SCHOOL

Here is the turtle and the two pots I did last Friday.


I sit next to Mike and I really like the gorilla he is making.
I'm so glad I pulled the finger out and started this class. It was just what I needed.

COLOR PENCILS

I'm very happy with my life at the moment with ceramics class, drum class and painting the days are pleasantly varied without being stressfull.
This picture was inspired by a small sketch af a corner of a Tibetan thanka that I once made, but it evolved into something very different.

TURTLEMANIA

I have been to ceramics class a couple of times more and I really like it. Our current asignment is to make an animal. I chose a turtle and had the rough form finished in today's class. This is the picture I'm working from; next class I'll take pictures of my sculpture to show you.

NEW COLORS

I could not resist this box of pastels that was on sale for only $9:

Here is my first drawing with pastel:

OIL PASTEL

"A peep at a parallel universe" was painted in 2000 and I like it better today than I did then.

DRAWING

I did this one in Costa Rica.

2nd DAY IN SCHOOL

I wasn’t that happy about the second school day. I guess it was my own fault because I had lunch in the sun and chatted with Liz, the assistant.
The assignment was to make a teapot with a theme, but I missed out about the teapot because I was late, and my team decided for Outer Space as theme and they decided on a design and I just sat there like a brute beast. Julian was the one who had the idea and the design and he more or less did the whole thing, and when I saw the other teams’ teapots, I thought ours looked like it was made for a doll’s house. I had made a small extra UFO and a moon that both didn’t have anything to do with the teapot but looked more like two cookies.
Well, see for yourself:


The teacher says “OK!” after every sentence, or is it “OK?” These OK’s are still rattling round in my head, OK!
Clean your tools, OK!
Here is clean-up after class:


On the home front, Eric, at his studies and Leela at her computer:

FIRST DAY BACK IN SCHOOL

Monday was the first day of the spring semester and I took my first ceramics class. It was a clear and warm day in Santa Cruz, the air was balmy and fresh and I left early to find parking, not knowing how much trafic there might be; I don’t want to be rushed.
There were thousand of young and younger people everywhere around the college. I was a bit nervous, but it also felt good to be there and be starting a new adventure. I find my class room and settle in; first there is one boy, while the rest is girls, then, just before class begins, a whole groupe of boys arrive. The one who was there first is a lanky latino guy with a long horsey face, but not bad looking. His black eyes are bright and lively and a catch them checking me out a couple of times.
We each get a lump of clay and have to sculpt a bird in flight. At the same time the teacher talks endlessly – more than an hour straight – and in great detail about what is expected of us.
“Expectations is the partner of disappointment,” she writes on the blackboard. (I hope we will not disappoint her).
She warns us: we mustn’t think we can just take the class without attending and doing the work! And cellphones, they must be turned off, OK! They disturb other people, OK! You are no longer present here when you talk to someone who is in another place. So, turn them off, OK!
I concentrate on my bird. For some reason I have the impression that it has to come flying towards the one who looks at it like it’s half out of the wall. It’s looking ackward but I don’t know how to do it differenly, so I push on without listening too much to the stream of rules and their reasons.
My neighbor is a beautiful dark haired girl. She shows me a strange little lumpy figure that makes me feel less bad about my own, but when it’s finished it reminds me of the golden Pre-colombian frogs that I saw in the museeum in Costa Rica; its primitive strength have a childish charm.
After an hour and a half we put all of our works together on a table and the result is an impressive variety of forms and ideas. Then we are dismissed and I go and get a woucher for clay and a toolkit.
It looks like it’s going to be fun.

