Being called “weird” feels threatening to people who believe that “normal” has some sort of moral weight. But “normal” is really only talking about statistics — just because most people do a particular thing doesn’t make that thing good.

For the last couple days, I've been doing pencil doodles which are studies of faces and figures from Ponytail, an early-60s comic strip panel by Lee Holley.





This year I've also been doing a lot of mental work and planning for a new graphic project, and I find a lot of inspiration in Holley's approach, as if it could lead me into something new. Drawing these makes me feel like I'm Onto Something® — it's kinda exciting.

For a few years now, I've been saying that [the recently late] Alice Munro is my favourite writer. Now, news is coming out that calls her personal character into question. [It also suggests that efforts were made to suppress this news while she was alive?] This brings us once again to the issue of, "What do we do when good art, art that we love, has been made by a person who is not good, who we find it hard to love?"

There are various levels of separating the art from the artist (or not), and we all vary in how much we are able or willing to do this. Ultimately, it's a subjective and personal decision. I've come to realize that, for me, it's better and more accurate for me to say that I am a fan of a creator's work rather than a fan of a creator. I'm now trying harder to express myself in that way.

And now I'm seeing people going back to Munro's work, re-reading it in a new light, and wondering if they were inadvertently approving of messages counter to their own values. In this case, I don't have so much of an issue, I guess. For me, it isn't so much what she wrote about, or what her message was, as how she wrote it. Her writing has an elegant and insightful economy to it: she never sounds like she's straining to sound Writery®. That's what I like about her sutff. Those times when she wrote about dubious people doing dubious things, I never took it as approval of those things — more an awareness that there are people like that out there.

And now it turns out that she was one of them, so maybe we shouldn't be so surprised.


P.S.: I can understand boycotting an artist when we learn things like this about them, not wanting to contribute to them financially, etc. But, once they're gone, that whole aspect sorta becomes moot, I think?

After months of going without, I finally found my very fave chamomile tea back in stock at Dollar Tree! [And, as you can imagine, I stocked up in rather unseemly fashion.]

I find myself thinking about this word a lot lately. Recently saw it defined as someone who indulges in something [most often an artform] without commitment. And I realize there are underlying connotations of Bad® here. Where did those connotations come from? Which gatekeepers determine how much commitment qualifies you as a true Artiste® as opposed to a dilettante?

I once heard David Bowie described as a dilettante, because of the stylistic variety of his work. He'd work with a sound for an album or two, then move on to a new one. He investigated things that interested him for as long as they interested him. He made the art he felt like making. Why is this a bad thing?

Along similar lines, I've been thinking about how amateur and professional have come to be used as terms to describe the quality of work. But, strictly speaking, neither word has anything to do with that. The amateur works for the love of the work; the professional works to earn a living. Full stop. There are amateurs whose work is astonishingly accomplished and wonderful, and professionals who manage to make a career doing work that is not particularly good.

I feel like it's time to reclaim these words. The value judgments we've attached to them are not inherent to the terms themselves: they are arbitrary additions which can be done without. I am a dilettante, and quite content to be one.

This morning I learned a bit more about my Sheltie sale. Apparently, it was bought by a lady who owned a Sheltie for seventeen years and was very fond of it. And the painting reminded her of hers, so that moved her to get it. This is exactly the sort of buyer I was hoping to get for that piece, and I feel like it found a good home.

My 47^th acrylic is [clearly] an abstract — black border added digitally to brighten the look of the warm colours on-screen. This piece feels like an important lesson/step forward for me... in that I can be reasonably sure that no one else will like it [so far, no one has], but I am confident in it anyway. I had a clear idea what I wanted to do, and I can see that I did it. So for the first time with an abstract, I feel like I don't need external validation to make it feel worth doing. P.S.: photos really don't do justice to these colours, but I have to make do.

A dull, wet morning here is being brightened by robins, who are out there singing out regardless!

being able to sit out on the front porch to read for a while — first time this year!

[Okay, since you asked: I am currently reading Imagine Wanting Only This by Kristen Radtke]