Painty-rific

~ firstly ~

I need to say thanks be to you.  All those gorgeous comments, convos and emails about the Travelers collection?  They BOUYED my heart like a big ol' hot air balloon.  Ladies, you got style.  You really do.

~ secondly ~
The muse has been here.  For days upon glorious days (as well as nights upon nights of utter sleeplessness as I can not stop working through thoughts and shapes and images and colors and...) she has breathed a fire into my fingers and the world has been a whirlwind of chroma.  It should be noted here that I have been painting for over a decade now, first as a student, then as an amateur and now [as  I would gladly label myself] a professional.  In all that time I have never, EVER worked in acrylic paint.  Not once.  Even those very first AWFUL still-life-of-toilet-paper-on-crappy-panels-pun-intended-that-I-threw-in-the-dumpster-and-six-months-later-found-my-neighbor-had-retrieved-and-hung-in-her-bathroom (yes, this is real) were in oil.  Along the way I picked up watercolor and a whole number of stigmas and prejudices about acrylic.  Silly untruths handed down by traditionalist painters such as "you'll never achieve the same luminosity in acrylic" or "everything you do will look like plastic" or "oils and watercolors are the only mediums for intellectuals."
Well I'm finally calling bullshit.
I'm digging around and looking to rid myself of these prickly, binding beliefs that I don't believe.   So I dug in with both hands, cave woman style, finger painting, squatting on the floor, smearing ultramarine across my temple, swinging canvases, letting paint pool and run and drip.  I drove emergency style to pick up a few more canvases after the first four had been covered.  Food, sleep, showering, whatever.  Halos and pale drifting lotus petals are far more interesting.
To paint so freely feels like shaking off rust I didn't even know was there.
Can I get an amen?

~ thirdly ~
We screamed and hooted and roared for three hours straight on Saturday night at the Humboldt Roller Derby double header between the home and Sacramento teams.  Which brings me to the all important question: IF you were a derby girl, what would your name be?  I debated over a few (including such gems as "seal clubber" and "tank-a-ray" before coming up with the bell ringer:
"The Umber-Taker"
Come on, you know that's good.  BC landed on "Bustin' Chops" (not surprisingly for those that know him) and we both nearly decided to take up the skates.
* * *

Happy Monday you cheeky little chickadees!
~ Umber ~