Izze's Artspot

You gotta take what life dishes out...

2012-02-05T12:17:00.000-05:00

I've been ill. I'm also teaching kindergarten children so the germs are rampant. Seems as though ever since I started doing that I have one cold after another, etc. Now I have a virus, so it goes. I gave it to my 87 yr old mother, aughhh. So, now she's in the hospital trying to recover. Yesterday she was very ill and today she is so much better. I was better yesterday and today I'm not but as I said, just trying to take what life dishes out.

I'm still working on my cards but also have changed my work to the smaller paintings and framing them. They are affordable and are small enough for groupings. I have some photo work to do and will post some later. For now here is a peek and please forgive, the photos are not great but gives you an idea.

Blessings, love and light! xo

Private Commission

2012-01-24T12:43:00.001-05:00

A good friend has encouraged me to paint my watercolors on cards. I was already doing that but not for money. Now I have gotten a private commission for six of my cards. I'm so thrilled. Looks like I will be doing smaller more affordable art, some 5"x7" and 8"x10"s. Let's hope it kick starts some new work.
Have a wonderful day everyone.

As Time Goes By...

2012-01-20T13:40:00.001-05:00

Well, it's been way too long since I have posted. Winter is definitely here and lots of clearing of sidewalks and the driveway has taken priority over a lot of things. Working, and making some art too. We have gotten two major snowstorms and I've been out taking reference photos for paintings. The snow was so gorgeous in the woods! The skeleton shapes of the trees repetitiously vibrating through the forest was so amazing. I'm changing some inventory on my Etsy Shop soon too so make sure you stop by and see what's new. I've been painting small paintings for notecards but soon to be posted will be matted and framed works that will be affordable. A grouping of two to four would look lovely on your wall. I'm making very small paintings, 4 1/2"x 5 1/2" and then there will be 5"x7", 8"x10" and they will be priced for nice on the budget so bookmark my shop now for future reference! http://www.etsy.com/shop/Cisza

Here are a couple of the beautiful photos I managed to get. We're in for a ton of snow today and sun tomorrow so hopefully I can get more then.

Love and light everyone. ♥

Bring on the New Year!

2011-12-30T13:46:00.000-05:00

I'm so grateful this year is over! It has been one of the worst I've had in many, many years and I'm sure that others will agree a new year coming is great tidings. I'm also very grateful that even though the year didn't turn out as I expected I can say that I'm so grateful for so many wonderful people around me and loving me. Thank you to all of you, I feel Blessed to have you in my life. I'd also like to tell all of you to have a wonderful New Year, may it bring you all love, prosperity and good health!! Mwahhhh, love you ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Happy Yule! and Happy New Year too!

2011-12-24T15:25:00.000-05:00

Holiday season has brought on a frenzy of making art. I chose to paint my cards this year. I didn't get as many done to my nearest and dearest but hopefully I can fulfill my list by the New Year. One of my projects has been a new technique and finished this one last night. I love snow and winter landscapes so this one was easy. 40"x60" and the title? Christmas Eve II of course!! I hope everyone has a beautiful holiday in whatever you celebrate!

Moody Monday

2011-12-12T14:29:00.000-05:00

Moody Monday is always so manic. Started my day with a doctor’s appointment because my allergies are raging...sigh. After nose sprays and inhalers I think I may be back on track. You wouldn’t think that in the winter allergies would be bad but I have an allergy to dust mites so they must have brought all their relatives and decided to lodge at my house this winter, tee hee…

Recently I have come across two words that I had never heard before. The first is a Hindu word, “ahimsa.”Ahimsa means “no harm to any living thing.” I like this word because it reminds me of the compassion and love we should share with everyone. I read somewhere that you should be careful how you treat even the lowliest person because it may be Jesus. Gives one something to think about.

I checked out a book at the library, Hard Time Require Furious Dancing by the lovely Alice Walker. Gosh I love that woman, not to mention the movie, The Color Purple. In her book she wrote this terrific poem about her black Labrador, Mu. Just by coincidence Mu is what Buddha calls “earth.” Love it.

