by Diane Widler Wenzel: My meal prep like my painting process, My table like my hanging of my paintings

The presentation of a simple meals is as important to me as the arrangement of  my paintings hanging in my home.

I don’t think how my work will effect interior decorating when I paint so I am always happily surprised when our living space and my paintings enhance one another. These surprises are thrust into my awareness when someone requests a viewing of my work and I start arranging work on my walls that I think will suit them.

I was surprised to see the lighting change during the day picking up the light in the painting, "Swimming Free". What surprised me was the painting created an enhanced lightness as if there was an additional skylight in our home.

My open storage is like my refrigerator storage. I pull out ingredients with water themes to hang for my friends who are coming this Thursday to acquire a couple of paintings. Although I am not actively promoting my art, if friends or family want my work, I am happy to see my favorite paintings go to a good home. Then I can visit and in some cases I can borrow it for shows.

Hanging art in my home is like meal preparation. I  can go to the refrigerator or studio to pull out the ingredients for showcasing  my meal whether my art is painting or food.

I should not be surprised that my meal presentation and painting choices are so similar. My meal prep is like my "laissez faire" painting.  I don't know what the menu will be until I see what ingredients are ready for me to prepare or hang.

My palette : My table
accepted and award winning in a 2003 Art About Agriculture Exhibit

The paintings on my walls can not be seen seperately from the totality of  living.  I should not be surprised.

 I see them as nurturing and as satisfying as a good meal.

When your body can talk to you

by Rain Trueax

Our life depends on our body continuing to function. Kind of a basic truth. Years back, I was interested in meditation as a way to keep track of how my body was doing. Deep breaths, blocking out my thinking, meditative scripts, music, lots of ways to quiet the brain, and listen to the body. 

Mostly, being aware of our body involves noticing what in the beginning might be subtle changes. Losing/gaining weight? Yellowed skin? Long-lasting, unexplained pain? Digestive disorders? Skin changes? Breathing difficulties? 

For most of us, we'd just as soon not have to think about something going wrong. Reality is-- the earlier we recognize a symptom is significant, the more likely it can be fixed. 

Many people depend on yearly checkups, mammograms, colonoscopies, and other tests in the doctor's office that might find a problem before symptoms.

There happen to be home tools that can help our body talk back to us. For young folks, this may not be an issue as there are years when we don't worry about things going wrong. The older we get, the more that changes.

by Diane Widler Wenzel: I garden the same way I paint

Lighting, atmosphere, color and linear gesture are important considerations in both my paintings and flower garden. My "laissez faire" approach, likewise, is the same. In my garden I love volunteer poppies, forget-me-not, snapdragons, glads, dahlias, and cosmos to come up where they may. In painting I often plunge in with colors without  little conscious thought to bring about what may. "Laissez faire" painting brings about new relationships that look natural because the paint flows naturally. Then  I weed out all but the happiest of accidents. In my garden and painting I am perpetually weeding to center attention on what is most interesting to me as my goals evolve. In paintings that tell a story the weeding is particularly important to communicate.

Pictures with busy activity can be more expressive of intention by subduing the activity. For example I just did some weeding within my 1989  on location painting of Tom Allen's watercolor demonstration at a boat repair yard on the Yaquina River.

My painting before subduing the clutter.

The distracting boy to the far right obstructed the dry docked boat that Tom Allen was painting, The boat is a necessary part of the story. So I cut him out entirely by scrubbing out as much paint as possible before covering the boy with Daler Rowney white acrylic ink. When the ink is just barely dry it can be covered with brilliant watercolor. Later it hardens and if thick will resist the paint like the white lines in the man's hat in the lower right.  Since the boy I removed was an important memory of our summer stay exchange student from Barcelona, I  redrew him lower down in the composition.
 

Adding a blue wash over mostly the bodies holds the group together as a unit by eliminating all that distracts from the faces there by popping out their expressive gestures. The same principle applies to my flower garden. When a green clover starts to dominate I allow my husband to rototill  and spread the mint mulch. The mulched garden is seen as a visual unit like the onlookers at Tom's demonstration.  The gestural blossoms are made more prominent by the less busy mulch.

a monster or more

by Rain Trueax

In 1992, I wrote my first paranormal, Sky Daughter, where the heroine returned to her grandfather's Idaho mountain after a series of losses. Once there, she learns things about her family that she hadn't expected when she finds her grandmother's Book of shadows-- a witch's compilation of her spells, potions, and experiences. Going against the rules as this book is only to be given to witches, Maggie's grandmother had left it for her with a note inside.

For the first time, Maggie understands why her mother had kept her away from her grandmother. This is only the first of what Maggie is about to discover in a world that isn't at all what she had believed. Something bigger, something unseen is out there. What is it? She has known many emotions, but fear is new to her. As I wrote, I contemplated an important point to the plot-- was what she felt real or her imagination coming from her losses? I reached the point where I had to decide. 

Diane on my paintings dedicated to two of the people I love

My entire body of work is a visual diary of my life including my hopes for the future of two of my most loved people - my husband and my mother.

This is my vision of myself and husband growing older together walking on slippery ice. The hand clasp is symbolic of being there for each other. This is one of the illustrations for a book dedicated to my grandchildren, "When I Get To Be Older"

Mama leaving for the beyond.


I painted mama and I couple a days before she passed away. She said she was tired and wanted a larger space then the nursing home room. I had visions of her desires for her existing in an exotic friendly atmosphere.
She liked posing for me.



The drawing on the easel is copied from a drawing on a prepared board
for an egg tempera she never completed from before or just after I was born.

