My 40^th acrylic painting is a chinchilla (as I hope is apparent). I did it back in August, but it was a birthday gift so I couldn't show it publicly til my friend saw it [so as not to spoil the surprise, eh]. I learned a few things while working on this one:

• my ability to handle acrylic paint technically is a bit more advanced than I consciously realized — I was able to do some things here that I didn't know I could.
• for the first time, I tried using a fair bit of drybrush in acrylic. It's a technique I don't hear discussed very often with acrylics, but I found that it came in handy here.
• so many times I have read that it's not a good idea to fuss with fiddly little things in a painting — but for this painting I felt free to ignore that advice, because I knew what final look I was aiming at.
• I noticed in my reference photo that the chinchilla had both white and black whiskers, so I painted on some white ones and black ones. But then I immediately saw that they jumped out, glaring unnaturally. So I went over them with washes til I ended up with light gray and dark gray whiskers instead, and that looked better. This was a good lesson in paying closer attention to actual colours and values, to see what you see instead of what you think you see.

I don't remember how I discovered them, but there's this Swiss indie band on Bandcamp called the blue herons. A few times a year they will record and release a new song, and basically give it away — their sutff is “pay what you want”, even if “what you want” is zero. When I stumbled across them, they had about half a dozen songs out, and I got them all for free.

Eventually I realized that I listened to them so often, and enjoyed them so much, that it was only right that I give something back. So when their next song came out, I volunteered to pay way too much for it, to pay enough for all the earlier freebies. And I've paid for every song since then, more like the price I would expect to pay for any other song. I feel better knowing that I am doing my bit to help support an indie creator.

And for the last few, I haven't even listened to it first, I just buy it and download it as soon as it comes out. We're at the point now where I trust them, cuz they have never let me down. Their periodic reappearance in my inbox is a source of quiet delight in my life.

new hearing aids — my tunes have cymbals again!

Art is expression. Of the self, one's thoughts and feelings and beliefs. It's not just painting a tree, it's conveying what the tree means to you. Art evokes, it suggests, it interprets, it expresses. It doesn't simply take dictation. It makes something that didn't exist before, that couldn't exist any other way. The artist who painstakingly reproduces the world in rigorous and accurate detail and no more, simply because they have the skills to do so, is really no different from a camera. The one who cynically cranks out yet another song or story or painting nearly identical to all their others, in their sleep, simply because they know they can sell it and for no other reason, is not creating art.

Art is in the intention of the creator.

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Art is an experience. The painter creates an experience for the eye, the musician for the ear, the writer for the mind, the chef for the tongue. Some will find the experience engaging, or delightful, or moving [good]; others may find it indifferent or unpleasant [bad]. But, good or bad, it's still art regardless. The pop musician may be up on stage playing their hit for the zillionth time on autopilot, bored out of their skull... but people in the audience are ecstatic because that piece connects with them powerfully, here and now. Norman Rockwell cranks out a painting in less than a week because a magazine hired him to make their cover, and some people dismiss him as a hack commercial illustrator... but next week, and for decades afterward, other people are moved to laughter or tears by the story they see evoked in his facial expressions.

Art is in the response of the audience.

another epic sky

A beautiful day!

Dunno what reminded me of this today, but:

When I was in elementary school, the schoolyard had a line painted down the middle to divide it by gender. [This was a simpler task in those days, as there were only two.] When we arrived before school, we waited in the schoolyard on our designated side. When the bell rang, the boys clustered at the boys' door on one end of the school, and the girls did likewise at the opposite end.

Of course, once we were inside the school, the genders mingled, because you would have to pass some of the opposite on their way to their classroom while you were on your way to your classroom. Once in the classroom, seating was non-segregated. As were lessons. When we were divided into groups for group projects, they generally tended to be co-ed.

But when the bell rang for morning recess, we lined up at the classroom door in two lines, divided by gender. And then, when dismissed, our lines diverged toward the designated outer doors. When we were out for recess, we played on our designated side. Facilities were duplicated: there was a girls' and boys' baseball diamond, girls' and boys' basketball nets, etc. Being caught on the wrong side was grounds for squeals of snitching, courtesy of the correct gender, and chewing out, courtesy of whichever teacher was on monitor duty.

This repeated throughout the day: returning inside after recess, being sent outside at lunch [our school had no cafeteria, it was assumed everyone could go home for lunch], returning, out and in for afternoon recess, and then final bell to leave for the day. Segregated outside, integrated inside. [Granted, they couldn't stop us from mingling over lunch or after school. But recess was enforced.]

It didn't take me more than a couple of grades to grow old enough to see the pointlessness and waste of all this. But I was always too meek to question it out loud.

In grades seven and eight, the boys were obliged to take wood shop, and the girls to take home ec — the first segregated instruction. This is also when phys ed classes became segregated. In my darkest secret recesses, I suspected puberty had something to do with the phys ed situation.

Once I hit high school in grade nine —

— then wood shop became an elective. Along with auto shop and metalworking. No longer obligatory. But also not available for girls. Home ec was similarly optional, and also not available for boys. No matter how much they might be interested in the subject, or benefit from it. It simply wasn't up for discussion.

But at least, in high school, the schoolyard and entryways were no longer segregated.

I still have no real explanation for all of this. But I'm glad my kids came up in a school system which no longer indulged in such eccentricities.

hearing robins right when I wake up

a rainy day

Today's forecast is for rain all day, heavy at times. I've been saying for the last couple weeks that we need it — the lawns and fields have begun to look like straw. Plus our air has been full of wildfire smoke for the past week and a good rain could help clear some of that out. It's unusual for us to go so long without rain in the spring...

I find myself thinking about this expression, and how often I heard it in my childhood and younger adulthood:

“Don’t be such a baby.”

So often, this was the reply we received when we found something difficult or stressful or painful, and dared to express this. The clear undercurrent to such a sentiment was that it is somehow morally superior to endure a situation rather than improve it. The deeper and subtler message was Don’t try to change things.

Nowadays, at least in some circles, I can see resistance to this whole dynamic becoming more vocal. People are speaking up about the fact that we are not all equally abled, and some people need more help to navigate the world than others do, and that it is A Good Thing® for those people to get it.

I think this is a social change for the better, and I hope it progresses. I have some regrets that this change in perspective is arriving too late for me in many ways, but I don’t begrudge it for those who need it now.