Cedar Lee October 27th, 2008

It has been too long since my last posting–I’ve been so busy.  For one thing, because of the large number of Jewish holidays in October, the little girl I baby-sit on occasion had a lot of days off from school in the past couple of weeks, and my services were needed more than usual.

My other part-time job, installing gallery shows at an arts center, is also giving me a lot of work.  I’m trying (with partial success) to maintain some semblance of a workout routine, I have started meditating more regularly, I’ve been taking weekly voice lessons, and I’ve been working hard on puppy training every day with little Blake.

On top of all that, I just returned home from 4 days out of town to attend the wedding of a friend.  It was a beautiful wedding, sweet and full of humor, and I’m glad I went.

But now I find myself at the end of the month already, and I wish time would slow down.

I’ve got 7 paintings in progress right now–almost all are still in the planning stages.  I’ve got to get a move on, especially since a few of them have deadlines.  I have some bulbs that urgently need to be planted before it gets too cold, and I still need to do some research on local judges and referendums before Election Day.

And Halloween is only 4 days from now–when I was little, I used to wonder why more grown-ups didn’t dress up for Halloween.  Now I know it’s not because grown-ups are no fun.  It’s because some years, they don’t have time to even think about Halloween until it sneaks up on them.  My 11-year-old cousin is dressing as the ocean goddess Yemaya this year, and I think her costume is awesome.

Despite my hectic schedule, I have managed to find the time to do some walking outdoors and appreciate the leaves on the trees turning golden, copper, bronze, and scarlet against the backdrop of a cloudy fall sky.  Seeing these beautiful things now will give me creative fuel as the nights get longer and colder.

Much of my time has been going towards the administrative side of my business–staying organized, paying bills, marketing, corresponding, etc.  I’ve got a lot of things to juggle at the moment, but never fear, fresh paintings are on the way.  Stay tuned!

• Family , Life
• Comments(4)

Cedar Lee May 30th, 2008

Wisdom tooth extraction. Not fun. However, the extreme anxiety I felt about this beforehand ended up serving me well. Because I imagined it would be so horrible, compared to what I expected, it wasn’t too bad. (Click here for details.)

Three days later, I seem to be healing well, and I’m feeling okay. This weekend I’m going to attempt to get some light work done around the house and yard, and by Monday I expect to be back to normal, working in the studio and offering new artwork for sale! Thank you to everybody who has wished me well.

• Life
• Comments(0)

Cedar Lee March 25th, 2008

This week I found out that my belly dance teacher is moving to Taiwan because her husband is being transferred there for work. I’ve had so much fun in her class these past several months, and I’m sad that it’s coming to an end.

In her honor, I’ve made this small painting of a beautiful dancer in costume.

Belly Dancer
Acrylic on Canvas
10″ x 8″

This painting is going to my teacher, but if you’d like me to paint a belly dancer for you, talk to me.

What I have enjoyed the most about my belly dancing class is hanging out with other women of all ages and shapes in a non-judgmental setting where we can have fun, laugh together, and celebrate our shared experience as women. Belly dance is a celebration of femininity, physical and spiritual. This may sound corny, especially to men (I don’t know what the male equivalent would be–sports? hunting? roughhousing?) but I think that the celebration of what we are is important–everyone is born into their own body and their own life. There is no way around it, so we might as well embrace it and rejoice in it.

So often (especially in our culture, I think) women are tormented by insecurity, questioning their own beauty and self-worth, trying to live up to some unattainable and vaguely defined standard. Insecurity can make women bitter, jealous and petty. It can make them spend all their money on clothes, hairstyles, cosmetics and plastic surgery. This is such a waste of our energy, when all the beauty that we need is already right there inside us, if we would just recognize it.

That’s what these next two paintings are about. They both started out as sketches for self-portraits (it’s been awhile since I’ve done one) but as I painted them, they became less and less an accurate physical likeness, but at the same time I felt they were representing me more and more. Finally I realized that it wasn’t myself I was painting, and it wasn’t any other real-life woman either.

I was painting goddesses–I don’t mean goddess in the literal sense, as a deity, but rather, the goddess that’s in every woman–the feminine spirit–that dichotomy of gentle beauty and fierce strength within the same person. Cliché? Maybe. A little corny? Maybe–but it’s rooted in truth, and this thought process has inspired some pretty successful artwork:

Ruby Goddess
16″ x 20″ Oil on Canvas

Lavender Goddess
20″ x 24″ Oil on Canvas

I got my artichoke seeds in the mail today (which had been on backorder.) I am so antsy to get out there and plant my garden, but I have to wait another couple of weeks, until the danger of frost is past.

• Life , New Works: Nature & Misc.
• Comments(3)

Cedar Lee January 30th, 2008

So, I’ve been bending my neck at an unnatural and painful angle for many hours today, working on the new ceiling mural for my bedroom. It’s about 6 feet in diameter. I just finished it a few minutes ago.

Starting tonight, this is what I will see when lying flat on my back in the middle of my bed:

We’re just finishing up our new bedroom and haven’t moved the bed or any of our clothes back into the room yet. The walls are now a lovely color called “Blue Thistle” (instead of a dull graying white) and we have installed new baseboards, outlets, switches, hinges, etc.

Apart from my new ceiling mural, my favorite part of our new bedroom is the two wardrobes we got from Ikea. They fit perfectly into our closets, which used to have shelves that didn’t use the space to its full potential. Now we have tons of storage space, and they look nice too! (I’ll post pictures when I have some.)

So, I’ve been working like crazy to get this bedroom project done, which is why I’ve been kind of quiet lately. It’s been an eventful couple of weeks.

My husband just bought another car–a 1998 Lexus GS 400. It’s beautiful! This isn’t the actual car we got, but this is what it looks like–I really like the color:

This means that between the two of us, we now own 3 cars, a Jeep, and a motorcycle. No, this is not normal. But for us, it is–Kevan’s kind of an automotive enthusiast.

I’ve decided I’m going to do the daily painting thing. I’m going to start out with a series of cat portraits, my goal being to finish one painting per day, 5 days a week. To start out with, I’ll do it for a month and see how it goes. But, I’m not ready to start yet…I’ve ordered a huge pile of 8″ x 10″ canvases, as well as some colors of paint that I was out of, and I’m waiting for my new art supplies to arrive.

Also, I want to make sure I’ve got plenty of source material to work with before I get started, so I can spend my time painting instead of finding cats to paint. I chose to start off with cats because they are such aesthetically beautiful creatures and I think I’m inspired enough by looking at them that it’s a subject I can focus on for a while.

My regal feline, Quani:

Quani is a gorgeous wild beast, but I don’t want all of the paintings to be of her. So I need to ask you a favor. If you live with cats and have any good close-up photos of your feline companions, and you’d like to help me make this a great series, please send me your pictures! I prefer close-ups that show the detail of the eyes, since I will be focusing a lot on the cats’ eyes.

Please send your photos to Cedar@ArtByCedar.com. I probably won’t use all of the photos I receive, but if I do use your photo, I will give you credit, of course, with a “photo by ____” line when I post the finished painting online.

Please only send me photos that you took yourself. If you send me a photo, I need you to also send this sentence, in writing: “I, _______, confirm that I own the rights to this image, and I give permission for Cedar Lee to use it as the source image for a painting.”

I’ve already received a few great photos from friends, so I can’t wait to see your pictures as well! I’ll start my daily paintings once I have enough art supplies and source material to keep me going for a month. (If you’re a subscriber, don’t worry–I’ll probably post my finished works once a week, so I don’t flood your inbox with daily blogs.) I can’t wait!

• Art Plans , Home Improvement , Life
• Comments(0)

Cedar Lee January 9th, 2008

Today is my husband Kevan’s 28th birthday! I’ve known him since he was 17–we have grown up together. I love him so much and am so glad he was born!

I’ve taken a part-time job at a nearby arts center. I am their new gallery installer. (That means I hang the paintings on the walls in a way that looks polished and professional.) It’s a lot of arithmetic and measuring. It’s only a few days every couple of months, when new shows go up.

I’m going to start taking belly-dancing classes with a few of my friends! I’ve also gotten into contra dancing…so it looks like there’s going to be a lot of dancing in my near future.

And I’ve got lots of ambitious plans for artwork, but the new year has unfortunately gotten off to a slow start on that front, due to a wicked chest cold and a feeling of chaos in my life. That’ll pass soon enough, and then I’ll have new paintings to show you.

• Life
• Comments(0)

Cedar Lee October 9th, 2007

This post isn’t art-related, so please disregard this entry if this doesn’t interest you.

This issue is just so important to me that I want to spread the word as much as possible and I encourage you to do the same.

This video is 40 minutes long, but worth watching if you can. If you don’t have time now, you can come back to it later.

I got the video off of this website: HealthFreedomUSA.org

Please, sign the petitions there, call your representatives, and tell everyone you know to do the same.

Here’s why you should:

An entity called Codex Alimentarius wants to control the world’s food and is well on its way to doing so. Codex was started in 1962 by the UN and is imposed by WTO sanctions. Codex wants all nutrients–basically everything found in food–to be officially classified as “toxins” so that they can be treated as controlled substances…everything, that is, except pharmaceuticals.

Codex is based in the Napoleonic Code, not Common Law. That means that under Codex Alimentarius, anything not explicitly permitted is forbidden. Under Common Law, we hold that anything not explicitly forbidden is permitted. The difference is the difference between health freedom and health tyranny. Codex Alimentarius would be able to ban supplements by default.

If the world becomes “Codex-compliant” (Codex’s goal is total compliance in 2009) we will no longer have any choices about what we eat and drink. Furthermore, it will be mandatory by law to include certain toxins, like Recombinant growth hormone, in our food. Pesticides will be less regulated than ever. Drugs will be pushed as the only option for health care. I am talking about enforced sickness: the world’s people get poisoned and malnourished while the corporations make money off of it. We can’t let this happen. We need to protect our freedom and our health.

I realize that I am an official “health nut” with “activist” tendencies…and maybe you’re not either of those things. But even if you’re not inclined to get involved in this issue, you can still go to HealthFreedomUSA.org and sign the Citizens’ Petition there. It only takes a moment.

Thank you!
————————————————————————
Next week I’ll be a guest speaker for a painting class at Goucher College–the same painting class I took 3 years ago with the same professor! I’m to tell the students what I’ve learned in the past 3 years…so I’ve got some thinking to do.

• Life
• Comments(1)

Cedar Lee August 14th, 2007

I’ve just harvested my first potato crop ever from my garden plot in my back yard! I planted red potatoes…mmmm. They were surprisingly easy to grow. All you have to do is wait till the green part of the plant shrivels up and turns brown…then you dig, and voila!

I unearthed these beautiful specimens:

Some were a standard medium potato size, and some were really tiny:

I’ve decided to learn more about investing. I’m reading “Smart Women Finish Rich” by David Bach. I’d recommend it to anyone (even if you’re not a woman.)

I’m thinking a lot about autumn lately. Where I live it is still hot and humid every day and there aren’t really any overt signs of the season changing yet, but everyone seems to be slowly getting into that back-to-school, can’t-wait-to-wear-sweaters, gotta-wrap-up-my-summer-fun kind of mode. The other day I canned 8 quarts of tomatoes, to be used for delicious home-made sauce all through the winter.

Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for a few days vacation in the Outer Banks. (Family reunion on my husband’s dad’s side.) I’ve never been and always wanted to go, so I’m really looking forward to it. The place we are going is called Emerald Isle. Based on the name alone, it certainly sounds beautiful.

When we return next week I’ll get back to painting, and all that other stuff I’m supposed to be doing.

• Garden , Life
• Comments(7)

Cedar Lee July 23rd, 2007

Ugh. Bleh. Today I am sick with a sore throat/cold and I have that weird sluggish feeling where my body is taken over and it’s like I’m detached from myself and observing everything from some distance. I don’t feel like doing anything but lying on the couch buried in a mound of blankets and pillows, watching movies all day while my Mama keeps the ginger tea and cinnamon toast coming. If only…

I am also sunburned at the moment so my skin is burning hot, which I think exacerbates that feverish detached feeling.

I went to the beach yesterday with friends…to Assateague Island. We saw wild ponies. We grilled chicken hot dogs, corn on the cob, and chunks of veggies and paneer (Indian cheese) on skewers. The waves on the beach were pretty raucous, and we got hammered by them something fierce when we braved the water. My dog was scared by the waves (with good reason) but still made many valiant attempts to take them on. I lay on the beach reading my novel in the sun for hours, which was lovely and relaxing and pleasant, but because I was kind of out of it from being sick, I forgot to apply sunscreen and got broiled.

