Aletha Kuschan Art Writing Bold Drawing

I’m searching for, listening for, music to play for the koi.  A little something they can dance to.  I heard Maurice Ravel’s “Jeu d’eau” on radio station WBJC yesterday, played by Pascal Roge.   You can hear Martha Argerich playing it HERE.  It’s the kind of music...

After news reports of the kidnapping of an Australian poem, held for an enormous ransom (the story broke at poet Gabrielle Bryden’s blog), my koi are refusing to come to the surface of the pond.  Moreover, they are refusing to be painted.  Efforts to paint them, thus far, produce only pale gri...

I’m having Darjeeling.  I just looked at Twining’s website, and I’ve got to get me one of those little purple tins.  I didn’t know they sold the tea in tins.  Those would make nice still life boxes.  I note that some of my other favorite Twinings teas come in little tins, tho...

I accidentally bought more white paint than I need.  And now I’ve decided that my mistake was a boon.  I’m adding lots of white to all the colors in the underpainting and producing a kind of multicolored grisaille when I do a lay-in on the koi paintings.  The lighter colors are kind of p...

I’m back again.  There I am, hiding behind the blue compotier, visitor to my still life set up — the one that I leave around all the time even when I’m not painting.  You get a different point of view when you wander around the still life and simply enjoy the things.  And they look...

I have neglected my little blog lately while I rethink my path forward.  It’s not been so much a case of “writer’s block” for I have been writing copiously in my little notebooks in that arena of my life that is strictly low tech.  But I have lacked ideas for blogging. And I ...

My internet friend Benedicte of Carnet de Dessins has shared an art exercise with me and some other friends that begins with drawing any kinds of lines that you want inside a little box.  It recreates art in perhaps its most basic form, and in contemplating the exercises I was reminded how much I wa...

To open your eyes each morning and find light pouring into your head, tapping the optic nerve and stimulating sight, isn’t it amazing?  As soon as I get up, I routinely go to the window, peer through the blinds,  and look outside.  There’s always something interesting on the other side. ...

Sleepy this morning, mobile even before the alarm sounded, I got up, wandered into the living room and looked at the clock on the wall without my glasses, and as I leaned in to see the numbers on the dial I saw a bright flash!  Behind me a bolt of lightening had just shot through the air [...]