Delusions of Capability

Whew… this doesn’t look like much but it required a lot of introspection.  I don’t tend to spend a lot of time assessing how I want other people to see, view or know me.  I work from home, don’t associate with the general public very often and do grocery pickups. I am not agoraphobic… I just really like my house, my space and doing what I want when I want without anyone else’s opinion on how I live my life.   AI is a bit controversial and I get it.  It is making parts of my own job obsolete and if my boss actually knew how to use it, I’d be out of a job.  But still I think there are some educational benefits to everyone learning to use AI.  First and foremost, know thy enemy and what they are capable of doing.  I think it’s important to understand HOW artificial intelligence works.  I don’t agree with everything it can do, but I use it to understand it.  And for the record, AI is wrong a lot with the information it provides.  One thing t...

 I do believe this is my first ever monochromatic piece for my digital art journal.  The rules were to only use black and white with one or two accent colors. That’s it.  The topic could be anything.  I don’t even know where this came from or how I landed on it.  I started with two crescent moons and then it just went from there.  This is a good example of how a symbol or color reminds me of someone or something significant in my life. All of the people represented in this piece have moved on from this earthly plane.  Maybe, the black represents their death here and the white is my remembrance??  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s just color with no meaning at all.  I tried to use images and words that were symbolic of how I remember them.   If I were to explain the meaning behind every word or image on this piece this blog post would be a 45 minute read.  Nobody has time for that, not even me.  There is nothing philosophical or gr...

I have gone back to digital painting again.  It is winter.  High season is over and paid work is virtually nonexistent.  I’m ok with that.  I need the downtime.  April to September is nonstop 7 days a week work, work, work.  I like hibernation season when the days are short, the nights are long, it’s too cold to go outside and it’s perfectly acceptable to snuggle up on the couch with an electric blanket, my iPad, a cup of coffee and turn on a Procreate tutorial on YouTube or one of the many learning platforms I am subscribed to but ignore all summer long. These are the first five paintings in the Kickstart Volume 1 series at BardotBrush.com I think the egg and pear are my best works so far. I wasn’t really ‘into’ the other items. Maybe I was tired or maybe they just don’t speak to me the ways eggs and pears do. Maybe it was the style of painting. Still Life seems to be more my speed.    

Isn’t it nice that you can use art to work out your frustrations?  This afternoon, even with the issues that have come up today, I have been more in tune with keeping myself on an even keel when problems arise.  I have been sitting here listening to old music, self soothing, thinking about what to make for dinner and caught myself imagining the literal translations of the music lyrics into images. For instance… I was listening to the Eurythmics singing Here Comes The Rain . Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory, falling on my head like a new emotion… And I wondered… what does it look like to have a memory fall on your head?  What does it look like to have a new emotion… and then to have that new emotion fall on your head?   OR another really good one…  The King of Pain by The Police There’s a little black spot on the sun today. There’s a black hat caught in a high tree top. The world turning circles, running round my brain. You see where I...

 There’s something else you should know about me.  I want to set your expectations at a low bar, if I may. I am not a conformist when it comes to blog postings or writing or anything, really. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that I will write 3 or 4 posts in one day and not be bothered to space them out on a timeline for “drip” content to my blog.  It is also entirely within the realm of possibility that I will not write a blog post for months or years on end with no reasons given.  You may be left in the dark to wonder if I have passed on, though I highly doubt you will give me a second thought as I have not published anything to burrow into your soul and make you yearn for more from my addled brain. I make lists and then do not do them. I can’t be bothered to tag posts.  I don’t know why. Sorry.  I will try to do better. A drink copious amounts of coffee and have a coffee cup with an inscription that says “Chaos Coordinator, fueled by coffee...

 I used to blog… years and years ago.  And then I stopped.  Life got busy with kids going in a million different directions, my career going up and down and then nowhere and my husband holding us all together with his income, smiles and laughter while we struggled to get to appointments on time, make it to ball practices, proms, graduations and then college. Today, we have been in our slow-er years for about 3-4 years now.  The pandemic changed our lifestyle. A Lot!  I stopped working outside the home, but I still have a part-time job that I work remotely from home.  All of our children are grown and out on their own and we have 3 grandchildren now. We lost 17 family members and friends during 2020.  Not all were due to the pandemic.  Some passed on from old age, some from terminal illnesses, one from a car accident.  I think we know of 6 of the 17 were covid related… the others were contributed to the causes previously listed.  My great...