a lot of people i love have a birthday around this time of the year... 3 of my best friends were all born this week... other important people in my life with october birthdays include a favorite uncle, my grandfather and my high school sweetheart... there are too many people near and dear with october and november birthdays to mention... that's probably just a coincidence... but i'd like to think it's not...  

both of my grandparents turned 80 in the past month... someday when i have processed the way this makes me feel i will write more about it... but all of this aging has me feeling sentimental... i guess that's nothing new for me... is it?

it's funny how light can play tricks on us... how sometimes you could swear you see something out of the corner of your eye... only to do a double take and realize it was "all in your head"... once when i was a little girl... i woke up in the middle of the night and swore i saw a creature at the foot of the bed... to this day i could tell you what it looked like and the panic i felt when seeing it there was very real... my rational mind explains it away easily now- but the emotions attached to that initial startle are still there and are not so easily reconciled away. it's interesting how our heads and hearts are often playing on opposite teams. trying to convince one another of what is really going on.

i spent a good part of today playing with light- and paint 

i went to the st. paul art crawl on saturday... there are of course countless numbers of talented artists... but... my favorite "display" was a wall of childrens art done that day at a little table tucked away in the corner of one studio... doodles done in a rush and probably without much thought... likely while their parents were shopping or chatting... 

more watercolor sketchings ... practice runs for acrylics to come

today i left work at 11... i haven't had much time to myself these past weeks and it's been eating at me that my art has been pushed to the bottom of my list. the above photo hangs in my new studio... it's a bit of joke to myself. it was snapped last halloween... but it reminds me how ridiculous it is to pity yourself. lately i've been feeling like... poor me... no time to paint... the truth is... with all things... my choice to make time for my work is my own. things have been really exciting at work lately and it's been hard to detach from that long enough to remember why i love to paint. 

my new studio space is tucked away behind the stairs in a basement. the water heater is the only one that ventures in here besides me... we like it here though... it's cool and quiet. before writing this i brought a few things in from my car and remembered just how warm and sunny it is outside... down here no one would guess there's an outside at all. i like it that way.

i have been working on a series of studies for a new series called "love is a drug" and these are the tiny dancers that are helping me formulate the entire plan for that... 

also there were two portraits i've been wanting to work on for some months now... these are watercolor and pencil studies for those too...

and some random-ness from the rest of the "love is a drug" series