Creativity, art and the middle-aged woman

butterflies are free!

'Katagiri Roshi says: "Poor artists. They suffer very much. They finish a masterpiece and they are not satisfied. They want to go on and do another." Yes, but it's better to go on and do another if you have the urge than to start drinking and become alcoholic or eat a pound of good fudge and get fat.'

––Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones,

I bought an old whipple ($15!) and it took me two days to figure out how to put the right pieces together to put up my new art work purchase, a stained glass butterfly. The whipple was used with horses, ploughs, and the like. It is rather like the yoke used for oxen, except for the size! Down at the Rideau Ferry junk/antique store, there must be a dozen of them!

It is fun work and great play. Outdoors in 5 C. weather, getting some fresh air and exercise!
Poor hubby is a minimalist, and anti-clutter-freak. But he tolerates my attempts to play with structure, art and the old dead elm stumps.

Front lawn, with newly repainted urns!

I have put up some festive decorations, some years I have not chosen to do so for many emotional reasons. This year I feel relaxed and content. I can manage the pressures of the holiday season.

At our house Frosty was up all year! I couldn't *do* Christmas for a long time, being a single parent, alone, I didn't have enough money for a tree. Our Christmas traditions became flexible. Our 4 years in Muskoka we didn't have a tree, my parents died, and the kids couldn't visit us, I let it all go. My girlfriend, bless her, brought me groceries one year.

Frosty in 2008!

When traditions become rules, and you cannot afford them, financially or emotionally, you get bitter. I make choices now. It is liberating!

At my late Mom's house Frosty was up all year! She invented Christmas in July in Bala.

I couldn't *do* Christmas for a long time, being single parent, alone, didn't have enough money for a tree. Our Christmas traditions became flexible. Our 4 years in Muskoka we didn't have a tree, my parents died, and the kids couldn't visit us, I let it all go. When traditions become rules, and you cannot afford them, $ or emotionally, you get bitter. I make choices now. It is liberating!

Other art that we have I have truly created, like the totem pole. Made of a tree all holey from pileated woodpeckers, put back together I have been putting on decorations.

sunsets on the day's work

You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. ––Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), author (1928)


Of course, the same is true of love!

Creativity is the life force that Dylan Thomas called 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.' ––Julia Cameron, American teacher, author poet, (1948)

Sunset over Perth's Lanark Lodge
–I may take painting lessons some day,
meantime I take photos.

Words, like flowers, have their colors too. ––Ernest Rhys, author and editor (1859-1946)

Creativity is the residue of time wasted. ––Albert Einstein, German physicist (1879 - 1955)


There is creativity everywhere. These young men were playing music outside at the Perth mall, one warm evening last week.


One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ––Jane Austen, novelist (1775-1817)