I want to see if I am clever enough to LINK this to my other blog! Now we shall see if I am learning anything?

When I had Cancer (it never had me!) I grew very old very fast. I went from being 63 to being 93 in six months. Cancer doesn't really do this, the cure does; it is a mean mixture of chemicals

derived from Mustard gas used in World War I. Why couldn't they have discovered a good cure made from a fine aged brandy! and I still don't know why they didn't include a few "Happy Pills"

into this recipe so we would at least feel good about the process! Doctors have no sense of humor!

Now I am getting younger every day! Walking again, taking in the neighborhood, doing a little welding and I recently got my paint out!

Free to Paint

Sunday Morning. I can never say that I have learned to paint. I am retired, my experience is with welding, joining steel together at the atomic level. Painting is altogether different, far more subtle but no less expressive. I am liking it a lot but haven't a clue as to what I am doing. I do this in my metal shop on the welding table or most often hanging on the steel wall I use for fabrication. I began just about a year ago, painting on sheets of copper because that is what I had.

Painting on metal is not like canvas at all where the paint absorbs fast and you can't move it around. The paint on metal is alive, mixes mysteriously and has a will of what it wants to be. I eventially ran out of the copper sheets and did this painting on kitchen foil. In a digital world I took a photo of it and it exists only in my computer. The original foil painting became gift wrap on a present to a friend.

Saturday Morning

It rained so hard last night, the early Fall kind of rain that marks the end of summer, cleans the air and creates the first mud puddles marking Winter. Oregon is a wonderful State and we are lucky enough to have all four Seasons. The times are changing.
I haven't "done art" in over seven months. No welding, no painting. Cancer is mentally consuming and chemo-therapy is darnright painful. I am getting stronger every day but my hands feel full of cut glass. Everything I touch is like picking up razor blades. Art of some kind and the will to do it is boiling up inside me and I am learning to live with the pain. Yesterday I got my paints out and found a large canvas to work on. It is stretched on my welding table, gessoed now, about five colors of red and waiting for me to do something with it. Like "The Call of the Wild" it will tease me, waiting patiently, calling for me, and sometimes screaming, until I get to work on it. Nice to be wanted!