Well, I have finally finished my thank you cards with much success and have decided to paint my Christmas cards. I must get busy NOW!! Not to rush off but thinking of this makes me want to hit the drawing board. Trees were my theme for the last two I painted. Bye y’all and have a great day. ♥♥♥

The Chill of December

2011-12-10T13:02:00.000-05:00

Can't believe it's December 10th. I haven't written in so long I'm embarrassed. Through the toil of life it seems that life can only be what you make it. If you choose to be happy, you can be happy. I've learned many, many lessons since grad school and I'm still learning even at my old age. I have found that living in the moment as I have mentioned before is a mindful experience if you practice daily. I still do.

I have taken a part-time job with the Robinson Community Center as a tutor for elementary students to teach them to read. It's been both fun and challenging. It's nothing like teaching college kids and it is really fun for a change. It's amazing the things that children can both learn and say. I'm astounded everyday I work.

The house is becoming our own. We have fussed and decorated and now I've put up Christmas decorations and it finally snowed yesterday. It's very festive and beautiful and nice to be able to enjoy our things again. I had no idea how awful it would be living without my things and the things my mom and I use daily to run the house. I even missed my miserable old vacuum cleaner. So c'est la vie, things have changed and I am liking it.

Art work. I've enjoyed having my own space for my work. I can go in there and make a mess, shut the door and go back to where I left off. I had run out of a few art supplies for oil so I have been painting thank you cards for all the wonderful people who blessed my mother and I through a very trying time.

Here are few to look at. In the meantime, I hope to be able to keep up with my blog and let everyone know that I'm still alive and well and going on with my life. God Bless you all.

Magic

2011-09-20T20:09:00.001-04:00

House is settled. Things are unpacked. Pictures are hung, and my very kind landlord put linoleum in my studio, down the hall and in my bathroom. Then today I got new carpet in my bedroom. I don't know how to act, such kindness, such wonderful acts of appreciation. Now, I am very happy and contented and painting again. I'm working a a piece that I had started in grad school that's a diptych that measures 24"x60". It's a landscape of one of my favorite old haunts in Grand Rapids where I used to go paint. I'm not really happy with the underpainting, it was almost a rose color but I can paint over most of it. The landscape is endless and goes on forever, it also has a grey sky for a change. Life is not about blue skies. It's lovely, and I will post some of it in a few days.

It's interesting how the right stuff will help you make magic. Having all of my things around me and being settled in a new home is just...magic. ♥

Living in the moment

2011-09-02T12:00:00.000-04:00

How we all take our lives so for granted. Recently I have been practicing mindfulness and living in the moment but Sunday I was fortunate enough to become so ill I had to make a visit to the emergency room. I say fortunate because it wasn't as serious as I began to think it was. I did have to go to the expense of having a CT scan on my head which turned out negative for a stroke but I was indeed scared. How precious our lives. How precious our bodies! I have a virus that causes paralysis on part of your face and I'm on medication. We'll have to see how that goes. I hear that it takes 3-4 weeks to 3-4 months to recover from this. What I need to embrace is the blessing it was not worse than I first imagined.

I have recently moved and my studio is under some construction. I have been moving things around to get into the studio and start working again but sickness has prevailed as well as getting the rest of my things out of storage. I'm finally moved and settled. Blessed Be! Namaste my friends. Love you all!! xo

Missing in action!

2011-08-28T20:51:00.000-04:00

Since June I have been on a spiritual path. It has been a great learning experience and I feel as though my daily practice is improving with age as I learn to sit still and live in the moment, meditate and may I use the words of Ernest Holmes: I've been "Borrowing knowledge of reality from all sources, taking the best from every study, Science of Mind brings together the highest enlightenment of the ages." Looking deep into my mind and body and doing some soul searching as well as testing myself as an artist to put everything in check that my thesis in grad school was genuine. Alas, I was right and my path has proven to me that I was on the right track and amazingly I have found that the philosopher's I used, Thoreau, Emerson, John O'Donohue and many more were all enlightened individuals. Now the hard part begins, I have to fuse my new spiritual path with my output of artwork. So, Blessings to my friends, I have missed you and these days on the blog and I promise I will be back.

