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 […]
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Tag: inner spirit
SELBY’S Favorite Game (Not Really)
Recently I watched one of those ‘cute’ animal videos where a seal was bouncing a ball around and playing catch with its trainer in one of those sea life shows. I wanted to relf. Seals belong OUTside. They are cute, sure, until you come up close and dirty – if one decided to attack you […]
COMPUTER WOES
Have you ever felt like there was a mean mad genie inside your computer who just does not want you to get a single thing to work? I swear, there are days it would be better to go back to sleep! It really isn’t the computer – it’s an app that doesn’t work the way […]
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 […]
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 […]
HE WAS ABOUT TO…
I was cruising on Facebook, when I saw that my friend, Bruce, who lives in South Africa, had posted 3 or 4 posts saying stuff like, “…Bruce Maxwell Cross …This is my journey thru an incredible life as I lay down my Cross and look forward to Heaven…….” And another post saying, “…Anxiety Depression and […]
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 […]
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 […]
RASCALLY REINDEER & BUDDIES
Art always makes me feel better. Like somehow, I’m Doing My Life Right. Maybe it’s because I go into a trancey kind of out-there in-there smooth, calm, non-thinking zone state while I’m creating art. Maybe it’s because when I see those bright colors something grabs me deep in my heart, and says ‘life can’t be […]
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 […]
RIVER WOLF
Sometimes I get caught by the Shoulds. As you probably know, besides being an avid sculptor and painter, I’ve also been a Peak Performance coach for many years. When covid hit, I put everything on the back burner and hibernated for 2 months. Then this little Voice in my mind popped up, saying, “You should […]
THREE ON A TREE
Someone asked me to do this one for her, as a gift for someone’s baby. The mom has three rambunctious kids, so I figured each one needed to have a bear. And of course they are going for the honey comb, right? What else do naughty bears do? (And Rabbit wonders how soon they will […]
SILLY TIGER
Silly Tiger says… “Those minty leaves look so refreshing! And my new pink hairdo feels so divine!” More silliness is required the longer we are in lockdown, yes? Here’s to silliness for your day. Original – pastels on 12″x12″ gessoed board Prints – available in 11″x11 on paper Contact me if you’d like one or […]
SAFE
Testimonials are so cool to get – check this one out for this little happy bears painting I did, “Safe,” for my friend, the terrific Florida scenes painter, Linda Blondheim. “I asked Angela to do a painting for my granddaughter’s nursery. She did a painting in pastels, and even happily made a small adjustment for […]
HONEY BEAR
Who doesn’t like honey! When Honey Bear went to the river today, he found part of a honey comb that had fallen from the Honey Tree! What a score! As the bees buzzed around him trying to get it back, he grabbed it and off he ran! Soon he slowed down and started snacking, not […]
MOON GODDESS
I keep getting these kind of allegorical images in my dreams. They look like they ought to be part of some huge mural somewhere. I like that they have these lines of energy running through them – I’ve never painted that before. I see the lines, but have never depicted them. If you look through […]
MIRROR, MIRROR…
I did a few sketches while I was on the phone with a friend a few days ago. They were all of silly gators having fun one way or another. I liked the idea of this one – “Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who’s the prettiest gator of them all….” Yeah, I know – I’m […]