Spring"

The Owyhee Spring is where we tied up our rafts to refill our water jugs. Originally I painted the ferns and moss like a poor photo I took of the spring. The photo has since become unimportant.Then around 1998 I painted the dry desert in the upper right over some of the vegetation and exhibited it. I thought it was done. Luckily it did not sell.
Then almost every year since I have made some changes especially to the way the water was falling. For awhile I would be happy each year. Then I would observe both the way acrylic paint goes on the canvas and observed more closely water falling into rivers on many boat rides since in other Oregon rivers. Painting this picture enhanced my enjoyment of nature.
Owyhee is a good example of why I am so sure that the directive myth of  quiting before overworking a painting is wrong for my art practice and development. I certainly lost the story of my surprise of this oasis in contrast to the desert but I have become more focused in observing water.

a contest

From my local Tucson writer group, this came with the morning's emails. If you are an unpublished author in one of the categories listed below, you might give it some thought.  It sounds like a contest that could lead to some helpful tips and winning would be something for your vitae as well as the prizes.

************

Hello,

I’m writing you about West Houston RWA’s 2019 Emily Contest for unpublished romance authors, which opened on September 1, 2018, and will close at midnight on October 2, 2018. The Emily has strong final judges and a history of frequent requests for our finalists. We are proud of our first-round feedback for entrants in all our six categories.

We are asking you to share our contest information with your members. Other chapters have posted the below information to their Discussion Loops or shared the links via their Facebook pages, and we would so appreciate your help in spreading the word to your chapter members.

Our contest details are:

***SHARING PERMITTED & ENCOURAGED***

2019 Emily Contest
Sponsor: West Houston RWA
Fee: $25 WHRWA members / $35 all others
Opens: September 1, 2018
Closes: October 2, 2018, midnight CST

Eligibility: unpublished in the category entered.

Entry: First 5600 words, no synopsis.
 
Categories: Contemporary-Long, Contemporary-Short, Historical, FFP/Paranormal, Romantic Suspense, YA.

Judges: First Round Judges: Published in Romance, PAN authors or PRO authors who give positive, helpful feedback.
Final Judges: Two publishing professionals: agent and editor for each finalist.
Top Prize: Silver Emily Pin and Certificate for winner, $100 Grand Prize.
FMI: http://whrwa.com/theemily/.

Thank you for sharing our contest information with your members.

renovating

It's late summer, and of course, the irrigation pump had to break down. That took a lot of work, getting a new motor, having that repaired in town, and finally-- irrigation back up.

Many years ago, we bought one of those worn-out, claw-foot tubs that we saw for sale on a lawn in a nearby city. It came home with us and went into where we store winter wood. We even bought plumbing for it from a renovation store in Portland. It all set there (for years), with us never certain what we'd do with it-- I just liked those old tubs.

You know, I am one of those people who buys books I am not ready to read but want them on hand for when I will be. I live a lot of life that way with finding something but not always knowing when I can use it-- usually, eventually, I find the reason I wanted it.