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| This pose amuses me. :-) |
Dear Art Lover,
There is a reason that olive oil is
nicknamed “green gold.” It is a lot of
work to raise good olives. In this
period in Tuscany, the olive trees are being trimmed, usually by hand, even if
in some cases, one may use a pneumatic cutting tool.
This means that my landlord has been here
a lot this week, working his field of trees.
He has been using a new hand saw that he and his brother bought. It is strong and fits in a sling that
attaches to a belt around his waist. I
love it that they still use old wooden ladders here.
It
is slow work and lots of climbing on, in his case, fairly young / thin tree
limbs. Falls are not uncommon. Sadly, I know one Tuscan woman who fell from
the tree in her own yard and landed funny. She has been paralyzed from the
waist down ever since. I hope to never hear of another accident such as that!
One another subject: It usually takes me about a week to write one
of my art newsletters. It may not seem
like that when you read it, but I often do research to fill out or connect
stories (and to be fair, for me research means MANY distractions on related
subjects, sometimes even getting more ideas for future works). I also take tons of images and must sort and
edit those. And then, of course, there
is the writing of the Web pages for my new art, updating the site and
supporting pages, and creating the online version of the newsletter, as well as
later creating the version to publish to my newsletter subscribers. After it gets sent, I try to respond to the
letters and comments that I receive, as well as updating the list. Then there are the follow-up promotions, such
as this blog post, to entice people to read all that I just published!
But, it turns out that when my landlord is
up in the trees, he is hardly accessible or interesting to his dog,
Gregory. So, by now, Gregory knows that
I will often have the door open, even if only slightly in cold weather. He comes bounding into house, stops to have a
drink out of the little bowl of water I always leave for him, and then pounces
through the house until he finds me. Sometimes
he is ferocious and drags me outside with him for a much-needed break from the computer
and sitting.
In the case of many of these images, he
jumped up on my bed where I was resting my injured leg while I worked on the
computer. I have learned to have a
variety of little spiky, spongy balls or even round rocks of a decent size to
entertain him and keep him from chewing up stuff I like. What these images do not show is that he
really wants to be the center of attention.
That means that he wheedles his way into my lap between my torso and the
computer. Sometimes my right forearm
becomes his pillow, while my left rests on top of or behind his bum. I have learned that if I play lullabies or
even soundtracks from films, he can be calmed and even lured to snooze for a
bit. Before Gregory, I never imagined
that a scruffy little, often earth-covered-toed dog with jealousy-inspired
chewing tendencies could ever steal my affections as he has.
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| Dog in my BED! Ugh.. I blame this behaviour on his owner! |
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| Gregory loves this ball with the light inside! |
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| Selecting art by my mentor Vasily Fedorouk for this month's art newsletter |
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| Snakes in art |
All of this is to say that I have finally
finished another art newsletter and introduced a new painting that depicts
history and … snakes. I hope that you
enjoy it and I invite you to click here to see the many images and news that I
have shared with you.
If you like, please
have a look at some more of my paintings and sculpture online here:
Peace
and thank you for following this journey with me,
Kelly
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| I love this local man's expression at Gregory's dancing with him after lunch at a nearby restaurant. |
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| Gregory took over my chair in my kitchen studio |
