Life, death and art
Whoa, I haven't updated in a long time.
The remainder of my week was without incident. I did my geek work, freelance work is continuing to pan out for me. Friday night I took dinner over to the Bri/yans and Saturday night I hosted a birthday gathering for Alyzan. We played the Totally 80s Trivial Pursuit which end up being pure, unadulterated torture for all concerned.
Heath was buried in Perth yesterday (well, his ashes were buried, I ought to say). It felt like some kind of closure. There were some great pictures from the post-funeral gathering they held at his favorite beach with around 100 of his Australian friends...near sunset everyone kicked off their shoes and some of their clothes and ran into the ocean. They're hugging and laughing and looking into the sunset and it's all kinds of beautiful and apropos. So I'm retiring my Heath RIP default icon now (this icon on this post) although I'll still keep it loaded up in case I want to use it again.
Shelly got me the awesomest thing for Christmas. It's a candle-warming hotplate, although I suppose you could use it for coffee or something, too. You put your scented candles on it and it melts the wax, so it's nice and smelly without actually burning the candle! Brilliant! I love it. I've been using it almost every day. I won't feel nearly as guilty buying expensive candles now because I won't just be using them up. And I can buy the smallest possible size, because they won't ever burn away! It's a total money-saver! Yayz!
So I went ahead and ordered the first print I showed you in this post from art.com. I just ordered a giclee print...for a lot of reasons I decided not to order it framed, just the print itself. I'll watch for another JoAnn's framing sale for the framing. I can't wait to see it in person.
Do you have a favorite artist? I've become more and more interested in art over the years, partly due to Brian's influence but just partly my own interest, too. I find that my tastes gravitate towards impressionism and post-impressionism, and I'm strongly drawn to color and light. I used to find modernism and surrealism attractive, but I don't so much anymore.
My favorite artist, bar none, is John Singer Sargent. His paintings really hit me somewhere in the chest, and his portrait work is astonishing. People say he was one of the few portrait artists who was able to capture his subject's inner life in paint and it's really true. My favorite impressionist is actually Pissarro, one of the lesser-known ones. I'm also crazy about Edward Hopper. I started paging through the Most Popular pages on art.com and just tried to see what I was naturally drawn to, and I found myself clicking onto a lot of Van Gogh, an artist I'd never really considered before.
That's the cool thing about learning about art. There's always something to surprise you and something new to discover.
The remainder of my week was without incident. I did my geek work, freelance work is continuing to pan out for me. Friday night I took dinner over to the Bri/yans and Saturday night I hosted a birthday gathering for Alyzan. We played the Totally 80s Trivial Pursuit which end up being pure, unadulterated torture for all concerned.
Heath was buried in Perth yesterday (well, his ashes were buried, I ought to say). It felt like some kind of closure. There were some great pictures from the post-funeral gathering they held at his favorite beach with around 100 of his Australian friends...near sunset everyone kicked off their shoes and some of their clothes and ran into the ocean. They're hugging and laughing and looking into the sunset and it's all kinds of beautiful and apropos. So I'm retiring my Heath RIP default icon now (this icon on this post) although I'll still keep it loaded up in case I want to use it again.
Shelly got me the awesomest thing for Christmas. It's a candle-warming hotplate, although I suppose you could use it for coffee or something, too. You put your scented candles on it and it melts the wax, so it's nice and smelly without actually burning the candle! Brilliant! I love it. I've been using it almost every day. I won't feel nearly as guilty buying expensive candles now because I won't just be using them up. And I can buy the smallest possible size, because they won't ever burn away! It's a total money-saver! Yayz!
So I went ahead and ordered the first print I showed you in this post from art.com. I just ordered a giclee print...for a lot of reasons I decided not to order it framed, just the print itself. I'll watch for another JoAnn's framing sale for the framing. I can't wait to see it in person.
Do you have a favorite artist? I've become more and more interested in art over the years, partly due to Brian's influence but just partly my own interest, too. I find that my tastes gravitate towards impressionism and post-impressionism, and I'm strongly drawn to color and light. I used to find modernism and surrealism attractive, but I don't so much anymore.
My favorite artist, bar none, is John Singer Sargent. His paintings really hit me somewhere in the chest, and his portrait work is astonishing. People say he was one of the few portrait artists who was able to capture his subject's inner life in paint and it's really true. My favorite impressionist is actually Pissarro, one of the lesser-known ones. I'm also crazy about Edward Hopper. I started paging through the Most Popular pages on art.com and just tried to see what I was naturally drawn to, and I found myself clicking onto a lot of Van Gogh, an artist I'd never really considered before.
That's the cool thing about learning about art. There's always something to surprise you and something new to discover.