cedar’s blog

Cedar August 8th, 2007

I’ve been reading a little about lotus flowers lately, and was inspired to paint them. The lotus is such an amazing plant. Lotus flowers symbolize many things, including divine beauty, purity, love (romantic & non), faithfulness, and expansion of the soul. You see them a lot in Buddhist and Hindu art. The lotus is a metaphor for the light of the human soul transcending the darkness that surrounds it. It grows out of a mucky, scummy, vile swamp but is pure, clean and vibrant, perfectly symmetrical, delicate and fragrant. Every part of the lotus plant is edible. The seeds can lie dormant for hundreds of years and then be successfully germinated! Read more about lotuses…

Here are three new paintings for you. They are meant to be displayed together, but look great by themselves too. I love how they turned out and I plan to do more like them. They are all 20″ x 20″, Oil on Gallery-Wrapped Canvas.

Lotus I

Lotus II

Lotus III

Great news! I am now officially represented by three galleries. On Monday, I signed with the Canton Gallery in Baltimore. They have nine of my paintings on hand and I’ve promised them three more by September.

I met the owner, Carolyn, and the resident framing expert, Mercedes. I really clicked with them…both of these ladies are friendly, knowledgeable, passionate about art, and generally fun to be around. I’m really happy to have started such a great new business relationship, and the best part is they’re local, so delivering new artwork to them is not a big deal.

If you live in the Baltimore area, check them out! It’s a small, cozy gallery near the inner harbor.

Canton Gallery
2935 ODonnell Street
Baltimore, MD 21224
(410) 342-6176

In other news, I went whitewater rafting for the first time this weekend. We went 80 miles down the New River Gorge in West Virginia. The area is known as one of the top five spots in the world for whitewater rafting. These were quite possibly the most beautiful mountains I’ve ever seen in my life–the river cut through rock faces climbing up 50 feet in the air, and above that, mountains upon mountains straight up. The air was full of blue mist. I can’t even come close to describing it.

The trip took 9 hours, including a lunch break. Most of the rapids were class 3 but one of them was class 5 because the rocks were so close together. Certain parts were so scary I could hear my own heart pounding in my ears. At one point I climbed to the top of and jumped off a 21-foot cliff into the water. At certain points they let us jump off the raft and swim with the rapids. Then there were more peaceful parts where the water was calmly drifting and we just floated along.

The water was warm and the weather was perfect. All in all, it was incredible and I really want to go again. I might go again in the fall or the spring, when the water is higher and the rapids are all class 5.

There was one part where they had a photographer waiting on a rock to snap our picture. Here’s the picture. (I’m second from the front on the left side.)

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