LOSAR

Losar is the Tibetan New Year, same as the Chinese, and I went to Vajrapani Retreat Center’s celebration today. They had prepared a fabulous lunch:


Chotak was there on one of his first outings from the hospital. He looked years older but otherwise he was unchanged. When we got to the telling of stories from the early days with Lama Yeshe, Chotak got going, mostly telling stories about himself. Fantastic things always happens to him, like in Kopan he saw a huge bird, a garuda or a phoenix, I guess. And in Solo Khumbu, when he meditated, a jeti (bigfoot) came to him in his cave and he chased it away with a mudra (ritual gesture) and a power word. Many times he has been on the edge between life and death, usually brought there by his wild living, and every time he miraculously bounces back. It isn’t longer ago than last October since he was apparently braindead in a respirator, and there is still a part of his skull on ice, waiting to be put back on.

TWO YEARS

A few days ago my other blog was eradicated, gone!
A good teaching in detachment!
The circumstances were puzzling: a couple of hours after I discovered that the blog was gone I tried to access it again and a Japanese blogger had taken my URL, which guaranteed him more than 5000 hits per day - the first few days at least.
This coincided with the two years anniversary of this blog.
I have somewhat neglected it lately, but I will try to concentrate on it now.
Here is my latest painting in oilpastel.

MORE PAINTING

I'm really fired up about painting at the moment.
Here is my latest - finished today.

COSTA RICA

So, I have been slow at posting because I was traveling - two weeks in Costa Rica visiting with Fut, a friend from the good old sixties, and his wife Cruzita. Fut is a gourmet cook, and with this coming so soon after Christmas I am seriously in need of dieting! Here are some pictures from the trip:

My best butterfly picture.

Volcáno Poás

A pre-Colombian golden frog

Three boys at the market

Lake Arenal

Leaving Costa Rica

Hwy 152 - just before landing in San Jose, CA

A SAINT

Painted in Morocco in 1965.

LIZARDS

PELICANS FLY IN FORMATION

Click to enlarge!
"I look at his tattoo on the beach in Santa Barbara" is the title of this watercolor painted in 1980 when I went through my American youth. Moore Mesa Beach is a mile long nude beach where I went with friends whenever the weather was good, summer or winter. The mesa was untouched and at the edge of the cliff a row of trees were growing with the sea shimmering behind. It was a corner of paradise.
There was a path with steps build and kept by devotees of the beach. At the western end of the beach the cliffs jutted out, but were easy to scale to reach one of the several caves like cavities in an old tooth.
The picture shows the other extremity of the beach from where it was possible to pass for miles at low tide.
Shortly after I left they started building on the part of the mesa closest to the road and I wonder how much of it is still there? I don't want to know. I have seen too many places being violated; it's better to keep the dreamy memory real ;-)

NEW PAINTING

I did this last night.
In a few days I'm going to Costa Rica to visit a friend who is a painter and I'm bringing art supplies hoping to have fun with them.

THIS YEAR'S FIRST

SACRED GEOMETRY

DIOGENES BOB

My dog loves to kiss me;
she is the sweetest little mutt!
But I make her wait an hour
after licking her butt.

For more poetry click here!

DANCE CLASS

When Mabiba Baegne lived in Santa Cruz she used to do dance class on Christmas day and New Years day. It was a nice way for the community to celebrate together, and this New Year the tradition was taken up by Borrina from Congo and Alseny Soumah from Guinea who taught a class together. Here they are: Alseny left and Borrina right.

A HAPPY NEW YEAR

TO ALL YOU WHO VISIT HERE AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST AND SUPPORT.

This is my last painting of 2007, finished yesterday.
As you can see by going through this blog I paint in many styles: mandalas, portraits, thankas, graphics, etc. but the most personal style is this that I think of as interdependent organic elementals. They have no 'meaning' other than leading the eye on a rhythmic journey through forms and colors.
I am always interested in feedback, so please comment!

SPIN

THREE BOYS FROM DUNUN VILLAGE

ALIEN IN STREETCAR

I used to feel like an alien on this planet and I still feel like that sometimes when I think about the crazy way affairs are handled here on earth.

PEASANT FROM ALGERIA

In 1967 when I lived in Ghardaia, an oasis in southern Algeria, I made my living by painting portraits. This peasant boy didn't come and pick his picture up.

