Open to improvisation

My friend Vicky says this reminds her of a children's book called The Big Orange Splot, so I looked it up on Amazon and realized I had to order it: it's really about how life's little accidents are opportunities to explore our originality -- and that's certainly what's happening here.

Stuck at home became an opportunity to play with new ways of doing art. And stuck with an empty studio and a delayed move has allowed me to explore watercolor -- the art medium both my mother and mother-in-law excelled in, the one art medium I've ever taken classes in, and the medium I've NEVER felt I was any good at.

So the book seems to be a perfect analogy to my current situation: I am forced to tackle again an arena where I've consistently failed in the past, only now I'm approaching it as an opportunity to explore abstraction rather than a place to emulate the work of other artists.

But I have to say -- finding ways to create spills with cheap hard little blocks of color is a definite challenge! I scrape and scrape, trying to get bits onto the paper, but then they are very reluctant to dissolve, so I get this lovely blotchy effect (see how I did that? I said "lovely" not "ugly")...

Which is just another way of saying that how life affects us is still all about perspective and attitude. I always think of the happy Indian tuk-tuk driver who sleeps in a tent and smiles as he drives, grateful for what pleasure he finds.

... and I think now, on the first fourth of July without a parade in who knows how long, of what a gift it was to walk out to the end of our street with our neighbors to watch a stream of classic cars drive by, waving flags as they went. When the going gets tough, the tough learn to improvise!