glad to know you

This weekend marks the second full year of phantsythat and I can't let it go by without thanking you for your visits and your support. When I started I hadn't painted or drawn much for a couple of years and didn't expect to either. I'd been working on the silks but things were pretty quiet in general. Within the first few weeks I posted pictures of all the paintings I'd done since arriving in Portland and then posted 'baby days' to a second blog. I was so new at the concept, having no idea how to arrange pictures and text, I did it as 18 separate posts. I never changed it because I treasure the sweet comments left as people discovered it for themselves. For me, having 'baby days' posted was reason enough to have a blog.

Anyone who blogs knows how difficult it can be finding things to talk about on a regular basis in a public forum. Okay, phantsy isn't all that public but you know what I mean. Eventually I got brave enough to visit blogs other than the two I'd shadowed for a while and actually left some comments. I was so delighted when some of those people whose blogs I admired came to visit phantsy that I was hooked into continuing. I've always just talked about the odd things that have struck me about living in the United States and the world in general so there's not much use in going to look at my old posts. I don't even do it myself.

What got to be really fun was the delight I found in the creative endeavors of fellow bloggers. I needed some new stuff and realized what was old for me might be new and weirdly interesting to others. I had old memories and some strange stories so decided to see if I could make them more interesting by drawing pictures to illustrate them. 'True Housekeeping' was the first and you liked it so much I wrote more. Before I knew it I'd illustrated over a dozen stories that got posted to my third blog, Adventure's Ink - more drawings than I had ever done in one year. That's all fallen off a bit recently mostly because I've only got so much time and I've been using most of it for silk painting and sewing. Nevertheless, there's a new one coming soon and maybe a few more besides.

Finally, I'm so glad I was able to introduce you to my dear friend, Crow. He's the one who shows up when I'm too irritated to talk about how we're all getting screwed by the super rich (those bastards). Crow is also very mindful of the natural world we share so is happy to fly around investigating places and people when other duties keep me at home.

The painting here is a scan of a rather tattered photograph I found of a very old one called Ibex Beach. (If you enlarge it you'll see it's dated 1982.) You can see my essential style hasn't changed much but I did get a bit more subtle with color as time went by. I guess that's what we hope for in life - to gain sensitivity.

I've learned a lot in two years thanks to my teachers. Thank you all.