Today

 

Shall we discuss this over tea?, #13 of 100 angels series, 10″x10″ original, Available $45 (contact: jennifer.pricedavis@gmail.com)

Today I’m finding inexplicable joy in freshly polished, orange toe nails.  I’m grateful for the salvation that is my kid and our shared love for Bruno Mars.  We sang our hearts out on our way to his friend’s house yesterday.  He reminded me that life lives in singing loud and dancing louder.

I’m also getting a little laundry done, waiting for resolution to a bank account hacking thing (a big ouch,) and relishing what really feels like spring’s arrival. I wish I could appreciate, snowy early spring a little better.  I’m just not that a good a person yet…

It’s in the cool-but-warming, post-rain dampness, that I feel my soul nourished and replenished.  I remember what hope feels like in the birds chirping their return and my stripping off some of the protective layers of scarves and gloves, blech! It’s in witnessing life emerge from death (or at least deep stillness,) that my  faith is stirred up a bit.

Progress shot

And I remember that God can handle me just as I am.  As my faith waxes and wanes.  As I stumble to figure out those nuanced pieces of life where I am in control and where things are just beyond me.  (It’s the just-beyond-me that gets me a little nutty and a little nervous.) Somewhere between wispy, dry brushes on canvas, and wet grass — half dead and half alive, I find the truth of my soul. Oh, does that sound cliche? “The truth of my soul?” I’m looking for something more powerful than that…

Is there a word/phrase to describe the vulnerability that comes with living, loving, and just being?  What’s the wording that means that at some point you wake up to yourself and it’s as glorious as it is terrifying? The other day, the word “zeitgeist” kept popping up in my dream, but that’s not it… We should come up with one, shouldn’t we?

How she bagan

Maybe I’ll make this my homework…who am I kidding?  I’ll stick to playing with color and lines and belting out Bruno Mars.

 

Of oatmeal and 100 angels

Strange magic, 10" x 10" mixed media (acrylic and charcoal) on canvas

Over the last two days,  I’ve had oatmeal for breakfast.  How did I forget that I love having oatmeal for breakfast?
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A little while ago, I got this idea to paint 100 angels. Part of my rationale was to completely give myself over to my current obsessions: angels,  tutus,  and finding lightness/vulnerability through lines and color. This is #1.

I wanted deep blue and play.  I found her in the process. I discovered the magic of too small wings and star earrings. (Well,  I already knew the magic of star earrings,  because I have my own pair. )

I’m finding that is hard to just love what I love. I’m asking myself why a lot.  I’m getting comfortable with, “I just do, ” as a perfectly acceptable answer.

Because she was free

Because she was free, 16" x 20", acrylic and pastels on canvas

I’m awake and making friends with the mundane… or attempting to.  Who am I kidding?  I’d rather be floating… painting, studying snowflakes, watching the sky… noticing.

Voice 2

There was a knock at the door and I felt panicked. After losing a house,  a car, a beloved family member (not listed in order of priority)… I never lost the fear that something could be taken away from me in an instant or slowly over time. Why do I focus on that stuff sometimes? None of those things was initiated with a knock anyway.

Who knows, maybe I could have won a sweepstakes. There could have been a person with a giant check on the other side of the door. Or a better religion… or a nice vaccuum. 

I don’t like it when I feel afraid like that. I don’t like it when I feel afraid to get it wrong.  It’s too much work to be afraid.  The brush will do something I hadn’t expected.  Life will take a funny turn.  I’ll disappoint, be impatient,  or I’ll even be thoughtless. I was once too quiet because I didn’t have enough money. I wish I wouldn’t have done that. But I didn’t think I deserved to speak. I was afraid to speak because I got the worth of my voice mixed up with the number in my bank account.

I think a lot of us stay too quiet because of money or we just say what we think is going to get us money.  Not in a terrible way, but because we want to thrive. We want to eat. So we say what we have to… or what we think the people with money want us to. Job interviews… What we create. .. How we talk about what create. .. Maybe it’s just me.

Anyway,  I write all of this to set it free.  My voice has hooked up with a raven and she’s flying all over the place with her mouth open. She wouldn’t let me paint her with it closed.  And she wanted a feather tattoo.

Willful disobedience: The day of the loud, full, hell-bound woman

Face 3, willful disobedience is available. Click on the right hand toolbar.

Nah, I don’t really think I’m hellbound…I just like playing with that which is not to be touched…  I like dancing on the edge. I’m so glad I made it here.

First, I need to tell you this story. It’s all true:

When I walked into the church wearing pants and my self-cropped hair.  The pastor preached a fiery sermon about disobeying the shepherd (him, the leader — shepherd — making the rest of us sheep, hmmm.)  A move of willful disobedience would get you sent to hell…pants and short hair were my ticket, if I didn’t repent. I wasn’t repentant.

I’ll be 40 in April of 2015 and I feel like someone has shaken me awake. (Really when I writing about my old church has made me realize that I was writing about 20 years ago like it was yesterday — that woke me up!)… I’ve been shaken awake into my own magic and magnificence…into a deep self-love that woman aren’t supposed to just have.  Especially not the pant-wearing and hair-cutting kind.

And, for the most part, I obeyed. I was afraid that everyone would think I was a fool if I didn’t.  They’d think, “She’s so dark brown and her hair so not straight. She’s so short and chubby.  She deserves nothing. She’s lucky for anything she had.”  So I stayed quiet and hungry. 

But, I worked hard to not appear fool enough to believe I was loved, and valuable, and gorgeous.  I worked hard to be quiet and to tip toe under the radar.  I preferred to fail over being seen… I worked hard to  be self-deprecating and I waited for someone else to green light my deepest desires.  (No one will do that.)

