A quiet Fourth of July

"Where the Fourth of July is Quiet," 5 x 7 watercolor, 140 lb Fabriano Artistico extra white cold press paper

"Quiet."
How do you paint that?  Doodlewash's #WorldWatercolorMonth made that today's  prompt. 
Something abstract? I don't usually think that way, and admire those who can do so, though I've experimented some with it. I've been reading Natalie Goldberg's Living Color-Painting, Writing and the Bones of Seeing, where she talks about moving in that direction.
But I have more reading and looking to do, but one person she tells about told her that all art has some abstraction in it. My greatest hinderance in painting is being too uptight. My best work is where I let myself go, and paint what I feel or think, without worrying about details.
Thus came today's watercolor response to the prompt, and we need some quiet in these days of pandemic, racist and political noise.
Some of the most quiet places I know are cemeteries, and I've often tried to paint the veterans' grave stones at Oakwood not far from our house.
Fourth of July isn't usually quiet, but it is in cemeteries, veterans' graves decorated with the American flag. 

Barn Again for mental health

"Sunset barn," 5 x 7 watercolor greeting card

What to do when you're stuck creatively, when motivation seems drained as these pandemics of viruses, racism and political chaos take their toll on mental health as well?

Listless days without painting, without writing accumulate. After reading about, and viewing others art,   I find one of my few cures is to go back to basics, to having some fun without expectations.

I found motivation in several places these past few days. One was a video by Thomas Schaller, https://www.thomasschaller.com/ the dynamic  watercolorist. I'm buying one of his books, Architect of Light. Another is reading Austin Kleon's austinkleon.com invigorating blog, where he quoted someone's advice to "Do the work in front of you." (I've bought all his challenging books on creativity.)

We ran into Natalie at an Abiquiu ice cream stand in 2016!

Then last night I picked up Natalie Goldberg's https://nataliegoldberg.com/ book Living Color, Painting, Writing and the Bones of Seeing." She's an inventive writer and teacher of writing whose work I used for years in teaching my students at UCO, especially Writing Down the Bones. 
I've had this book for several years but never read it all the way through before, and in desperation I picked it up last night. She paints to invigorate her writing. I told you earlier, I believe certain books choose you when you need them.

When I found this in the book last night, it spoke to me, and of me: 

"I never think of drawing a new building.Only the old, the dilapidated the uncared for and unnoticed draw my attention.... I like to paint what is marginal what will not last."

My late friend Ben Blackstock looked at my art one day and said, "You sure like to paint God-forsaken places don't you?"

Yep, and now that I think about it, no wonder, Natalie is right, and it gets more important as I age. I find aging people and life and nature more interesting. "The more wrinkles, the more stories," I once said about writing  about people.

Same thing. So today, after a large failure yesterday, I went back to a greeting card, another old barn, which I love to paint. As I do greeting cards for people... fun, relatively quick and also antidotes for being uptight.

A barn again for mental health, and for writing, and painting creativity. See? 

Two month flurry of pages read-I

I won't ever eat octopus again. 
Actually I've only recently tasted it, but after reading the Soul of an Octopus, sent by my friend and former student  Lauren Vargas of Boston, I discovered a new world of intelligence. Editor that I am, I discovered one small error in it. The author refers to a boat going so many "knots per hour." Ahem. knots are nautical miles per hour. But this is a book of discovery about life on this planet. Some things should not be human food.
That book was one of ten I've completed, two sampled and one half finished in the last two months, bringing my total read so far this year to 13 plus-surpassing my goal of one a month.
I usually read and write reviews of these, but blogging has been blocked, but books have not since early April.
I'm not inclined to comment much on each of these, but you'll note all but three are non fiction, and one of the others is poetry.
Notes:
Coyote America, Dan Flores, "a natural and supernatural history." If you're a Westerner, you know coyotes, but there's more information here than you ever imagined. They're the oldest deity figure in the Americas. they originated in America. They now inhabit all major cities east to west. In spite of man's best efforts, you can't wipe them out. In fact, we're responsible for them spreading everywhere. Lots of science and history here, plus a naturalist's viewpoint.
One Man's Wilderness-An Alaskan Odyssey. Sam Keith/Richard Proenneke. From the journals of a man who built his own cabin with handtools, telling how he built it a step at a time. He  lived alone in the Alaskan wilderness beginning in the late 60s. With his color photographs. He died in his 80s in 2003.
The Highwayman, Craig Johnson. A Longmire novel, set in the Wind River canyon in Wyoming, a ghost story involving highway tunnels. Shorter than most, also. A two-day read. You can look the setting up on Google maps.
The Great Spring. Natalie Goldberg of Writing Down the Bones fame (I have a signed first edition). Lives in New Mexico, a follower of Zen, teaches writing. This is one of those books I like because I can skip around and read the chapters I want first.  About writing, living, and more.
Woe to the Land Shadowing. Red Shuttleworth of Washington State. Won the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Wrangler Award for poetry this year. I got to meet him and he signed it. It's my annual tradition to buy these books of Western poetry. He and his wife are real westerners, but this book stretches the mind with his sparse views of life in the modern west. 

The pages of February

Watching gentle, large flake snowfall out my window this morning, sipping coffee, thinking of travels past and future, I journeyed in other worlds this month, in the pages of eight books, five of them completed, one sampled, one mostly read, and one underway.

Five of the books came from friend Jeanetta Calhoun Mish's Mongrel Empire Press in Norman, poems, short stories and a fictional novel, all with strong Oklahoma roots and subjects. 
The other included Longmire creator Craig Johnson's "Wait for Signs," a collection of short stories, purchased from friend Joe Hight's Best of Books in Edmond.
The books of poetry were "The Walmart Republic," J.L. Jacobs' Streets as Elsewhere," and Carter Revard's, "From the Extinct Volcano-A Bird of Paradise."
"The Long Rifle Season" by James Murray is a bunch of short stories, appropriately titled "Tales," most of them set in southeast Oklahoma, and including a fictional view inside Timothy McVeigh's mind. The fictionalized novel by William Cunningham is "Pretty Boy Floyd."
The seventh book is Natalie Goldberg's "Loving Color--Painting, Writing and the Bones of Seeing." Writer-teacher Goldberg lives in Taos, doing what I dream about, and I bought the book thinking it would be about writing. Instead, it is a book about a writer taking up painting, filled with her art and prompting. I found it has a chapter on Cezanne, my favorite artist, which means it's a must read to complete.
The eighth book was OKC Mayflower UCC church pastor Robin Meyer's book, "Saving Jesus from the Church," a discussion prompt in our Sunday night "Soul Detox" group. He has lots to say about the difference in institutionalized Christianity and what Jesus taught.
Reviews and comments on most of these are coming. The poetry books are the most difficult, as you can see from my previous review of "The Walmart Republic."