Realized I could test a new color or pattern on part of a painting by adding it to a sheet of transparent plastic instead of trying it on the canvas and possibly needing to wipe it off!
Diving into Glazing
Finally was time to mix a fresh glazing medium and put a first light glaze on parts of the face and neck.
Complicated
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Have you noticed the way fossil fuels and plastics have wormed their way into every aspect of our lives? And it’s not only our private, every day lives. Fossil fuels and plastics are in all our systems: agrculture, clothing, transportation, construction, government operations, the military, schools, shopping . . . . I suspect (fear) they cannot be yanked out of all these systems without collapses and/or riots. More practical would be to replace them (though with the military, maybe not completely) with alternatives as rapidly as possible. The chances of doing that rapidly enough seem slim.
Reorentation
Coming or Going? (Love Earth or Lose It?)
The worse the climate catastrophe gets, the more convinced I become that we have to decide whether we love our earth or we do not. If we love our earth, we respect it. If we respect it, I’m afraid we may have no choice but to live, work and play locally so that harms that have been externalized around the globe for decades can be readily observed and stopped locally by local law. The sooner we reorient ourselves this way, the less jarring the transformation will be. And if we survive, it’s possible we will be just as happy or even happier than we are today.
Just waiting to be glazed . . .
Lost
What should be obvious has been lost. No local, state or federal government is legitimate if it does not focus on making certain that all people have ready access to those things that all people need: clean air, clean water and fertile soil; healthy food; responsible primary healthcare; secure, sanitary housing; proper sewage; ambitious schools; living wages for their contributions to society; support if they are disabled or poor; and security in old age.
Justice
July 31, 2017
We in the US (at least) need a new social contract, one based on Justice. Even aiming for Justice with all its interpretations would likely yield better results than our current, rarely discussed, social contract.
The Pandora Technique
What else can one call throwing even attempts at honesty or truth out the window, risking untold chaos and suffering? It is, however, a technique a messianic, egomaniacal demagogue would use.
Yeah, Congress
Yeah, Congress, hold other countries' governments accountable for terrorism. Now add "state-sponsored terrorism," and watch our walls come tumbling down.
Disenchantment
If anyone (including anyone already exhausted by permanent war) wants to know why people on what used to be known as the left and the right are angry about what feels like, and actually is, the loss of any decent social contract between the people and the state in our "representative democracy," see Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," Perspectives on Politics (Fall 2014).
Respect
RESPECT is key. If we could all manage to respect, truly respect, each other, all human beings, and all of the rest of nature, this world would be a much more peaceful, healthy planet on which to live, and many if not most laws would not be needed. But, sadly, I don't know if there is any way to engender that respect
The cat on a horse self-portrait I'm working on includes me (cat), life (horse), rapid change, insecurity, never-ending militarism, words' loss of meaning, greed that imagines luxury will prevent death, and earth abuse.