Saturday marked the opening of the "Free Spirit" show at the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts.  I'd submitted, and had accepted two widely disparate pieces- the little painting of conversation hearts "Free spirit/trueluv/marry me and another piece- "Die Gendanken sind Frei" which is a relatively good sized  three dimensional piece.    Die Gedanken took an Award of Excellence.  I need to send a caption out to Suffolk to translate some of the German that is integral to the piece, and maybe a little background as well- the song from which the title comes is an old German protest/wandering song, sort of an anthem for the Munich students known as the White Roses during the WWII era, a time during which the song was banned (as it had been on other occasions previously).   The literal translation is" Thoughts are free. " I hate over explaining a piece, but the language differences seem to require a little something.

I like candy!  First the chocolate colored cherry, then the conversation hearts, and now some milk chocolate truffles!  A sweet portfolio, indeed.  But the best part of this little piece was actually painting the foil- each plane of that crumple wrapper changed color, and the because it was so highly reflective and intensely colored the outside of the foil through down the most remarkable combination of cast, reflected and even a little refractive light!  Not something I'd anticipated, but definitely appreciated, and great fun!

In the  interest of lightening up the palette so that I could travel out into the world with an easel more readily, I figured I needed to learn to limit my palette and get down to the essentials.   This is the first attempt to work with no more than eight tubes of paint- lemon yellow, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, cadmium red light, titanium white, Art Spectrum's lilac,  alizarin crimson, and cad yellow light.  Not that I always want to limit myself, but methinks life would be easier on the road with as little baggage to lug as possible.  I'm trying to come up with a dozen essentials.

  Well- a quarter of the year gone already, and it's just about warm enough to pack up the portable easel and hit the great out of doors. ( But not until taking care of  shovel pruning the bushes that didn't make it over the winter, poor things.)  A season to review the philosophies that guide me to and at the easel and see if they still work.  Spring cleaning, as it were.