My 26th birthday is tomorrow. I’m not celebrating it till this weekend though…my husband and some friends are taking me camping all weekend. I am really excited about that.

Then the weekend after, I am going whitewater rafting. And the week after that I’ll be going to the Outer Banks for a family reunion. I’m meeting with a new gallery next week. This summer is such a whirlwind that I can hardly keep it straight.

As far as my painting, I am working on a few themes at once right now. In order to stay at least somewhat focused/productive, I have made a very cursory list of things that inspire me. The idea is to remember to keep coming back to these things, thinking about them, and using them whenever I get stuck, which is quite often.

In no particular order:

The Sun, the Moon, the Stars
Dawn & Dusk: Night vs. Day
Changing Light
Growth: Upwards & Outwards
Birth, Death, Cycles
Flying & Things that Fly
Breath, Wind, Inhalation/Exhalation
Backlighting & Contrast
Clouds
Rolling Waves (in Air, Water, Foliage, & Topography)
Images of Abundance, Sexuality, Fertility, Fullness & Joy
Solitude
Feminine Mystery
Independence & Strength
Boldness & Audacity
Peace vs. Conflict
Storms
Circles
Spears & other Pointy Shapes
Sources of Life, Life Force (Energy/Mother Nature)
Emotive Color Schemes
Vastness

This is of course an extremely incomplete and not well-thought-out list, but I thought I would share it with you to give you a glimpse of where my art comes from and what makes me tick.

I have found that if I successfully focus on one or more of these themes while making a painting, from the planning stage until completion of the work, I can’t fail.

• Fun With Friends , General Ramblings About Art, Creativity, Philosophy , Life
• Comments(0)

Cedar Lee July 5th, 2007

This is just a quick little entry today. I feel like I’ve barely had time to think this week…I have to look at my calendar to tell you what day it is and what I’m supposed to be doing. Last Saturday we went out of town for a family event and got home very late Saturday night.

Then I hung my show on Sunday morning and had my opening on Sunday night. It was fun! (I didn’t get any good pictures because by the time I remembered to take pictures, the place was closing and we were getting kicked out. I’m sorry!) The show looks good though, I met some new people, and everything went pretty smoothly. The paintings will be up all month, so if you’ll be in the DC area anytime in July you can still go see them.

Monday, my mother-in-law came to visit, and my husband, dog and I all went camping with her in Pennsylvania. I hadn’t been camping in a long time, and I really enjoyed it. Sleeping on the ground was remarkably comfortable, and poking at a campfire, listening to birds, and breathing clean air was all so peaceful. Now I want to go camping again, but for longer next time.

So we got home from camping last night and watched fireworks. We just watched some little local ones from our front yard, and didn’t have a very good view of them, but still. Today, my friend from out of town was visiting and I spent most of the day catching up with her.

All of this time I have had this blank canvas sitting on my easel staring at me, and simply haven’t had time to paint anything on it.

I’ve got a meeting with a new gallery lined up a few weeks from now, to show them some artwork in person. The problem is I don’t have any artwork. My house is usually crammed full of artwork, paintings filling all available wall space and even stacked on the floor in my back room. At the moment though, pretty much all of my inventory is either displayed in a show, or up for sale in art galleries–which is a good thing. But now I have to do a lot of painting in a short amount of time, and it needs to get done whether I have out-of-town visitors or not, no matter what else is going on in my life, whether I feel inspired to paint or not.

Sooo….that’s where I am right now. I have this long to-do list of tasks that are small but still annoying, like “get eyeglasses repaired” and “take dog to vet for vaccine” and “buy whatever thing we’re out of.” I need to take care of all these annoying but necessary errands and chores that have been accumulating on top of everything else, and I’m feeling generally tired and frazzled, so maybe I should meditate or something.

But after I meditate, I’m gonna paint.

• Adventures , Art Gallery Representation , Life
• Comments(0)

Cedar Lee June 5th, 2007

So, I’ve added a section to my website entitled “Story.” It is basically the story of my life, and it’s obviously very abbreviated, but I think it includes most of the important things. The story is illustrated with photos from every phase of my life.

Of course I wouldn’t go so far as to presume that you are interested in reading my life story, but just in case you are, check it out:

www.ArtByCedar.com/story.php

• Life
• Comments(0)