Freya Hite Shares Art

Prolific artist Freya Hite has won numerous awards at the Brush & Palette Fine Art Shows. Hite paints landscapes, figures, portraits and abstracts. Freya believes that art is a strong form of communication of ideas, emotions, and states of being. And, of course, it feeds the soul.

Hite demonstrated her abstracts using a product similar to water based oils (Flashe paints). Her painting might look "random" but her composition is far from random as she lays down paint on the canvas.

Some highlights to remember from the Hite demonstration that you arty people might want to refer to in the future:

• Using the Golden Triangle in art composition... link here for the Rule of Third
• and here for more information and good examples (a Vermeer painting is cited
• Flashe painting was briefly mentioned, using transparent type acrylic paints
• Source: The FLASHE range, distributed since 1955 by LeFranc & Bourgeois, is one of the first modern painting materials to give artists other means than oil painting to express themselves. Its optical characteristics allow the effects of old tempera paints and primitive painting grounds to be reproduced. The paints are matte, velvety and opaque.
• Hite mentioned the Zorn Palette, named after Anders Zorn, as he used the following four colors for his palette, resulting in good skin tones and varying shades of greys: : Yellow Ochre, Crimson, Black, Titanium White. "That's it! Just 4 colors. You can vary your palette by the type of black and red that you use." (source Gagnon Studio)  
• These are some of Hite's small canvases where she used Zorn Palette colors:
  
  
  
  
  
  

Thank you, Freya!

Mini Art Show Winner for the month of May was Cynthia Grover, shown here with her painting:

Reyna Shawl and Lunch Out

Linking with Ginny, here is the finished Reyna Shawl.

Comments: Giving myself a C- grade on this one. Instead of knitting a slip slip knit, which is tedious, instead the trick for me was to knit through the backs of two stitches (after the center spine). Note to self: too difficult to maneuver this and dropped too many stitches along the way, thinking I had caught them up when, in fact, they elusively slipped from sight.  Then I saw the dropped stitches too late.  Bad knitter.  I will not knit this scarf again.  The colored clips denote places that need to be fixed.

On other notes:

Yesterday was the first time in a year, since Julie arrived back in Colorado, that we went out for lunch at a public restaurant.  I was apprehensive on many levels.  But the excursion bypassed most of my worries, and even the sun came out for a while. Julie, of course, has no qualms about anything. She merrily drank a marguerita and had her meal with just a few mishaps that certainly did not bother her in the least.  I came home weak kneed (Gene went, too, bless him) and thankful I did not misbehave with too many aimed corrective behaviors.

Going to the manor now for our little art class so will look at other YarnAlong entries later.

A Mother's Day Thought without Flowers

One of my favorite sermons concerning Mother's Day was delivered several years ago by a Lutheran pastor.  She spoke a few words in a heartfelt message about Mother's Day, and how it is not always a happy time for many individuals, especially for women who had lost children to death, to drugs, to estrangement, or to legal intervention which placed children in other homes or institutions. And women who chose abortion as a means to end an unwanted child were also mentioned with sadness by this pastor: how, indeed, would that female remember Mother's Day and her prior actions to prevent the start of a life from shortly becoming one of her own children?

This pastor went on to say that not all people were lucky enough to be born to exemplary mothers; some people were not nurtured with love, with bed-time stories, with chicken soup and sweet kisses on hurts, but instead had only painful memories of their mothers. And those unpleasant memories were brought to their attention and in juxtapostition by Mother's Day being joyfully celebrated by others.

But if you are lucky enough to have children who give you esteem out of love, or even simple duty, then you are blessed.  And blessings to you if you have or had a mother who did not abandon you, and who more times than not, gave you love.

Simply being reminded that motherhood is not all ribbons and bows is worthy of thought.  And it makes one careful of calling out "Happy Mother's Day" to female strangers at the supermarket, since it might evoke an untoward response.

On Sunday afternoon at the manor, the activity directors sponsored a tea for all mothers at the facility.  Refreshments and flowers were well received, and we heard some amazing stories about elderly resident mothers who were honored that day.  One son told of his mother having read the entire Bible each year for 48 years.  Forty-eight times she had read the Bible, and lived her life with those lessons in mind.  He and his dad are there every day for a few hours at lunch time, honoring their mother, cajoling her to eat, giving their attention to her. She is truly blessed.

Julie gave me potted tulips in my favorite colors, and a wooden carved face to place in our garden.  She gave Gene's mother flowers, and then we had his mother and part of her family over for dinner in the evening while Julie stayed at the manor.

Gene advanced pups Mercy and Libby some money, and they gave me presents he said they told him to purchase to thank me for a year of being a good dog momma.  Gene made this picture of them: