New Year, new intentions...

"Winter's dusk" By Hilary J. England, 12" x 16" oil on canvas

So, we welcome a new year. 2012.  I guess I've learned things throughout the year, although for all the credit I give myself as a quick learner, I sure made a lot of mistakes, and some of them repeat errors.  I am so very grateful that God is a merciful and forgiving one...

I'm not corny and cliched enough to make resolutions, since I usually have them blown up by the end of the month anyway, but I do have a bit of advice that was given to me, and darn it, seems to work pretty good if I could just follow it!  It's so simple, and yet so very tricky!  Live in today.  24 hours at a time.  Plan for tomorrow, but live in today.  If you can make today successful, you can make your life successful, because, after all, your life is just a series of "todays" since no one is ever guaranteed tomorrow.  So, I'm going to try my darndest to live this advice.

With that idea, I am going to try and paint in every "today."  With the recent interloping of math into my schedule, as I pursue the completion of my Communications degree in the near future, my mind has been in two different camps, and that's OK, because in all honesty, I enjoy the very different way my mind has to work in order to process quadratic equations and cube roots, haha, and it is a refreshing change.  Kind of like swapping your five mile run for a two hour Zumba class.  Just as challenging, but sooo very different.

I think it's funny how I am the only artist in my Communications program.  We have Army and other military, law enforcement, some business majors, a rogue teacher here and there, and then me....they must think it very odd for an artist to be in a left brained field like this.  But, mass communication has always fascinated me, and I think it's marvelous to get degreed in a field different from what your obvious talents are.  I pursue art and furthering my craft because it is who I am, but I pursue other intellectual studies because I have many interests that I feel compelled to cultivate as well, and this is one of them.

Ah well.  On a different note, I have gone back to my most primieval comfort zone for my first painting of the year, the local landscape.  It's like curling up with chicken soup and a blanket on a cold winter's day, and I love the sting of frigid, super clean winter wind on my face and watching the various birds such as cardinals and chickadees so puffy in the barren tree branches, and little creatures scurry by every now and then, our worlds touch for just a moment and it brings such warmth to my heart...so I will never abandon this genre. 

Yes, painting the landscape makes me feel closer to God, and brings me great comfort and love for this beautiful world.  I especially love the lonely and barren landscape of Pennsylvania in winter.  There is such a stark beauty in the farmlands, where all the woods, creeks, hills and dales look quiet and at peace, and I feel such an anticipation as I look at it in restful winter slumber, knowing in a few months it will be bursting with color and activity...but for now, it gets some blessed peace and quiet.  Even the creatures seem reverent of the stillness, as if they are tiptoeing through the brush.

So, more to come in the next days and weeks, that is my hope for the upcoming "todays."  As for today, I've got my own agenda to move along to, so Adios for now...

Happy, peaceful, healthy, and prosperous New Year 2012.