~Namaste~

The magic of imagination

2011-06-11T18:22:00.001-04:00

Today I took my mother to the nature trail because she needs to walk to get better. This particular trail is great because they have a main path paved, it's not very long, has a small incline, yay, in one area and it's nestled right in the center of the woods. Sprouting out off of the paved path are little paths that wonder back into the forest that are deer paths and they always calls my name. As I'm tied down to parent my parent for the moment I stand on the concrete path, hesitate, linger, and drool all over myself as to where that path leads.

My imagination begins to go wild and thinking back off these paths there could be all sorts of things sprouting, growing, and dwelling there. I think of little animals and maybe little beings in little tiny houses, I think of animals that may talk and think wisely and little gnomes that can communicate with them. These paths make me want to wander back and investigate, who cares if all I find is another clearing of early summer daisies growing or a thick woods that is peaceful, with chirping birds and sounds of scampering chipmunks but they always draw my attention.

This all brings to mind about another type of path. A lot of friends and family do not understand how a person who is artistic is an someone who beats another drum than an average person. Another way it could be explained is through this poem:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~Robert Frost

Maybe thats why I'm always drawing and painting paths and taking the path less traveled...
xo

Peonies are coming!!!

2011-05-31T23:09:00.002-04:00

My favorite flower. Period. They're coming, buds are bursting.

Here's a poem about peonies by Mary Oliver.

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
 to break my heart
 as the sun rises,
 as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

 and they open -
 pools of lace,
 white and pink -
 and all day the black ants climb over them,

 boring their deep and mysterious holes
 into the curls,
 craving the sweet sap,
 taking it away

 to their dark, underground cities -
 and all day
 under the shifty wind,
 as in a dance to the great wedding,

 the flowers bend their bright bodies,
 and tip their fragrance to the air,
 and rise,
 their red stems holding

 all that dampness and recklessness
 gladly and lightly,
 and there it is again -
 beauty the brave, the exemplary,

 blazing open.
 Do you love this world?
 Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
 Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

 Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
 and softly,
 and exclaiming of their dearness,
 fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

 with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
 their eagerness
 to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
 nothing, forever?

-- Mary Oliver

Great Weekend That Was a Big Deal!

2011-05-22T22:10:00.002-04:00

This week was a big deal. My workshop at the Buchanan Art Center and Fernwood Botanical Gardens was Saturday and Sunday. My students worked wonderfully and produced the most beautiful sketchbooks and then Sunday off to Fernwood to paint. I took so many photos for reference and managed to squeek out a couple of sketches myself. It rained on Saturday and I was afraid that the weather wouldn't hold out on Sunday but it was gorgeous, sunny and beautiful sky with a little breeze. I'm so thankful it all worked out so well.

Friday

2011-05-13T14:28:00.001-04:00

Seems as though Google had some problems and I lost my last post. Photos of my new Etsy Ephemeral Beauties can be seen here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Cisza I really love these little paintings and they're fun to do. If anyone is actually interested in any and not sure what you can do with them please get in touch with me.

The weather has been beautiful. I've been able to get on my bike and ride down the country roads here and it's been such a great enjoyment. The other morning I saw a wild turkey and visited my neighbors horse! My walks with Emma are getting longer and to the nature trail more frequently because I just can't stay away. Here's a couple of photos from our last walk.

Beautiful Day~

2011-05-11T11:55:00.000-04:00

Wow, this weather is beautiful! I just got back from a ride on ole blue, my beloved bike. What a wonderful peaceful ride and living in the country does have it's advantages. I saw a wild turkey today and visited the neighbors horse. The air was filled with the fragrance of lilacs and blossoms and I had such a nice ride.

If you haven't visited my Etsy Shop yet here are some of the paintings I'm working on.

Have a Blessed Day

Love, Me xo