Today, Asha and I went on an off leash romp at the Kansas Historical Museum; or, actually, the trails around the museum. We were joined my our buddy Matt. I have to give Matt credit for getting up early on a Sunday morning so that he could meet us at 7 am for our adventure. He also took me to lunch today to celebrate my 50th birthday. More pictures of our adventure may be viewed here:

http://pics.livejournal.com/couchart/gallery/0007rp7b

When I am at work, I usually have National Public Radio playing in my office. Since NPR is mostly news and classical music, it doesn’t usually distract me from concentrating. Yesterday afternoon, I found myself  roused from the details of my stock holdings table by sounds that invited me to what I can only describe as…life. I found myself mesmerized by the piece I was hearing and found myself moving in my chair. After the piece finished I went to the radio station’s playlist on the Internet to find the music. It was Boccherini’s Quintet No. 4 in D Major, G. 448 “Fandango.” This music haunted me all day and so, when I was at home last night I found a version of it on iTunes and downloaded it. Not being a wordsmith, I cannot adequately describe this music, how evocative it is, how joyful, how quixotic. All I can say is that it makes me wish with all my heart that I were a dancer. But I AM a dancer in the confines of my own living room and, if you were a fly on the wall, you would see a heavy-set woman. totally lacking in grace, pirouetting, clacking invisible castinettes and leaping to the best of her limited abilities.  How wonderful to be introduced to something so joy-producing in the middle of a long work afternoon, after a long week of working late nights. How I LOVE art, whether it be sound, images or thoughts. It can make me feel that life is totally worthwhile. This piece of music makes me feel joy. I don’t know about anyone else; but, I can’t knock joy.

Over the past few months, I have been purchasing pieces of art off of ebay. It takes a while to sort through all that is out there, but whenever I take the time to do it, I invariably come across some little gem of a piece that I would love to have. I really like the idea of supporting other artists directly, the ones who don’t go through the gallery system to sell their work. I don’t need a gallery to tell me what is good or important art, or to take a big chunk of my money while doing so. I have purchased pieces from galleries; but, I really would prefer to deal directly with the artist. The Internet makes doing so easy, for which I am glad. If you want to see some of my recent purchases, follow me.

 I decided to start doing some straight painting again, and by that I mean to use only brush, paint and canvas.  Although I have always preferred oil paints to acrylics, I am not set up to do oil painting right now and I am not sure I could tolerate the requisite exposure to toxic substances like I used to do. So, since I have a few tubes of acrylic paint around, I decided to give them a shot. I am not enthralled with the results in this piece; but, as the intent was just to get back into the practice of using strictly brushes to paint, it got me started towards that goal. This piece is 4 inches by 6 inches in size.