Thanks Again

I am still in a turkey-stuffing-mashed potato stupor, so to save us both some agony, I've decided to re-run a Thanksgiving post from several years ago. Interesting that is as relevant today as it was then. Another case of The More Things Change The More They Stay The Same.

Patricia Scarborough 8x10 oil  Early Morning in October 2013

From 2009...

It seems as though the Pilgrims did not, after all, invent Thanksgiving.

Nor did they have pumpin pie, mashed potatoes, or cranberry sauce.

A truely American 'melting pot' of holidays, our current Thanksgiving is a collection of myths and traditions handed down and mingled with other myths and traditions.

It's original purpose? To take time to honor the humble beginnings of our country and to give sincere and humble thanks for what people had after all was said and done. Needless to say, the table was barely cleared and the dishes put away before the holiday was "improved" upon by well meaning politicians and business owners.

It's been a crazy year for so many people. Crazy good, and crazy bad. Slowing down to honor a holiday dedicated to thanks is probably the best kind of holiday to have. It was 200 years ago, and it's a good idea today as well.

Maybe the Pilgrims didn't mash potatoes, and so what if they probably had fish instead of turkey? However we celebrate, whether by gorging on turkey and football games, or by lighting a candle in a darkened corner, we give thanks.

My grateful list is long, and includes you, dear reader.

What does your list include?

Grateful List 2.0

Anyone who spends time online or reading magazines directed at the female population has noticed this trend. Its a good one, far more useful than owning a pile of Beanie Babies or getting a tattoo or wearing jewelry made from Grandma's silverware.

During the rare times I log into Facebook lately I am met with Gratitude Lists. They start with, "I am thankful for..." and list, gosh, just about any kind of positive, almost positive and barely positive items the author can dig up.

I grabbed an O magazine recently (it had been left on a chair I wanted to occupy) and there it was, a tutorial on how to be grateful. Step One, make a list...


And since it's the week of Thanksgiving (remember Thanksgiving? It's that holiday squeezed between Halloween and Shop Til Your Credit Cards Melt) I'll share my list with you today.

Of course there is the fun stuff, like Handsome Husband, Fine Sons, warm socks and pumpkin pie.
There is another list too. We'll call it Grateful List 2.0

I am grateful for

Rejection  It helped make me stronger. Well, okay, it hurt like H-E-Double-Toothpicks and I can still cry if given half a chance, but it did help me recognize a weakness or two. Or three.

Fear - I felt it and did it anyway. Well okay, not fear, like that dream where you're naked in a hallway at your Junior High School and can't find your locker. More like the kind of fear an entrepreneur feels when their toes have left the edge of that cliff.  Or, more honestly the fear of landing after leaving the edge of that cliff.  My landings may not have been beautiful, but there were no broken bones.

Hard Knocks - Well, okay, it's not like I got hit hard enough to leave a mark, but things didn't always go my way. I got pretty good at picking myself up and starting again.

The Grind - Like a good cup of coffee, you don't get there without some grind. At a certain point, like one of Pavlov's dogs, you begin to salivate just a bit when you hear those cogs engage.

How about you?  Is there something beyond that bowl of cherries that you are grateful for?

Not Today

Greetings Dear Reader –

I've often said that the goal of this blog is to post something by 9 pm on Sunday whether I have anything to say or not.

For the most part I am able to rub a couple of brain cells together and squeeze out a thought that I may or may not have known I had.

File today's post under the “not” category.

This is the weekend after Thanksgiving. We had a lovely holiday with gobs of siblings and spouses, with a few young’uns tossed in for fun.  The table was laid out with abundant food and shared with those we love most. For that I am truly grateful.

The hard part is not the preparation, cooking or cleaning up. The hardest part is in saying goodbye to family who, it seems, just arrived. How is it they spent days here and we hardly had time to visit?

And now, because it is the Sunday After Thanksgiving, the Christmas tree has been hauled in from its place in the garage, erected and lovingly graced with priceless, one-of-a-kind ornaments.

 

After laughing and eating and teasing and eating and debating and eating, eye-rolling and eating, long walks and one last lick of the spoon, I confess I am pooped.

As I sit here in my jams at noon, dining on the remains of our holiday feast, all I can think of to say is, thank you. I am deeply grateful for all of you. And maybe this:  while you're out and about this next month, keep this in mind ...

My exhibit, titled Common Ground, will be at Norfolk Arts Center until December 29^th. I’m pretty proud of it.

The Burkholder Project and Lux Art Center in Lincoln proudly display my work, as does Graham Gallery in Hastings and the Museum of NebraskaArt in Kearney.

As for me,  I've got just one more thing to do...

One Down . . .

@2009 P Scarborough Square 6 12x12" oil

I'm still reeling from our Thanksgiving get together. Hope you all had a lovely weekend, and are ready to embark on the next leg of our Holiday Trifecta.

Leave a message, a comment, or just a sweet hello. Whatever you choose, please, please do not leave any dishes in the sink!

