In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems.
-Rumi
Art Every Day Month – Day 24
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Art Every Day Month – Day 23
…lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and … stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?
-Wassily Kandinsky
Art Every Day Month – Day 22
The moon is at her full, and riding high,
Floods the calm fields with light.
The airs that hover in the summer sky
Are all asleep tonight.-William C. Bryant
Art Every Day Month – Day 21
Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the ‘creative bug’ is just a wee voice telling you, “I’d like my crayons back, please.”
-Hugh MacLeod
Art Every Day Month – Day 20
I experimented and drew with my non-dominant (right) hand.
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.
-Martha Graham
Art Every Day Month – Day 19
I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.
-Jules Verne
Art Every Day Month – Day 18
The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
-Kurt Vonnegut
Art Every Day Month – Day 17
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Ideas for Practicing Love
Today, for whatever reason, I am feeling how we all struggle to be here. How much we need to love each other, and how we need to practice that love in deed and word. Once upon a time I struggled to meet my basic needs while working to reach some lofty goals. My life, through whatever process, has transformed into something full and comfortable. I want to remember not to abandon others and to pay it forward.
So I made a list of what I can do. I’m sure there are more, but this is what my first harvest produced:
- Donate money to community agencies that provide supportive services for housing, food, and education. There are so many, and I cannot do them all. I selected Sacred Heart because I volunteered with them some years in the past, and their mission resonates with my heart.
Sacred Heart Community Service is dedicated to bringing our community together to address poverty in Silicon Valley.
Our vision is a community united to ensure that every child and adult is free from poverty.
Our mission is to build a community free from poverty by creating hope, opportunity, and action. We provide essential services, empower people to improve their lives, advocate for justice, and inspire volunteers to love, serve, and share.
Sacred Heart Community Service is an equal opportunity service provider. No person shall be excluded from services because of age, ancestry, color, national origin, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, creed, marital status, disability, medical conditions, or veteran status.
- If I have any, I can give my spare change to someone when they ask.
- I can offer my change for a cash purchase toward the purchase by the customer in line behind me.
- I can take the time to pay attention when someone is speaking, rather than thinking about my next turn.
- I can listen to my child and empathize with her, rather than try to manage her through my agenda. (And apply this to all interactions with people.)
- I can breathe, which helps me to slow down.
- I can cease judging another person by his or her past actions and perceived failures.
- I can give another person the benefit of the doubt and not personalize their behavior toward me if I perceive it as mean or rude.
- I can let go of predictions about how situations will evolve and how people will behave.
- I can remember to smile at people and say hello.
- I can say I’m sorry when I have acted or spoken in a hurtful way.
- I can empathize when someone is angry at me rather than leap to my own defense.
Can you think of ways to practice love? Please share your ideas.
Art Every Day Month – Day 16
You will always be lucky if you know how to make friends with strange cats.
-Proverb
Art Every Day Month – Day 15
Your heart is full of fertile seeds, waiting to sprout. Just as a lotus flower springs from the mire to bloom splendidly, the interaction of the cosmic breath causes the flower of the spirit to bloom and bear fruit in this world.
-Morihei Ueshiba
Art Every Day Month – Day 14
I have very little experience with drawing, especially sketching portraits. I can see how the lips, forehead, and eyes are slightly out of proportion, and I didn’t capture the tilt of her head, and I don’t have the essence of the slightly inquisitive expression. However, do like the shading and the general likeness, and I really enjoyed drawing this.
Art Every Day Month – Day 13
Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.-Kahlil Gibran
Art Every Day Month – Day 12
Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I’m halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God. I could be eating a slow learner…
-Lynda Montgomery
Art Every Day Month – Day 11
The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.
–Carl Sandburg
Art Every Day Month – Day 10
We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.
-Robert Frost
Art Every Day Month – Day 9
The questions worth asking, in other words, come not from other people but from nature, and are for the most part delicate things easily drowned out by the noise of everyday life.
-Robert B. Laughlin
My “Soul” Possession Here in Heaven
Art Every Day Month – Day 8
If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it. Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them.
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Art Every Day Month – Day 7
The craving for colour is a natural necessity just as for water and fire. Colour is a raw material indispensable to life. At every era of his existence and his history, the human being has associated colour with his joys, his actions and his pleasures.
-Frenand Leger