Le Grande Chartreuse

Chartreuse, Scarlet's sister. Oil on 30"x40" Stretched Gallery canvas. Still unfinished.

Several years ago, I painted the picture on the right and called it Medium Green Tea. During that time period I belonged to a message board called Medium Green Fiesta. It was a fun group where everyone talked about Fiesta dishes and just about everything under the sun really. It later moved to a new site but I forgot my sign on and password and by then I got so busy with work and, ahem, blogging and of course my art! That is why my blog is titled Ces And Her Dishes. I wanted to talk about my new obsession. After two posts about dishes, I ran out of things to talk about.

Those of you who have been visiting me for quite sometime will know about Scarlet, left. The last time I saw Scarlet, she looked very happy in her new home. Two weeks ago I tried to paint but nothing came up. I always struggle with a new canvas. I have this idea plus I usually have done my study but when I pick up a brush, it does not want to follow any study or preconceived idea. Paint, paint, paint...nothing. I saw Scarlet's picture and a thought entered my mind. She is thinking about her sister, so that was it. I painted her sister. There she is above. her name is Chartreuse.

Incidentally, Scarlet and Chartreuse are Fiesta dish colors. Rose, Marigold and Heather are also Fiesta colors. I wonder what they would look like. In the meantime I am just happy with Scarlet and Chartreuse. I will hang Chartreuse somewhere in my home looking towards the west. What was more fitting than to paint the Medium Green Tea painting with Chartreuse? Alas, Chartreuse uses a polka-dotted cup, which is her favorite. I have not signed Chartreuse yet. You know what that means, anything goes.

An Inkaholic's Trees

My name is Ces and I am an inkaholic.
I listen to music,


while I draw trees...
until my wrist gives out!

Obscured By Wires and Billboards

I don't hate Mondays. It's just that it follows the weekend and when I am not on-call during the weekends, I make a point of being lazy. I spent all weekend doing nothing but drawing. I drew for 26 hours starting Friday night. I sat on the same chair in the kitchen drinking coffee and drawing while occasionally checking my email on my phone and the nearby laptop. Ugh! I hate that I subject myself to these electronic gadgets. My mind was busy thinking about my life and what I was doing with myself. Obviously not much that weekend. My daughter joined me and she went online doing homework assignments while chatting on her laptop and text messaging on her phone. Daisy, our gentle and loving dog sat beside us and we occasionally got off our derrieres and wrestled with her on the kitchen mat. At one point she leaped on my daughter's lap begging to sit on the chair next to her. She obliged. I did not mind. My son sat down with us from time to time and so did my husband. That weekend if they wanted anything from me they had to come to the kitchen. I did not cook but we did not starve. There was food and my kids are teenagers. At one point I felt guilty that I was not providing meals, I ordered pizza.

I am grateful for so many things. First off my family and my friends. I have terrific friends, truly wonderful friends who I value more than the diamonds, the gold and pearls... obviously I am not that crazy about jewelry but I am crazy about how my friends stimulate my brain and hold my heart when it bursts out of my chest, including male friends who step in front of me to protect me from any situation that would threaten my safety when my husband is not around to do it for me.

Darn it! I meant to talk about the sky on my daughter's birthday!

On Monday evening, my husband and I picked up our daughter's birthday cake. I had an awful Monday workday full of meetings and my checklist was burgeoning with new tasks. I managed to get the major things for that day out of the way. I could not even remember the sky outside my office window but on the way to the bakery, WHOAAAA! I look up and the sky was ablaze. I had no camera so I took these photos with my mobile phone. It was disheartening, the billboards, wires, posts and traffic obscured my view. I hated that I live in a big city but settled with the realization that at least we are better off economically than most states, so I just thought of these things as symbols of survival but I could not contain my excitement.

I looked up and made a sign of the cross on my chest thinking that the heavenly show was prepared especially for me. How self-absorbed can I be? But I honestly praised God for giving me a spectacular performance. My husband loves it when I get this excited. He tried to chase it without veering off too far from our destination.

On the parking lot of the grocery store, we met a friend whose truck had a flat. He had gone home to get another truck but first, he told us he wanted to show us a picture of his new girl. I thought he meant daughter. He showed us a picture of his new girlfriend. He was beaming with pride. She used to be a Playboy model. In the meantime, I had to politely listen and was missing my sky show!

By the time our friend was finished gushing I looked up and this is all what was left of the heavenly spectacle.

We went inside and picked up our daughter's birthday cake; went home and I cooked her the "simple" dinner that she requested. We celebrated her 14th birthday. Overall, it was copacetic.

For My Dux Litterarum: An Acer Grove and Hydrangea Flowers

Cluster One

For my Dux Litterarum who tickles my brain and always has the most wonderful things to say about my drawings even if I am making faces at them. Below is the full picture. The image above is a high resolution area detail. I drew thirteen smiley faces and three lizards. Can you see some of them?