Give Thanks

@2009 P Scarborough Square 5 12x12" oil

It seems as though the Pilgrims did not, after all, invent Thanksgiving.
Nor did they have pumpin pie, mashed potatoes, or cranberry sauce.
A truely American 'melting pot' of holidays, our current Thanksgiving is a collection of myths and traditions handed down and mingled with other myths and traditions.
It's original purpose? To take time to honor the humble beginnings of our country and to give sincere and humble thanks for what people had after all was said and done. Needless to say, the table was barely cleared and the dishes put away before the holiday was "improved" upon by well meaning politicians and business owners.
It's been a crazy year for so many people. Crazy good, and crazy bad. Slowing down to honor a holiday dedicated to thanks is probably the best kind of holiday to have. It was 200 years ago, and it's a good idea today as well.
Maybe the Pilgrims didn't mash potatoes, and so what if they probably had fish instead of turkey? However we celebrate, whether by gorging on turkey and football games, or by lighting a candle in a darkened corner, we give thanks.
My grateful list is long, and includes you, dear reader.
What does your list include?

Yellow

The last of the green bean casserole has been eaten and we're getting back into some sense of a routine after our Thanksgiving blow-out.

Back in my studio after not having been there for way too long I found myself floundering a bit. What to do? How to do it?

When in doubt, sometimes it helps to break convention and try something out of the ordinary. I'm not talking anything really weird here. I don't paint with condiments or throw things from my second story studio. I refuse to tie my brushes to the Wiggly Dog's tail or paint with my eyes closed. No, I simply reached for some yellow.

Yellow is not my favorite color. No special reason, I just don't reach for it easily in my collection of pastels. I've got several hundred sticks of soft pastels in many different brands, and the yellow group is overly neat and clean compared to the blues, reds, oranges and especially the greens. So, because I was still feeling a little full after our Thanksgiving revelry, I decided to stretch just a teeny tiny bit by going sunny.

Oh, the agony.

I still don't like yellow. I don't read it easily. What looks like an orangey-yellow in my palette turns greeny-yellow on the paper.

Except when it doesn't. Then there's the grey area where it's no longer yellow but not quite green (sorry, I couldn't resist the pun). Reading the warm/cool aspect of that particular blending was giving me a headache.

Look, I get that I'm not doing rocket surgery here. There's no heavy lifting going on. But it's a challenge to keep fresh and not fall asleep at the easel.

Pick a new color. Give it a shot and see what shows up.

Yellow 24 x 18 Pastel 2008

Recipe for Thanksgiving

This is the best recipe ever.

Gather a bunch of siblings...add a Mom...swish in the loving memory of a Dad...

sprinkle liberally with sons, wives, husbands and special others...

add a wiggly dog...

stir in an extra curricular activity...

and nap for one hour at room temperature.

Season with hugs and fond memories of a truly lovely Thanksgiving holiday.

Love you all-P

Thanks Dr. Z

I shared a Grateful List for my birthday, and it really hasn't changed much. I'm a pretty grateful kinda gal. To that list I've got one more addition to honor the holiday.


It's been a frustrating couple of weeks in my studio. Some ideas that have been floating around in my head don't seem to translate onto paper or canvas. Inside my noggin, they're beautiful renditions of the acres of birches we saw in the U.P Michigan. On paper, well, it's another story. It's been frustrating, to say the least. Especially since I saw a really beautiful exhibit by Hal Haloun at Kiechel Gallery in Lincoln, Ne. Achingly beautiful.
Deep sigh.

So many people have said to me "Oh! It must be so much FUN to be an artist!" And I smile and mumble something about it being better than kick in the pants. Satisfying, certainly. But fun? Playing cards with friends is fun. Sharing a meal with family is fun. Being an artist? Mm, not so much.

When I was in college, I had an instructor who was refreshingly honest with me. During our last conversation, while I picked up the last assignment of the year, I asked him whether I should pursue an art degree, or get a 'real' job. Of course, I was hoping he would smile sweetly and tell me how wonderful an artist I was.

He didn't.

What he did say has stayed with me all these years (and it's been alot of years).

He said, "You've got the talent. You can do it if you want it, but it's going to be hard work."

Oh.

I didn't understand the hard work part. For me, just like those people, painting was FUN! I hadn't yet spent hours trying to make the perfect mark that would hold a painting together. I hadn't spent days working on one small painting, wondering how to get oil paint to look like air. I hadn't yet spent hours in a studio, alone, facing the fear that I had no idea what I was doing. And doing it anyway.

I get that art is not like hauling rocks from one site to another, or saving babies from burning buildings. No one has ever used a canvas of mine to protect themselves from an assassin's bullet.

I'm grateful to Dr. Z for being honest with me, and telling me that being an artist is hard. Not saving babies hard, but ego-bruising hard. Not back-breakingly hard, but intellectually hard. Inventing a new language hard. Sharing your private thoughts and hopes with strangers hard. Had he not been honest with me and shared that little nugget of truth with me, I'm pretty certain that I'd be working in the food service industry, or the local Shop-n-Drop. It may yet come to that. But until then, I'm going back into my studio and face that canvas one more time. Dr. Z will be standing with me, shoulder to shoulder.

I'm grateful for that.
Happy Thanksgiving.