Changing Light

Bewitched

Week 29   July 28 - August 3

"It is the time you have wasted on your rose that  makes your rose important."
    Antoine De Sainte-Exupery

One of my projects this summer has been to find a way to keep the deer out of my roses (also known as deer candy). My solution has bee to build a fence. Resourceful as ever, I used interesting sticks fro my pruning pile, mostly lilac and madrona. Some of the sticks are wonderfully curvy. I have been saving them with the thought of making them into furniture someday. For now, they have become a fence. I left all the pokey ends facing out, thinking that they look like deer antlers. So far, so good. Consumption of my roses by browsers has gone down, even blossoms peeking through the fence
have been spared.

This week's painting is an oil on panel, subject: roses. It is titled Bewitched Again, because I did a similar painting in watercolor many years ago. "Bewitched" is the beautiful pink rose. The variety has been around for a while. The size is 8" x 12" . It is for sale for $150.00. Please contact mary@marygreggbyrne.com for purchase and further information.

Deer tend to become inured to whatever one does to frighten them, so my fence may lose both its charm and its effectiveness, but not too soon I hope.

"There's pansies, that's for thoughts", Ophelia, Hamlet (Act IV, Scene V)

"In my garden there is a large place for sentiment.  My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams.  The thoughts grow as freely as the flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful."
Abram L. Urban

Week 28    July 21 - 27

I started  pansies from seed this year, which is always fun because the colors come as a surprise. The cool, wet spring delayed things and the plants are only now coming into full bloom. I've always considered pansies an old fashioned flower, something for storybook Grandmas: demure, sweet, pretty…. 

Upon investigation, I learned that pansies (from pensee, French for thought) are by long tradition a symbol of freethought.  The blossom is said to resemble a human face, nodding forward in contemplation.

This week’s painting has more and different connotations than I knew. This is a watercolor, 7.5” x 8”, titled Heart’s Ease (an old name for wild pansies). It is for sale for $100.00. Please contact mary@marygreggbyrne.com for purchase and further information.

Thoughtfully yours,

A Series of Unfortunate Events

"Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors."
    Ludwig van Beethoven

Week 27     July 14 - 20

Did any one look for me at the Salem Art Festival and feel great sadness and disappointment that I was not to be found? I missed the fair this year, though I had been looking forward to it, because of my own mistakes. I am not going to elaborate on these errors, for risk of looking disorganized or spacey, an image which some of us who dwell too much in the right brain constantly battle.

I love the Salem Art festival (www.salemart.org). It opens with parade of children and ends with bagpipes. The weather is often hot but Bush's Pasture Park, where it is held, is filled with tall oak trees for shade. I hope to be there next year and many other years.

This week's painting is a watercolor/gouache, 15" x 15",  celebrating the Salem Art Festival. It is titled Take Me to the Fair. The price is $400.00. For purchase and/or questions, please contact mary@marygreggbyrne.com.

I will be at the Bella Strada festival in Bellingham, WA August 9 &10. Please come visit!