And everything suffered.  Not enough money.  Not enough energy.  Not enough… I have felt so disconnected from this wonderful and awful life.  Working hard to obey what a woman is supposed to be takes too much.  It costs too much…too many days, too many laughs…too many walks in comfortable shoes and moments of not holding in my belly.  

So I’m declaring a state of willful disobedience.  

Loud.

Full.

Hell-bound.

And they shall be given over to their obsessions

Gray splotches. (Inspired by my son’s stellar color mixing on cardboard.)

Turquoise.

Spots.

Peach.

Face 2. Available for purchase.

 

Antiquing.  (A new obsession.)

The smell of raw wood.  

Lipgloss when I’m feeling anxious or need to be able to think clearly.  These go hand in hand for me.Back at that old church I mentioned a couple of posts ago, we read the King James version of the Bible (holieth coweth!)  In the Old Testament, God would sort of threaten that the people who were misbehaving would be given over to their sins or something to that effect.  In essence, that’d be handed over to whatever was carrying them away. That wasn’t a good thing.

And yet, when I’m deep in my obsessions, I feel carried away and so alive.  When I’m at a certain point in a piece, I ask myself “What are you obsessed with?”  If I don’t see it in the piece, it seems to lack depth and emotion.  I’ve ruined pieces that way too, ha!  But was it creativity without ruining a piece or many?

When I’m in that juicy, obsessed place, I think I’m “given over to my obsessions.”  And I giggle, because there is a part of me that is so terrible.  I really like that part of me 😀

 

What’s the word for a form-phobe?

Today I painted to ease the overwhelm that comes with the end of the summer and endless school forms.  Why do forms give me so much anxiety?  It’s the lines.  The deadlines and details.  The little things…and I worry that I haven’t filled them out right…or that I won’t fill them out right.  

Did you notice that I forgot to put the “R” in my name?  I have since fixed that, but gah!  I need to get these forms done.  What is the word for being a form-phobe?  

Anyhow, I finished this face and a trunk that I antiqued for my friend.  What hands can do never ceases to amaze me.

Fixing women and exorcism (Hey! That sort of rhymes!)

 

Back in the day I went to a church where women couldn’t cut their hair (and straight was preferred if yours was of the kinky/tightly curled variety.)  We weren’t allowed to wear pants in the church and little or no make up as well.  I think it used to be no make up, but then they figured that God likes a pretty face with a nice glow, ha! (I should also mention that I found this place on my own.  It wasn’t my upbringing.)

What was I doing there?  Looking for belonging?  redemption?  exorcism?  Yes.

 

This place offered it all willingly.  There was a lot of work to do, for women in particular.  We had to watch the length of our skirts and wait for a husband.  We had to learn to shut our mouths and smile at the sexually harassing deacons who were just boys being boys.  Only they weren’t boys.  That was about 20 years ago now…another lifetime…

Only, just a couple of weeks ago, I got an email from a list I’m on.  The writer realized that she needed to feel pretty and she has a friend who offers that service.  That’s fine.  I won’t even ask why we’re not questioning a system where  any woman would have to experience not feeling pretty.  The thing is, I didn’t subscribe to fix my pretty.

And then this nice-enough guy has come up with a plan for a woman to get the guy she wants. Maybe it works.  I just don’t know how fixing a woman fixes a commitment-phobic guy.  Can I get an, “Amen?”  I’ll totally give myself one on that. (For the record, I don’t think guys as a whole are commitment-phobes. I married one such man and I lurve him dearly.)

And where between pretty and winning over a commitment-phobe does a woman go to learn her own truth?  Luckily it lives in her.  Like right about here ❤ don’t you think?

(Truth is available for purchase at www.jenniferpricedavis.com/store)

 

Because she was a real bee

Because she was a real bee, mixed media original, Jennifer

 

I was up at 2:38 this morning, and what do you do when you wake up at 2:38 AM besides finally get out of the bed, run a nice bath and paint all 20 of your finger-and toenails “Boom Boom” pink (by Sinfulcolors?)

You think about voice and wings and being a woman…

You think about women, mixed media, and butterflies…because butterflies are beautiful, strong, and tender. But I’m not growing butterfly wings I don’t think.  I think I’m trading them for less aesthetically pleasing, translucent little wings, that move fast.  I might be growing a stinger and six legs…my buzzzzzz might be disconcerting.

I’m sure of it.

I’m sure a woman needs her bee wings.

Once upon a time, I flew in with my butterfly wings and asked my then boss if I could volunteer at my son’s school for 1.5 hours, once a week for 8 weeks.  It was an after school artsy thing sponsored by the PTA.  I’m an artsy kind of lady so they asked and I said that I’d ask.

My then boss denied my request because he felt like he was “losing” me. Losing me?  I was furious.  I was not aware that I had belonged to him or the institution.  The time I asked for amounted to about 1 day’s vacation and my lunch (half) hour (that’s a story for another day.) But more importantly, there was this kid that I birthed and was raising with my mister… I wondered if, when I dropped him off at 7:30 AM and picked him up at 6 PM, he  felt like he was losing me. And what about me?  I was already lost.  I was looking for some piece of me in that after school program, but I had given most of me away…and it was clearly not enough.

Ah, I write tough, but I stayed silent.  I didn’t want to rock the boat.  I didn’t like people being mad at me.  I was afraid to lose…not the job…the peace. But really, there was no peace in the first place.

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(6″ x 6″ signed, limited edition prints of “Because she was a real bee,” are available for $27.  Email me at jennifer.pricedavis@gmail.com for yours or check my website on Tuesday.)

Trust

Trust is a falling feather.  6″ x 9″  mixed media, on encyclopedia page

The beginning of a new journey.  I’ll share later ♡