Taking (and Giving) Lessons

I've recently had to pay some visits to a chiropractor (unfortunately), but something more than just relieved back pain has come of it: a new art relationship!  Barbara McCulloch is a local painter, and four of her acrylic paintings hang in the waiting room of the chiropractor's office!  These paintings are so beautiful and lovely, with one or two white aspen tree trunks in the foreground and bright sky-like backgrounds, with colors like purple and orange. They really spoke to me.  Her contact info was noted, so I emailed her, which led to our first encounter this afternoon.  We talked for an hour or so about the business of art (she's got some excellent life experience) and then delved into making art!  Below is what resulted from her lesson to me:

As you know if you've been reading this blog for awhile, I value professional development and I have always felt a desire to get back to basic foundations.  Well, today we started very much at square one (right where I needed to be) with oil pastels and watercolors, two mediums I've never loved.  Barbara said that she could see my artistic skills lie in design and precision, so she challenged me in this oil pastel exercise to be inspired by certain phrases and create each piece in just two minutes.  We did four pieces, and it loosened me up a little, forced me to use my intuition and emotion rather than my brain.  I found it to be pretty fun, actually!  The final product looks very elementary to me, but I really appreciated the exercise.  At first, 2 minutes fled by and I felt like I'd done almost nothing.  By the 4th one, my brain engaged a little more and the 2 minutes felt a lot longer.  I could think a little, and that led to the one I like the most (bottom right: "Dancing alone at home").

Meanwhile, I am thinking lots about teaching my own classes, and I finally have a date for a Ribbons Class(!) at Mama Said Sew: March 26.  Tell your friends!  To market the class, I just had to make samples of the projects we'll make (poor me) out of some of their ribbon.  Aren't these leg bands (for riding your bike) SO GREAT?????