My Life in 10 Objects: (# 11) Watercolor Paints and Brushes

“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up

My tubes of watercolor paints and brushes

A couple of my watercolor sketches in frames

“The question of what art is for has far too long been needlessly treated as obscure: it is to help us live and die.”
— Alain de Botton

After telling the story of my life in 10 objects, I realized that this mini-series was missing something important to me — an aspirational object, my watercolor paints, brushes and supplies.  These are the objects I hope to grow into.  I am prepared to spend hours with my brush in hand, palette at my side, paper in front of me — to play and practice and experiment.

Drawing and painting are more skills to help me slow down, pay attention, create beauty, play, and express myself.  So they are a natural extension of my other interests.  I aspire to become a better artist.

So now that I am truly finished with the story of my life in 10 objects, I invite you to share your stories — your 10 objects — in the comments.  I’m so curious about what your chosen objects will say about you.

 

Proving that One Day is Different from Another

Spring crocuses

“It is important that I write something down every day . . . It doesn’t have to be more than a few words, just enough to prove that one day has been different from another in certain of its aspects, otherwise it might seem as if one has no past or future, as if one lives within a twenty-four-hour circle, turning over and over in an endless repetition.”
— Julia Blackburn, Daisy Bates in the Desert

“The main value of the journals is not any of this, but making the reader realize that what’s important about life is not the major calamities or joys but just living the day, just seeing the light on the wall, just seeing a rose open or the birds come to the feeder.”
— May Sarton, from Conversations with May Sarton

I am again reminded how thankful I am to have this blog with its self-imposed deadlines to keep me writing about the commonplace things in my days.  It has turned into something of a biography of my daily life.  And while I may return to the same topics from time to time, each fresh post is a discrete, and hopefully unique, reflection celebrating a new day.

When I use the “search” box, I see that I have written a dozen or so posts about crocuses, for example.  Here is yet another look at this harbinger of spring.

Watercolor sketch of a crocus inspired by an autumn crocus called Saffron: Crocus Sativus by Lindsay Megarrity, from the book Contemporary Botanical Artists: The Shirley Sherwood Collection

My watercolor sketch of a single crocus bloom

You are Invited to a Show

Poster for Botanical Art Exhibit currently on display at the Miller Library, Center for Urban Horticulture

The current exhibit at the Elisabeth C. Miller Library includes two pieces of my work — a photograph of a bleeding heart plant and a watercolor sketch of a rhododendron.  The exhibit is just part of a recent Plant Biodiversity Conference and features native plants of the Pacific Northwest.  The biggest challenge for me was finding images of native plants and flowers from my archives of photos and watercolor sketches.

The Botanical Art Exhibit will remain on display through March 29th, and I invite you to check it out.

Botanical Art Exhibit at the Miller Library

My pieces are in the second and fourth windows of this display case.