Landscape of Virginia

Working on my own projects at home can be harder work than I do during my day job at school. I cleaned the livingroom, the bathroom and recycled my dry trash. I began working on another Japanese painting too. And this was all in just the beginning of Saturday afternoon, I have another whole half of an afternoon to go. Lot's to do. Where it's all leading seems to be the expression of my choosing, I chose to paint. I chose to recycle. I chose to clean. All because of my own wants. This new painting is of a main street in the town I grew up in overseas. I included myself on a tricycle in this one. It's kind of a fun thing to see oneself that long ago in another part of the world and I was acting as if the world owned me. It's kind of ironic since I felt so honored because the Japanese people treated me with such kindness and it wasn't so long before that our American people were demonized by them during the Second WW II. I am glad to have had that...

It was a walk in the woods that I used to do to feed my addiction back when I started feeding it. I use to buy a pack of cigarettes for thirty-five cents at a local country-store then go into the woods with a friend by the name of Tommy Beale my cohort in crime and we smoked them all. We smoked the whole pack between the two of us in one "sitting" or more like "walk in the woods", it's amazing to me that we could do that in just an hour or so without getting really sick. After those early days of not ever getting enough even after half a pack of smokes in a short time, I turned to beer as soon as I got to college. I was legal then but I still couldn't get enough, the one (beer buzz)I was about to have was going to be so much better. And on and on....I couldn't ever get enough and seldom felt good and if I did it was short lived, a few moments at best Last weekend, I walked in the woods with other men who suffer from the disease of addiction, ...

A new painting was finished last weekend, it was worked on for my full spring break from work. It was quite enjoyable to work on although it had it's moments I felt like I accomplished something good from doing it. It's not exactly the same as the photograph it's taken from but it's ok for what it is. I'm kind of thinking people are having so many problems from just what the combustible engine is doing to this world maybe looking back at a society that didn't have too many engines at the time this painting is done might be somewhat revealing to we who are living is such a polluting time as this one. Anyway, I hope you enjoy seeing Kamahura Japan in the 1954 era, pre-modernization but post war era. I don't think there is too much of a record from that era in Japan.

I took a trip to Northwestern Virgina yesterday and I had the good fortune to stop in Upperville, Virgina. It's on the John Mosby Highway (Route 50) which runs down the Main Street for the little town. It is certainly something worth stopping for an taking in the older buildings in that city because many of them are made of hand laid stones with some mortar between them. The library is about the size of my apartment, certainly not huge, but it is still in operation as an active library. The houses are all typical of early Virginian styles of homes. In fact it seemed to be that they had a about every style of house that one might find in Virginia right their on Main Street. I did stop and paint one of the stone homes, it had been added onto so it was a little bigger than just one three story home. It was a challenge to put all those stones into the painting but I imagine it was even harder for those that laid those stones into the house itself. It was a very impressiv...

Today we met. The organizational meetings of this self-help organization I belong to happened today. Boy people can really beat a dead horse sometimes and other times people seem to ignore what others or even groups have decided in order to question authority or even whatever is accepted as a done deal. It's truly a learning curve in many of these meeting, new people take a while before they get it, whereas those who have been doing these meetings for a while certainly have the advantage but one only learns by doing there homework or jumping into the fire and seeing where/how they get burnt. Many times I find what I have to say, is little but needed at this point, just because I have been thru these meetings for many years now....and I can help out by letting people know what has happened in years gone by (if I can remember it well enough). Thing is to remain focused on what is the fair and correct procedure to follow I find to be of great need in these meetings. Many pe...

Working has never been going so well, but I feel that even though our little corner of the world is going well that the cost of living today is going to soon have an impact on us all. With trucks spending over a thousand dollars for one fill-up we'd better get into local food sources. Some are already planning to plant a garden this summer for the very first time to offset the grocery-store prices that are already showing signs of strain. In a word it's better to buy local than to expect to get it cheap at the nation's grocery-store chains because that isn't going to last or so it seems to this little guy. Thankfully, our art supplies are staying about the same but with shipping using gas and oil products no doubt that it will change with the times like everything else. I am gonn'a not pretend that everything is alright just because I can take care of myself. I know we are in this as a nation of free people and not as individuals just trying to "get b...

Its been a long time coming but I finished another in my Japanese style paintings this past weekend. It's of a fire cycle, they didn't have enough money to build a fire truck although they did have a few in the station instead they made a cycle which could fight fires. I thought it was kind of unique and looked very different that anything I'd seen before so I painted it. Using one of my Dad's black and white photos I did a rendering of it. I enjoyed working with the strong red colors even though the photo is in Black and White I could remember some of the colors involved in this vehicle so I went ahead and played with it. It took a good deal of work, but I continued on with it until it was completed. I just couldn't let go of it very long while I was painting it. I guess I did another marathon painting session last weekend. I know I felt it after I was done.