SUNNY DECEMBER

A pleasant result of global warming? Or just another dry winter? The nights are icy, as they should be in December, but the days are like early summer in Denmark. I saw a fruit tree in bloom yesterday.

A corner of my room & a view into the music room.

A shadow of myself…

The weird window

The sun has set in the American suburb. African souvenirs.

Outside: Miguel's Saab and the Drum-Hater's house. I like to think that the drums she is forced to listen to every Tuesday and Thursday, without her knowledge are helping to heal her. She has had serious health problems, but show amazing resilience.

MOODS

When I am in a bad mood I think of this:
A long time ago I read an article about monthly mood swings and whether men had a cycle similar to what they had found for women. The rating system was a scale of five:

1) totally depressed and crappy :-((
2) not having a good day :-(
3) it’s OK :-]
4) pretty nice day :-)
5) cloud nine :-))
The rating was done three times a day: morning, afternoon and evening.

I was interested in the question and decided to try it out for myself. I rated for about six months and didn’t find any discernible lunar influence, but I found another thing. I worked out my average rate and it was exactly 3.0. I was pleasantly surprised; there had been some bleak times and I didn’t expect to come out OK average. It strengthened my belief in a natural balance in things.

I think that if I did such a survey today, I would again come out very close to average 3, but there would be way less ups and downs.

LOW TIDE IN SANTA CRUZ

"Give peace a chance"

HALLOWEEN GONE BAD

This is the pumpkin I grew!

SYNTHESIS

In Heglian philosophy Synthesis is the final stage in the process of dialectical reasoning, in which a new idea resolves the conflict between thesis and antithesis. Thesis being a statement put forth as truth and antithesis the negation of the thesis, based on experience.

So, what is needed as the world engages in religious warfare, is a synthetic religion that is in accord with science and embraces the Truth at the core the different religions and philosophies.

For example:
One thesis is that God created the world with the design of his intelligence, such as described in the Book of Books. The antithesis is that the universe evolved in the way proven by Science.
To resolve the conflict that exists between the believers of these two schools of belief we must admit that both are right.
Science, building on experience, is irrefutable and is obviously right about evolution.
In religion it’s less obvious what is truth and what is superstition, but, since the thesis is based on the Bible, that’s where we must seek its deeper truth. According to the Bible, God revealed himself to Moses as JHVH, meaning, “I am that which is”.
So the thesis holds that “That Which Is” created the world! Of course, “It” must have been there before the world was created, for something cannot come out of nothing.
But what exactly is it “That Is”?
That is a mystery, but in the belief of the American Americans it is called Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit. Science has found that the material world seemingly is built up of a mysterious energy in eleven dimensions.

The synthesis, the idea that makes a resolution of the conflict possible, is that “That Which Is” is an indestructible, free Spirit-Energy that eternally “Is” without any dimensions and that also exists manifested in continuous creation.
It is impossible to deny that there is intelligence in creation, but, as far as the evolution of life on earth goes, the intelligence expresses itself in evolution.
Evolution is continual creation.
This is true religion and goes far beyond words. The Truth at its core is this, that the actualization of being united in the Spirit is unconditional Love for all creation.
That is really all the religion we need.

The title of this picture is SYNTHESIS, and it uses the ancient symbol for spirit energy twice, spinning in opposite directions, as the thesis and antithesis.

QUOTE

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

Bertrand Russell

A RUSSIAN PAINTER

Alexander Alexandrowich Deineka was born in Krakow in 1899 and died in Moskov in 1969.

Goalkeeper

Skiers

Sailors

Lunchbreak

POST # 400

Painted last night.

POOH & PURRY

Purry is of the age of consent, he is just small. He showed up here one day and I have no idea where he came from.
Pooh was living with a bunch of other teddybears not far from here. I came by when his house-lady had a yardsale. Pooh and I took to each other and the lady said, take him with you.
Now we all three share the bed.