Monday, May 31, 2010

Changing Seasons

I feel like I'm going through the five stages of grief over my maternity leave ending. I've greeted my first son, a big-eyed, beautiful bobblehead and I'm smitten with everything he does. Teensy hiccups, long toes, fuzzy skin, a chin that quivers when he cries. Even while I was pregnant, though, I learned that every mother bears her baby into this world and then hears the inevitable tune of letting go. It's a new emotion, the love I feel for him. The intensity of the worry I can feel brings me to my knees, chest tight, or sends me to his room so I can place my palms on the edge of his crib and watch him dream. God has gently showed me that Liam is His baby, ultimately, and I'm the lucky girl who gets to love and protect him for now. It's like having the most gorgeous rose on my palm and every time I try to close my fingers around him I get a swift prick and a sweet, gentle voice reminds me Liam was never mine, he's the son of a king far better than me. Here's the first portrait I've done of Liam, probably the first of hundreds, God willing.

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Also, back to the bride theme...I had these paintings on the ticker for a long time before I completed them. It takes a little more diligence as an artist when my attention is broken by baby meals and tummy time. I looked at wedding pictures of a couple of girlfriends and myself and really soaked in Revelation 21 when I painted this triptych. I'm sorry the images are a bit blurry...I wish I had a phattie scanner. The paintings are about the beautiful bride, ready and waiting for her groom.

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The handwriting says:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

“I am making everything new! Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.

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Monday, May 10, 2010

What if Obama IS the Antichrist?

Mull that one over.

For some reason the Dems tend to be called the Antichrist regularly. As evil as the Bushes (Bushs? Bush's?) seemed to me, I don't recall anyone ever calling them that. But I do recollect Bill Clinton being called that. And our current Commander in Chief also, of course.

I watched Inglorious Basterds last night. Not my fave...I actually thought it was pretty boring for a Tarantino film, but I saw the Hitler character and I turned and said to my husband, "I still can't believe that asshole pulled that off." Hitler, I mean. Think about what he did...he slowly, pragmatically pulled a whole military into a hatred so thick that his soldiers were all willing to kill, kill, kill anything he told them to kill. He pulled the wool over the eyes of civilians all over Europe. Poor Jews. But they weren't the only ones he killed. The homosexuals had a hard path under his rule also. A lot of folks did, I reckon.

It got me thinking...what DOES it take to 'do a Hitler' on a nation?

It probably starts with control over the media. That happens all the time. Google's leaving China over this very issue. Those Bush people said we invaded Iraq partially because of this (don't get me started, don't even get me started). Heavens...it happens here in the United States. Remember how the H1N1 scare happened? It wasn't even real, it turns out. Sure it COULD have happened, but ultimately it was a sensationalized nothing and the media outlets scared the beJesus out of us. Many got the vaccines, but the drug companies couldn't even accommodate demand for the vaccines. They made an epic amount of loot. What if they were pretending there weren't enough vaccines to go around? I'm in marketing, I know what it does when you make a consumer think a product is scarce. They get into an I-gotta-have-it frenzy, worse than a school of Hammerheads around a bleeding surfer. Think about it...what if my beloved NPR has a price? What if...gulp...Google has a price? Can you imagine if our news outlets were submitting their scripts to Obama's administration and getting them approved before they aired the news? Creep-tastic to think about, huh?

It takes a good census to 'Hitler a country.' We all report who we are and what we are to the government. So far the Gestapo hasn't followed up since we submitted our census, so that's cool.

And it takes that sheer, raw evil that flows through Satan's veins to posses a man to do what Hitler did. In my opinion, at least. What else does it take? Post some comments, my people.

I like Obama, and I voted for him, but he sure did go caballero with how he pushed his health care reform through. That was weird, to me. I'm still deciding how I feel about him. It's early yet.

Anyway, next subject: my beautiful paintings. :) Some new ones for your viewing pleasure:

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This one's of a catholic priest. I was trying to do a caricature of the current pope, but it didn't end up looking too much like him. I'm SO tired of how the Catholic church responds to their pedophilia. John Stewart said that Dominoes is more sorry about their crappy pizza sauce than the pope is about thousands of little boys being touched up. So you have the priest, and he 's got a little guy curled up on either side of him, with an angel kneeling over each. There's a verse in the Bible where Paul says, "Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." It should say, "than to burn with passion for little boys." I'm one of those people who thinks that the priests should choose whether or not they are celibate. If I were Catholic I wouldn't care about having a virgin priest, but you bet your bottom dollar that I would want a priest who I could trust to not touch my son if i left them alone together. These priests are lucky I'm not the mommy of one of the boys they molested, they would be seeing a mean side of this momma bear.

Next is one I painted for an art show I missed the deadline for. There's a gorgeous little park here in Carmichael called Effie Yeaw...they protect lions and tigers and bears there. Just joking, the animals they protect are turkeys and deer and these silly, fuzzy grey squirrels. The park is low on funds and they may have to close it, so a gallery in Sacramento is having an art show to benefit the park. I sat by the American River and painted this landscape, but the deadline for the show had already passed. Ultimately I gave it to my ma-in-law for Mother's Day.

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Monday, February 1, 2010

The Haps

I've been painting a lot, and big. I had some crazy soul stirrin' this winter and lots of rainy afternoons to paint. One Sunday afternoon yielded my beautiful nymphs, a triptych in which I tried to capture three different, equally sacred aspects of being a woman: the valiant and daring, the introspective and pondering, and the broken and bowed down. The inky blottiness was an accidental ink well spill that turned out to be a happy mistake, and I love the electric, fluorescent skin color of all of the angels. They're very human but very divine. I've also gotten lots of comments about the voluptuous middle gal...ladies love a full figured model!

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Another painting that I'm really excited about is this life-sized representation of the crucifix. I've been inspired to paint this since I went on my honeymoon and it took about eight months from inspiration to execution. I read a book called A Case for Christ, which is a pretty interesting argument for the gospels being accurate and historical. In that book I read a doctor's commentary on the crucifixion and what Jesus went through during his final moments and the words just came to life for me. I really felt like I understood what he endured. At the time I was reading it from the standpoint where I wasn't sure how to categorize Jesus..just a good guy who had a bad day in court and was sentenced to death? Divine? Supernatural? Emmanuel? I pondered these things but I finally wrapped my mind around what he endured from a human, physical standpoint when I was reading that day. We get the word "excruciating" from the ugly scenes of that day.

The other text I really digested was Isaiah 53:

1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.

8 By oppression [a] and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken. [b]

9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes [c] his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

11 After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light of life [d] and be satisfied [e] ;
by his knowledge [f] my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.

12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, [g]
and he will divide the spoils with the strong, [h]
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

What I love about this passage is that it was written about 700 years before Jesus was ever born. There were hundreds of prophesies he fulfilled. It was like the whole story came together into one unified, resounding expression of God's love...woven throughout time, and it culminated and made sense to me the day this painting fell onto my heart. It's hard to get a picture of, it because it's so ginormous, but here is the painting I call "Isaiah 53."

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Finally, this one goes with the last painting I posted about the bride of Christ. It's another study about the many different faces and aspects of the bride of Christ. It's like a waiting place, it's where we all are. I added a bunch of different verses about God's bride, "I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, it was a glorious sight beautiful as a bride on her wedding."

"Come with me and I will show you the bride, the Lamb's wife."

"Bring together everyone - the elders, the children, and even the babies. Call the bridegroom from his quarters and the bride from her privacy."

And so on. This is called "Go and Find my Beautiful Bride."

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