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Texture Paintings
I don’t do wine painting classes. Since I teach in a United Methodist Church, our Wesleyan temperance tradition holds sway: we serve no alcohol. However, out in the world beyond there are classes where everyone drinks wine and paints the same image. They’re out for fellowship purposes more than for art, but these classes serve…
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Perspective: How We See
Perspective is both a mental outlook on life and our ability to view things in their true relations or relative importance. In art class, we use the tools of perspective to make a two dimensional surface appear three dimensional. One of the techniques is drawing parallel lines as converging in order to give the illusion…
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OAKLAWN FRIDAY ART CLASS
WE’RE BACK!!! Ready or not, the creative juices must be stirred. If the brain has lain fallow all summer, or it’s been overworked keeping the youngsters occupied, now you can find your own groove again. Our first meeting will be Friday, September 8, at 10 am in the old fellowship hall. Bring your own acrylic…
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Chaos and the Order of the Day
Morse Peckham, author of Man’s Rage for Chaos, believed “Order is humanity’s freedom; but the rage for order creates its own limits on that freedom.” Art, he maintained, enabled the artist to fight that rage, which destroys what it would create. Only the rage for chaos can balance the rage for order. As one who…
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Winter Solstice 2022
This shortest day of the year is the Winter Solstice, which is on Wednesday, December 21, at 4:48 P.M. EST, in the Northern Hemisphere. Some think of this as the Longest Night, but I’m a person of the light, not the darkness. I always prefer to look to the light, no matter how dim or…
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Year End Art Class Notes
While some are counting the days until Christmas, some of us are are counting the remaining days left in the old year of 2022. Somehow I always get a cleaning burst of energy around the end of the year. Maybe I hear my mother’s voice urging me, “Let’s get the house straightened up, so Santa…
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Meditation with Mandalas
The mandala is a geometric design representing the universe in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism. It generally has a circular form and can be varied in any number of ways, but it’s always balanced. In the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, mandalas are objects of meditation to aid in one’s spiritual development. The imagery depicts the universe…
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This is the Way
Are we our works? Are we valued by our works? Is work a noun or a verb? The child in me asks these questions until the parent in me wants to answer, “I don’t know. Go ask Alexa!” We’ve all been there with the rug rats of our families and kinfolks. Children are curious and…

