My dad used to burst into my bedroom, at dawn:30 a.m., throwing the door back with a bang, roughly yank all the covers completely off me and my bed, and cheerily spout, “Time to get uuuuuuuppp!!” He thought he was being SO funny. N O T . But could I ever convince him of that? […]
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Category: About Angela
BUDDY: in the Light, Shadowed
When I drew this, I was focusing on the white part so much that it wasn’t until later that I saw the funny blue face. I particularly like this one because it’s so silly (Silly really ought to be my middle name), and so obvious … but not. It’s a great metaphor for my life […]
SYLVESTER: Hiss
Lately I’ve been really struggling with sleep imbalance. It’s so strange – I can sleep 2 or 3 hours, but then my legs get all jumpy and I have to get up. Then within an hour or three, my eyes slump shut and I’m sleepy all over again and have to get horizontal before I […]
ELIGHTABETH, So Serioth
When I was a little kid, my dad’s mother would come stay with us. Granny. The one whose middle name, Treat, I carry. I couldn’t stand her. She smelled like Eau d’Oldde Peoplle. And she made this weird little sucking-in whistle sound whenever there was something she disapproved of, but wouldn’t speak about. This image […]
SCREEN PARALYSIS: JESSE: Caught
I’ve been writing up a storm lately, and last night as I got up to take a little break, I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror as I left – I looked kinda like this! I realized I’d be practically glued to the screen for days! So today I’m focusing on remembering fun, funny, […]
BEARY BEAR’S DAD, BURT: Mellow
Burt is the kind of dad everyone should have. Holds little babies as if they were the gods’ own treasures; plays with the toddlers; treats little girls to merry-go-rounds and lots of colorfully illustrated books and art supplies; little boys to Tonka trucks, small-hand size tools and paints, encyclopedias, roller skates and skis; and young […]
SHYLEE: Searching
I was 13 years old the first time I was raped. Not to worry, this will not be a rant or a self-pity party. Just a story about overcoming evil who took the form of a ‘nice’ man everyone liked and respected. The summer before my sophomore year, my mother thought it would be a […]
CHOPPY DAY
When I was a kid, I spent my summers sailing and swimming. On weekends, we’d race our boats in little weekend regattas. Either I’d crew for one of my family, or one of them would crew for me. One weekend when I was 13, my older brother Tom was supposed to crew for me. We […]
WINTER DREAMS
Exactly 20 years ago today (April 1, 2021), I returned to the US from my year and a half stint as the first Artist-in-Residence for Gore, New Zealand. I left NZ at 7 am on April 1st, and after a 9 hour flight, arrived in Honolulu at 8 am on … April 1st! I was […]
DAWN WAVE
Sometimes, before the sun is up all the way, the wind skittles across the glassy-smooth surface of the ocean, and it looks like a pinky-blue streaked mirror. The swells come rolling in, incessant, constant, hypnotic. Every so often, the current and the swells clash just right, and a surprised wave pops its head up to […]
WING and WING
I grew up on a small harbor right off Long Island Sound. We used to go down to the little beach near our house and watch the 12-meter racing boats cruise into the harbor on their practice days. So exciting – they were so huge! One of them could have eaten my tiny 13′ boat […]
JOURNEY
I think I have mentioned that, for 35 years, I carried in the back of my mind, continual, persistent, destructive thoughts of offing myself. Wondering, how can I do it – pills? A gun? A knife? Drive over a cliff? But somehow my eternal self, the One that is the True me, kept me going. […]
TUMBLING
I’m taking a 4-week class on how to paint waves. My first painting was a complete dud – as were #s 2, 3, and 4. And 5. Ugh. Today’s was, too. Well, it was a wee bit better, but did I feel like packing the paints in and running away to some secret place where […]
THE OBSCURE PAST
I like looking at old documents. Did you know that at one time, writing materials – especially parchment – were so precious that people wrote in tiny, tight script in one direction, and then turned the page 90 degrees, and wrote right over it with more tiny, tight script? I’ve tried to read documents like […]
MONSTERIOUS
Surprise! Black! Yes, I know people think of me as doing art with outrageous bright gleaming color – and – I also love black and white! I decided to just go wacky and blast out a really bold piece – I think this fulfills that idea. I’m thinking of that whole monsters and critters series […]
