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Ten years ago I created a mixed media Muse lesson for Valentine’s Day called My Love Relations. Actually it’s has many versions and all of them a lot of mixed media fun. You can pick a lover, spouse, beloved children, mother, father, self love, or love of the divine to focus your feelings. I believe I’ve done all of the above! An easy way to start is with an old love song in sheet music in a book called Magic Melodies of the Gay Nineties (which I picked up years ago at a library sale). Then find a romantic couple in an art history book and make a black and white copy. This couple was in a painting called Street Scene by John Sloan in a compilation of Love artwork in book called LOVE, A celebration in Art and Literature! Cut it out, glue it on with the music and collage the heck out of it!

acrylic and collage on w/c paper, 10 X 11″

I’m just wild about Harry/Bob

He’s just wild about me

When I close my eyes we’re

Walking down the promenade

His eyes are on me and my heart

Sways to the song in our hearts

As people in cafes whisper

“Ah yes they’re so in love”

Meanwhile Valentino looks on with envy

then turns his head away

in movie star despair.

And the song continues. . .

The heavenly blisses

Of his kisses

Fill me with ecstasy.

He’s sweet just like chocolate candy

And just like honey from the bee

Postscript: Happy Valentines day! May you have chocolate to enjoy and someone to enjoy it with. Romance is a bit of nonsense, but Love is the best indulgence!

I was just sitting down to figure out what I would teach for the first lesson of The Playful Muse workshop starting this week. I always like to start a mixed media series with fun paint application techniques to loosen us all up. Drip creatures is one of my favorite lessons because it’s silly and profound at the same time! So I looked up past blog posts on the Drip Creature theme and found this one from seven years ago. Lo and behold, it revealed my uneasiness about recent murky vision. Turns out that once again this is exactly my concern today! So here I am reposting it and letting it both speak to my fears and give me a much needed prayer of hope.

(from the 2016 post) I thought I was just being playful with this one, picking up an old class demo of a kind of ink drip creature. And then, no kidding, it started to talk to me about something I needed to hear!

I can see you sitting there, thinking about your eyes, one clear and one struggling to see through spots and threads and the murky patch.

Look me in the eye and repeat after me: I can see just fine. This cage of one eye is translucent and does not a prison make. I have three eyes to take the place of the one

and the world keeps opening.

Drip creatures tend to be a combination of many species and so they exist outside the realm of waking mind where we have convinced ourselves that things are a certain way that we can explain.

Yes, my left eye has a retinal occlusion for which there is treatment. . . of sorts, and yes I must be reminded not to worry, but to notice all the ways my other senses and brain fill in the blanks, giving me for the most part decent sight. I won’t soon forget this colorful and bizarre image, like something right out of a dream, or perhaps a prayer. (end of 2016 post)

And now (2023!) dealing with cloudy vision again, I feel so comforted, remembering that I have three eyes, and the world keeps opening!

If you want to try your own (prophetic!) drip creatures, look at this post for some simple instructions and give it a try!