Most of the people I know who enjoy gardening also love birds - watching, feeding and just observing their little lives as they go on all around us. Well, I'm no different. I find birds fascinating, beautiful and quite clever (well, okay, maybe not chickens...). I'm lucky to live in an area where there is an abundance of wildlife and on any given day I can see bald eagles, great blue herons and scarlet tanangers. When I talk about birds with my fellow observers, they are always shocked to find out that my absolutely favorite bird is the crow. They are busy chasing the crows away from their feeders while I try to attract them by offering gifts of slightly rotten eggs, moldy cheese and (a particular favorite) canned cat food.

Crows are smart, athletic and social. I love to hear them chattering with one another in the tree tops through my studio window. However, when they come to the ground to pick through my crow buffet, they are quiet and stealth, always ready to leap away in an instant. By now, they know me a bit and know that I mean food but they are still very apprehensive about letting me get close and will wait until I am safely back in the house before swooping in for a snack.

One of the reasons I feed them and try to get them accustomed to my presence is that I love making paintings of and about crows. I am constantly at the window, my camera set to 'burst' in order to take three pictures per click instead of one. For every round of photographs where I may take up to 30 shots, only two or three will be keepers. Ideally, I would love to get to the point where I don't have to hide behind glass in order to take their picture, but I think that will take a considerable amount of time and patience. Unfortunately, I don't have much time to be patient with, so for now, I'll have to settle for my glassed-in observation perch.

ONE CROW  30" x 40"
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Thank you for visiting my blog. To learn more about me and my art, please visit my web site.

It's spring time in Maine which is commonly referred to as Mud Season up here. That's a pretty self-explanatory term, as it always gets wet and sloppy and everyone wanders around in knee-high rubber boots for a few weeks. This year was an exceptionally wet spring especially for some areas in northern Maine where they had awful flooding. I live in the central/southern part of the state and a couple of years ago we had some significant flooding of our own.

My family and I live in a very rural town without any sort of a downtown area (or our own post office, for that matter). We also, luckily, live on relatively high ground but the nearby town of Gardiner is right on a large river called the Kennebec. Well, life in rural Maine is pleasant but not all that exciting, so when downtown Gardiner flooded, my family and I hopped in the car to go watch the floodwaters splash against the old brick buildings and rush over parking lots. We parked well out of the way, bought a bag of doughnuts at a little bakery and walked to where a collection of other flood-watchers were gathered.

It's unnerving to see places you've driven, walked on and done business in underwater. There was a lot of tense energy in the crowd we had become a part of and so we stood, my husband, three-year-old daughter and I, and nibbled warm doughnuts, chatted and watched.

There had been a man kayaking in the rushing flood waters when we had first arrived. (I remember being surprised that anyone would do that, but I know white water kayakers tend to be a little on the fate-tempting side.) Suddenly and disturbingly, we now only saw an empty yellow kayak bobbing up from a particularly deep, fast-rushing hole of water created by a small grove of trees sticking out of the middle of the river (which the day before had been a parking lot).

Clearly, someone had been watching more closely than we had because rescue teams were arriving and trying desperately to figure out first, where the man was, and second, how to get him out of the rushing waters. They had ropes and life vests and floatation devices but the current was intense and the bank they were trying to access the water from (opposite from where we were) was unstable at best, a mud slide at worst.

And then the man surfaced, spit out of the hole and pulled back down again. His skin was pale against the darkness of the water and there was no resistance to the current in his limbs. He rolled again with the water and then began to drift away from the trees and the hole. The rescue teams were then able to bring the man to the shore where they tried in vain to get him breathing again.

I had never seen anyone die before, had never even seen a dead person for that matter. And it felt so odd - my young daughter munching warm doughnuts and happily playing at our feet in the crowd, totally unaware of what was happening - the buzz and collective shock of the crowd - the feeling of sadness for the rescue workers desperately trying to jump-start the mans heart on the distant shore. The rush of emotion was so great that a numbness took over as I watched the yellow kayak still twisting and floating in the current.

THE YELLOW KAYAK

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Thank you for visiting my blog. To learn more about me and my art, please visit my web site.

I received an email a while ago asking me to take part in a project called Broadsided (www.broadsidedpress.org) which pairs poets and artists. Every so often the creators of Broadsided send out an email to their pool of participating artists. In each email are two or three poems for artists to "dibs" or chose to use as inspiration of a work of art. After signing on, the very first email they sent out for "dibsing" contained a poem that struck me, not only as a good match for my style of art, but it was like having the wind knocked out of me without the actual punch. The poets name is Joe Wilkins. Here is the poem and the painting I created to pair with it.

Meditation on the Treason of His Body

Bent over books of the economic
and social development of Latin America,
my brother is dying. I have only been once
to see him, there in the gray light rushing
like water down Arthur Avenue, down
the throats and into the lungs of young
men bending against the black stones of
tenement houses. And there I saw his body
turned on itself, insurrection of MS—left eye
white and blinking, the hung flesh of his face,
bird's legs and trembling hands. He is 24.
He has gone gauzy in the light, his shadow
on the sidewalk only half as black as mine.
But in the evening, after we eat ravioli
from the market and share a quart of beer,
after he sets out a syringe and translucent
vial of oily medicine, scrubs his pearl belly,
and slips the needle in, little red bulb of skin
in chemical blossom, he pulls his shirt back
across his still wide shoulders and opens
his book and studies.

This poem and painting will go live on BroadsidedPress.org on May, 1st. Thanks for stopping by my blog!

There are many who turn up their noses at the art being sold on eBay. After all, it certainly lacks the glamour of the traditional gallery atmosphere. Also, there is a lot of fraud here on eBay, whether it's a fake Picasso or a print being sold as an original. However, there are a lot of wonderful, talented artists selling legitimate, thoughtful work here and once in a while I'd like to take some time to show you some of my favorites.

Patty A. Baker  is a professional artist who has been selling her work via eBay for about 4 years now. She has studied art at the college level and has been honing her talents even since, mostly using acrylics and oils on canvas. While her landscapes are probably her best sellers here on eBay, my favorites are her still lifes.

Still Life with Coffee and Apple

There are a number of things that make this painting remarkable to me. First is the color; the orange/red of the apple against the contrasting blue/green of the tablecloth play back and forth with each other but also push forward the lightness of the coffee cup, making us feel like like we are sitting right there and can almost pick it up and have a sip. Next, the balance of the shapes; the echo of the round apple in the top and bottom of the cup, the handle of the cup being almost a mirror shape of the right, shiny side of the apple, and the rectangular repetition in the cups shadow, the checks of the cloth and the wall behind. And lastly, the contrast in the almost stark flatness of the cloth and wall to the round, three-dimensionality of the cup and apple really makes this picture enjoyable to look at - and keep looking at. It is thoughtful and elegantly executed, clearly the work of an artist who is aware that her art-making choices have direct consequences to the outcome of the piece.

Here are a few more pieces by Patty for you to peruse:

Grapes

Still Life with Poppies and Fruit

Four Mourning Doves

If you are interested in finding out more about Patty, you can see her listings here: 
http://stores.ebay.com/Lookout-Studios

Or you can visit her ME page here:
http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=pattyabaker