BUILDING BLOCKS
I think that, if you sliced open my skin and looked inside it with a Soul Microscope, I’d be a bright soft greeny aquamarine color. Like that soft green near the yellowy-green at the bottom, to the left of center. Color is what I live on. It makes my life rich, even during times when […]
ALL IS LIGHT
There have been times in my life when my entire system went on dizzy-mode. I’d have to stop whatever I was doing, or pull off the road, or stop a conversation I was in, in order to simply not fall down. After a few of them happened, I began to just close my eyes and […]
Dà Huā – BIG FLOWER
I had this idea that I was going to do a pastel of a stunning cactus plant I saw. I had it all drawn out and ready to go, and started applying the pastels…. And discovered that I had bitten off WAY more than I could chew! 16 flowers, 7 cacti bottoms… and the details […]
CURLY
For the last few days I have been a social cactus. I’ve been so irritable I felt like I could bite someone’s head off. Not sure why – seems like a lot of the tension from the last few years has released – but – there it is. So since I believe in transforming nasty […]
MY THOUGHTS OF PEACE FLY FAR BEYOND ME
Recently, I figured out a way to take thoughts of resistance and resentment and cook them up into new dishes of peace and calm. It’s not that hard. You kind of have to be a bit detached in order to do it. It’s like feeling a belly ache, and then watching yourself feel the belly […]
IT’S NOT MY FAULT!
This is dedicated to any frustrated artist… I attended an intense marketing workshop today. It made me cry. It put me right smack dab up against the years of deep conditioning I have fought my entire life. I absolutely loved everything about it. Here’s why: I grew up in the 50s, where it was, “little […]
I WILL KEEP YOU SAFE ALWAYS
When my kids were little, they were friends with a pair of brothers whose mother was insanely over-protective. She used to drive me nuts. I can still hear her shrill shriek, “Don’t climb that wall, you’ll fall off! If you go up that tree, I’m not going to take you to the hospital when you […]
WASABI
It was 1966. I was 21. I was new to California culture, having been brought up back East. I had come west to stay with an aunt and uncle in San Francisco, after I divorced my first husband. I eventually landed in Santa Cruz. Those were the hippy days – lots of pot and acid, […]
RED SINGS the BLUES
In an argument with my son a few days before I left Hawaii to live in California at the end of 2018, he asked me if I had ever had myself checked for mental illness. I was so shaken by the question I had no cogent reply. Looking back on my life, however, I can […]
A TRIPLE WHAMMY
I posted on Facebook a couple days ago that I hadn’t been feeling well. No worries – not The Big V Thing! I got triple-whammied by other completely stupid stuff! First, I must have eaten something off, because I started feeling weak and nauseated. I was about to go to bed and let it wear […]
MY NEW BOOK!
A few weeks ago, I was approached by a not-so-very-well-known company that prints books, art prints and other arty products. They wanted me to submit a book of images for them to print. The deal was they’d give me $150 off the printing price in exchange for a review. I’m thinking, “Huh? 150 bucks? Who […]
2-YEAR TRUCKABOUT
In the mid-80s, I had been living in Kailua, on Oahu, in Hawaii. I had a nice house, drove a Volvo station wagon, had a simple carving studio, enough to eat…but I was unhappy. And I couldn’t figure out why. So I sold everything I owned except for a few favorite things, sold my car, […]
THE EVOLUTION of A PASTEL PAINTING
I’ve been asked how I do these pastel paintings. I do them in three main stages. First comes the idea, sketched roughly in black ink on a little scrap of paper. Then, I prepare a bigger sheet of paper or art board with a special gesso primer that has marble dust in it, so it’s […]
LEONARD LEOPARD
I’ve been talking about procrastination lately. Mainly because I’ve been doing it, myself. I know, bad me. I couldn’t figure out why until speaking with a friend today. I happened to just blurt out that after this relief money runs out, I’m worried that my life will fall flat, that I won’t be able to […]
REAL SELF-CARE
WHAT DO YOU PUT UP WITH? Last weekend, I got a call from a man I hadn’t heard from in 20+ years. At first I was glad to hear from him. But then – He didn’t ask if it was a good time to talk. He didn’t ask how I was or anything about my […]