My art process is a part of my whole way of living and dreaming. For more of my paintings about relationships see some of my old blogs.
http://widlerwenzeldreams.blogspot.com  is of illustrations for "When I Get to be Older"
http://parapluie-fromthentonow.blogspot.com is a short retrospective

reality versus how we might wish it was

by Rain Trueax

For this blog, I tend to write articles ahead of time, as ideas come to me. I had one planned for today and changed it after my friend, Diane, wrote her piece about her own experiences with sexual abuse. I felt her bravery, and yes, it takes bravery to share such things, meant I needed to change my own plans to address some thoughts on what has been traumatic for our whole country.

Here is not where I want to write about the recent hearings, guilt or innocence of anyone involved in them, but rather the subject of sexual abuse, ramifications on a life, my own experiences, and how thinking about the subject and its impact on adults led to one of my books.

Diane on cultural change: Recognizing sexual assault

Procion dye painted on cotton

Some names have been changed  in my true story.

Feeling like an outsider, felling  so different I might as well been an alien from outer space.  I needed to go along with the flow, to carry on and try to be happy when my feelings from sexual assault did not count in the eyes of others.

  I was 5 years old in 1948.  Walking alone to Jefferson Elementary School, I was crossing the extremely busy intersection of Delaware Street and the El Camino Real in Berkeley, California.

I told my mother what happened. She called the principal who had me and my mother come to his office. After we talked, the blond 6 year old boy who offended me came. All the principal did was ask the boy to say sorry and not knock me down again. No punishment.

They would have spanked me if it had been me.

 He never came close to me again after I pushed him into the bushes where he was stung by yellow jackets. My sense of power was short lived.

Today I see what happened in new light. I did not realize the extent that I was still without my power. Revenge doesn't work. One example, I always walked to school in a group. They didn't have guards at intersections back then.

 I did not realize my power was diminished by a man, the Principal. Seventy years later while watching the current event of Ford's allegations against Kavanaugh, I learned  new words and concepts - "sexual assault seared into my hypocanthus."  Now I know why I  remember the emotional details like they just happened.

How much of the incidents when I was 5  add to my self image as a pillow to men?  How much weight did this experience have along with many day to day interactions? The male Principal of Jefferson Elementary School whose casualness about the whole incident placed upon me the belief that this assault was not a big deal. My outrage was an over reaction. he did not even calling his parents! Instead of  getting justice, I learned that males were privileged and above punishment when it came to sexual acts.

In 1962 I was a naive 19 years old on a University of Hawaii study tour sharing a Waikiki condo with three other girls. I experienced  what would be called sexual assaults today but I didn't know but that my experiences were normal: there was no intercourse that could have spread venereal disease or end in pregnancy.  No problem? Wrong, I allowed  two to touch me with their penis with visible sores in exchange for being freed from their hold on me.  Since there were multiple assaults, it is hazy which of the men had sores. I don't want to think it was the one I liked until he assaulted me.

I did not report John to our guide who thought so highly of him as her student. He and his buddies barged into our condo when I was alone. When they couldn't find full bottles of alcohol, John turned on me.  Afterwards I asked the hotel management to fix the broken lock on our door saying I felt unsafe. They did not honor my repeated requests.

At the University in1962 I studied watercolor and dance. 
This 2006 watercolor, mixed media painting
 of Waikiki, Royal Hawaiian Beach Bar and Grill overlooking
the water where Ray, the sailor, and I met. We rented a surf board
and he tried to teach me how to stand and ride a wave.

We had a great time walking hand in hand, surviving an attempted climb of crumbling lava on Diamond Head, hanging out with the preschool and kindergarten kids living in the condo next door. We played my favorite game - chess.  He taught me to cook chicken like he learned from being a fast food cook before joining the Navy.  All was fun until he became seriously talking marriage and expecting premarital sex.

My Japanese date said, “When in Rome do as the Romans.
When in Hawaii do as the Hawaiians.”

Three of us went out on a date with Japanese men probably in their late 20's. The one I paired with was verbally persuasive but I was able to persuade him against intercourse. He took me back to the condo but not before unwanted groping. Now-a-days that would be considered assault.

The one time I almost reported an incident was when several of the girls and I went to look at the Princess Cruise Ship  just as it was about to disembark. Three crewmen offered to take us on separate tours. Of the encounter, I will only say it was the most physically violent leaving me bruised. I felt very guilty because I did not report him. At the time it seemed so easy to think I could just forget about it because there was no intercourse. Maybe I would have been successful in getting authorities to get the help the crewman needed so no other girls would be hurt. That is my guilt.

In the Ford and Kavanaugh hearing the prosecution gave Kavanaugh a definition of sexual assault.
Expectations of proper behavior are changing? The definition was not shared on TV so I tried looking up the legal definition. It varies from state to state.

 I wonder what the boundaries will become.



The 19072 woodblock print that mother showed Assistant Curator Donald Jenkins

I am amazed that many other women like me experience horror when sexually assaulted short of intercourse.  Maybe I am not an alien after all.

 I realize the assaults were a factor in my choosing to close windows like the opportunity to study in Italy my Junior year at Portland State College.  I turned down an invitation to apply for a scholarship to do graduate study at the University of Iowa. In 1972 I turned down an interview arranged by my mother with assistant curator Donald Jenkins about exhibiting my woodblock prints at the Portland Art Museum.


2015 drawing of a window
of  my husband's and my desire of continuing
 to work for a marriage
in which we both support each other's passion
 

Where I chose to close some windows, new ones continue to open.

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.