# 327 Breakfast

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I haven't done a sketch like this in many many years. It's way too happy for me. I have a great life, but there's way too much going on out in the world to be this happy nowadays.

This is how I felt at breakfast time this morning, however. It's not what my breakfast looked like, but it's what I felt like having not read or heard the news yet. Happy. For me it harkens back to a time when we weren't at war, and there didn't seem to be so many people homeless, out of work and addicted. There was always a war going on somewhere in the world back then, homelessness, no work and addiction. But as far as we Americans knew - which, come to find out, is not a whole lot - this stuff wasn't a worry. Today it is.

So we do what we can and hope that what we do makes someone feel better somewhere out there.

Breakfast - 8"x 8"  acrylic framed to 12"x12" • $250

#326 Boatyard Dog

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There used to be an old black lab hanging around JO Brown's boatyard on North Haven. I haven't seen him for a couple of years, so I figure he's gone now - can't imagine he'd stand for being left home every day. But I haven't seen a young one running around either. Maybe I'll ask the next time I'm there.

Boatyard Dog • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12' x 12" • $250

# 325 Sailing Down East

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This time of year, especially after a 90 degree day like we had here in Portland the other day, sailors start chomping at the bit to get their boats in the water. The best light is now, the longest days are now, and there is no competition for a spot in one of those quiet, starlit anchorages with the dreaded summer flotillas from away - those obnoxious all-night generator-driven-loud-boom-boxing-air conditioned-tuna heads we sailors call stink pots.

The water temperature in Casco Bay today is 48 degrees. It's a degree colder in Penobscott Bay, so that means full January ski attire including face mask if you want to take a turn around the bay. Some of the old codgers might say it's worth it.

Sailing Down East 8 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" 8 $250

# 324 Whoa! It Just Got Sprung

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Whoa! It just got sprung - spring that is. The grass is beginning to green, and the birdies are tweeting their little brains out.  Someone in the neighborhood heard peepers the other night, and Gus the cat has been bouncing around the field like a nut case after all of those fat little critters.

The next big event will be the leafing show when all of a sudden you notices the trees have them and they are like a green haze across the countryside. In the meantime,  here's something to hold on to when those rain days come through in a couple of days.

Whoa! It Just Got Sprung • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

# 323 Damn Damp Depressing and Dreary

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I was thinking about my mom the other day - God rest her soul. Every time she came to visit me here in Maine, she'd throw away my dish towels and buy me new ones before I could dry the breakfast dishes the next morning. My towels were clean, they just didn't look it because the very idea of going shopping for new ones was too overwhelming. They tended to be a decade or two old and a bit ratty, but still very usable.

My thoughts then turned to how much I would love to wash my filthy ratty-looking dish towels and watch them dry outside on a sunny day filled with a soft warm southerly. That's how desperate I am these days, entrenched in and looking ahead at a stretch of some of the most damn depressing damp and dreary weather I've seen for a while.

Damn Damp Depressing and Dreary  8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

# 322 A Road Somewhere By Stuffed Sheep in a Trippy Landscape

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 We were headed south the other day. Thank heavens the sun was visible, because I was constantly questioning whether or not we were headed in the right direction even though I'd been down the same road many, many times. 

We passed a field with a some sheep - they looked stuffed for some reason. You know, the kind that play dead during the day, but come alive at night to haunt you, bah, bah, bah, as soon as your head hits the pillow, destroying any thoughts of sleeping.

Anyway, I could have painted them standing there in the brown stubble that describes this year's spring. Or I could have thrown a little color out there, making the whole scene trippy-looking, because right now that's what seeing any color feels like.

I chose the later because the sanity of many of my friends is at stake here. Fortunately for me, the skiing up north is pretty excellent, otherwise I'd be a head case too.

A Road Somewhere By Stuffed Sheep in a Trippy Landscape • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250

# 321 Pin Pricks on the Universal Pin Cushion

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I have adopted a mantra. It's an aging thing. Defer nothing. So I've been hanging out in Kingfield for the past two months working on a project and, I will confess, skiing too. The skiing conditions have been both good and rotten up on the mountain, but when they're good, they are awesome and not to be missed. And so I repeat, defer nothing!

In the meantime, the full moons here are spectacular, especially when I get up in the middle of the night to let that last cup of all-natural-super-soothing-herbal-dreamtime-tea go. When I look out the second floor bathroom window down in to the fields and river and hills beyond, I am spellbound - it's magic, and I always wish everyone had the time to see what I do out there.

Gazing at the moon puts everything in to perspective. And when I look up at the moon - without the worry of burning my eyeballs, I am reminded that we are just pin pricks, not even pins, just pin pricks on the infinity that is the universal pin cushion.

Pin Pricks on the Universal Pin Cushion • 8" x 8" acrylic framed to 12" x 12" • $250