Come Draw With Me In Central Park!!

I am conducting a drawing tour this Sunday in Central Park at the Bethesda Fountain, which is located directly in the center of the park. On the tour I will be using a lot of the ideas I teach as an artist's coach and speaker to help the attendees enhance their creativity and deepen their experience of a place. Come join us! There are only 6 spots left! For more info and to register, click here!! A little bit about the Fountain: Bethesda Terrace was constructed in 1859-64. The fountain sculpture was designed by Emma Stebbins in 1868 who was the first woman to receive a public commission for a major work of art in New York City. The bronze, eight-foot statue depicts a female winged angel held up by four four-foot cherubs representing Temperance, Purity, Health, and Peace. The statue is also called the "Angel of the Waters", and celebrated the opening of the Croton Aqueduct in 1842, which provided the city with a dependable water supply for the first time. NYC history is so rich and varied. When I visit a place, I love to take in all the meaning of the things that happened in certain spots. I am looking forward to this drawing adventure and I hope you will join me! Click here to register! Here's to your creativity!

What Are Your Dreams?

What are your dreams? Dreams are so important. Dreams are delicious and delectible....they are delectiblicious and delishilectible. They are wonderful to have and to hold onto. Keep your dreams alive. Water them and pull the weeds that could choke them. Your dreams matter. Acrylic painting, 4 inches wide by 6 inches high, on canvas.

New (to you) Drawing

This drawing is about 22 inches by 30 inches. Done in graphite. With a very pointy pencil.

"Imagination Is More Important Than Knowledge" - A. Einstein

Professor Einstein is always a special featured "guest" at my "Enhance Your Creative Power" talk for artists and solo creatives. He will be there this Wednesday, June 1, 2011 at 6pm
Linger Cafe and Lounge
533 Atlantic Avenue
between 3rd and 4th Avenues
http://lingercafelounge.com/

Albert Einstein, as we know, was a scientific genius. He was also a very, very creative person. As a youth, he had a reputation as a troublemaker and delved into a variety of careers that included vaudeville comedian and solo symphony violinist! After some meandering, he eventually found his way back to his true path which was science and math. He is known for many wonderful quotes, among which is one that I really REALLY like! "Imagination is more important than knowledge." This is an amazing quote, especially coming from a scientist!

But we're talking about Albert Einstein! He used his imagination to turn science on its head .... I'm sure he had a storehouse of knowledge, from his education and his work and his research. But knowledge alone couldn't have served his purposes for what he was trying to discover. He knew that it would take stretching beyond what was already known to come up with a theory that would explain his hunch about space being curved, thus developing his theory of relativity. He pictured himself riding a light beam through space and this imaginary journey led him along a curved path. He then used his mathematical wizardry to prove how that could happen. Pretty creative, right? At the time, there was no evidence anywhere for such an idea.

Using his imagination and his other skills he found a way to prove something that must have seemed impossible at the time; that reality, on a certain level, exists on a quantum level, and has properties that exist in a very different way than we perceive with our senses!

He was at times a misfit, even a ne'er-do'well in some people's eyes. Someone who, as a child, did not speak fluently till he was twelve years old and had been thought to be mentally impaired and yet became one of the most revered scientists of the past century. Ask yourself, now: What seemingly impossible thing you could start to investigate using your imagination to picture it and your skills to bring it into being?

The Best Little Appliance In The World

I am a vegan. And for a while I described myself as a raw vegan. I always feel really good on a "high" raw diet of at least 75% raw fruits and vegetable. Excess weight drops off and I have a lot of energy. To be a raw vegan, the most basic and indispensable food preparation appliance is the blender. There are other things that come in handy in the raw vegan's kitchen but the blender is the first, best and most versatile kitchen appliance. You can literally whip up some AMAZING dishes with the trusty blender. This past year I have been living SANS blender and while I missed having one, I just didn't get around to getting a new one. During this time I remained a vegan, but I was eating a lot of cooked vegan food. I knew having a blender would make it easier to make a huge variety of delicious raw concoctions, thereby making it easier to maintain a high level of raw-ness in my diet, but I still didn't get around to it. Until last week, that is. Last week, Wednesday to be precise, I finally bought a new blender. I can't even tell you how exciting it was. Before I rushed home with it, I stopped off to get bananas, strawberries and some other goodies to make a smoothie with. Then I rushed home and promptly did just that! It was one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted. I'm having amazing smoothies, at least once, sometimes twice a day now, everyday....I will run some delicious smoothie recipes in a future post. For now, I am just happy to be able to say that I am back to being a mostly raw vegan again....and it feels good.

Trying Too Hard

Just last night, I was thinking about the term "trying too hard." Often, when you keep "trying" to do or get something and don't seem to succeed, people will recommend that you stop trying "too hard." This is one of those ways that deep spiritual concepts show up in many people's everyday thoughts. Without realizing, perhaps, what they are referring to, they are acknowledging that when one "tries" to do or attain something, one is actually affirming their feeling separate from what it is they desire. The advice to "stop trying too hard" is a "disguise" for finding your oneness with everything. That is the "secret" to attaining your hearts desires. When you want to lose weight, find love, achieve in your career, build relationships...all these things elude the person who sees them as separate from themselves. If you see them already as a part of you, you relax into that knowledge and your behavior will demonstrate that you have indeed stopped "trying" too hard. Grasping for anything, in its various permutations is usually considered socially unattractive, but underneath that is the truth that it demonstrates a belief in lack and separateness. Next time you feel that familiar tension that means you are trying hard to "get" something, relax, rest in the knowledge that it already exists in your world and trust it to move toward you when you stop trying "too hard."

Crazy Nicknames You Give Your Cat........Here Are Mine

The photo above catches all three of my cats. As you may have read in my previous posts, I lost 2 of them this winter. 99 (who sits in the light beam in the photo) had cancer and I had some time to prepare for her passing in December. Less than two months later, Mr. Sweetie (who is probably chasing a piece of tin foil behind the garbage can on the right) fell ill. There were so many complicating issues with his health that I had to make a sudden, very painful decision right there at the vet's office. I miss them. To celebrate both of them, this post is actually about their surviving sister, Saturn (who is in the foreground of the photo.)

I think that anyone who has a cat and who loves them in that crazy way that cat owners do (you know who you are!) probably has a lot of names for their cat beyond the "official" one. For example, my remaining kitty's name is Saturn, but here are some of the other names she is called on a regular basis (in no particular order):
Fluffers
Fluffernutter
Noodle
Noodlehead
Button
Chunkster
Mook
Mookie
Mookster
Monkey
Monkeybutt
Monk
Monkster
Chicken
Cuddle Bunny
Cuddle Monster
Cuddle Bug
Bunny
Bunny Cat
Cuteness
Sat Sat
Satty
Saturnia
Satty Watty Doo Da
Satski
and
Butterball

I think that covers it. And may I add that I am totally UN-apologetic about this. Do you have some nicknames for your cat? Let's hear 'em! Feel free to leave them in the comments below!