On the left: Maple grove with hydrangea bushes on foreground. I am disappointed with the image. I don't have a scanner large enough to capture this 14"x17" Bristol Board drawing. I was only able to scan a limited area. Another thing, I can't get too excited over this illustration. I think I used too much ink. I should have left some white spaces. This drawing exacerbated my carpal tunnel syndrome, but it is much better now. I repeatedly listened to Pink Floyd's song "Wearing the Inside Out" while drawing this. Do you think it may have adversely affected me? I love that song. It inspires me to create. Is that alright that I am dedicating this to my mental ninja friend even though I still feel lukewarm towards it?

Eat

I don't know why I make decisions out of the blue, maybe because I can. I wanted to stop blogging but I keep missing my sisterfriends. I really had no reason other than I said I would. In the past it did not bother me that I changed my mind every few seconds. Now I am having a hard time being fickle. I am bothered by it. I am getting old. I want some constancy, but right now, I shall eat the words I said to Bella about not blogging for a month. With the long post below, you probably wish I stayed away, so...

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Modern medicine and American society, I can only say American because I can’t say much about the others, have given melancholy a bad rap. I can understand why depression requires chemical therapy but melancholy?
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I grew up in a home where introspection and pensive mood was a welcome and necessary state of mind. It allowed us to evaluate and reflect on our lives, our being and existence. I grew up in an introspective and reflective thinking family. Just imagine a slow Saturday morning before we started our chores. There we were in the shaded garden. My mother was sitting in the canopied swing talking to the fish vendor whose high pitched voice pierced the crisp morning air. My eldest sister M was walking with her head held up gazing into the horizon, thinking. I knew in her head there is some discussion going on or paper being written. My brother D was standing by the palm tree blowing smoke from his cigarette with eyes narrowed, thinking. I hated the fact that he smoked. My sister L was sitting in the wrought iron chair under an umbrella canopy reading and writing. My brother E was pacing back and forth, thinking, gesturing. He sometimes stopped and smiled at the young helper who meekly returned his smile or said something funny to him. My younger sister L was in the outdoor kitchen toying with and feeding the fire. I don’t know what was in that pot blackened by the soot from the burning firewood. My sister R was speaking softly, giving instructions to the two young female helpers who also spoke in hushed tones. My sister F… my sister F, she comes out smiling, says something and everyone turn their heads towards her. She is a catalyst for the fun and mirth that exploded in laughter or a chorus of loud and happy voices all speaking at once, conversations crisscrossing. My mother and the fish vendor stopped their conversation and my mother was proudly looking at all of us. Tia Aurea, the fish vendor admiringly looked at everyone and sometimes made a comment at one of the children. She was always complimentary to my sisters and brothers. With me she was free to tease and criticize. She said things like “Cee-cil look at you! You look like you are going to war in that outfit” or “Go to your mother and help her!” It never bothered me. People think they can say anything to me or command me but that is only true of the ones who are dear to me. Otherwise, I had the foulest, most sarcastic mouth to accompany my bellicose teenage decorum in that house. I gave Tia Aurea deference. She was our laundrywoman and the mother of one of my classmates in high school.
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For my part, I was with my father who was tinkering with his camera. He asked me questions and when I was younger I replied with an argument or defiant answer. The older Ces, the one who came back for a visit with her husband, was now swelling with love and desire to give him a hug or a kiss. My heart was pounding and telling me “Kiss him! Just grab him or hug him from his back and kiss him like you do so naturally with your mother.” Instead my body was frozen, it did not move. Instead I just answered his questions methodically with extra gentleness.
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Dear God! I loved him so much, my father, and I was so proud of him but it took me to leave the country to tell him I loved him. The last time I saw him, he looked so peaceful in his coffin. He looked like a thinner version of my grandfather, whose photograph of him in a white suit leaning by a tree, I used to gaze upon. I can’t remember my grandfather. He died when I was a young child.
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My children only met my father once. My son was four years old and my daughter was one year old. She screamed her heart out when I put her on his lap. As a toddler, she only preferred her father’s company and mine. Thank God my son sat with him, lingered, touched him and hugged him. My father beamed with pride. My son celebrated his seventeenth birthday two weeks ago.
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So back to melancholy, it takes me to some unknown journey. I did not mean to talk about my father; he just popped into my mind and in my heart.
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Today is my daughter’s birthday. She is fourteen years old today.

Away

Unfinished Maple Grove 14"x17" Bristol Board...hopefully will be done when I return.

Dear friends,

I will be away for a while. I hope to be back soon. Please behave yourselves while I am away. Take care, enjoy life and always give thanks.

Love,

Ces

Landslide!!!

Trees In Winter. Pigment ink on 6"x6" Bristol Board.

Ssshhh! Listen!!! There's a landslide in Massachusetts. Do you hear the people's voice? Scott Brown took Ted Kennedy's Senate seat and gave it back to the people of Massachusetts!

Here We Sit Like Birds In The Wilderness

"When I grow up, I want to be a big Girl Scout. But I want to be fun."

Top: Brownie Girl Scouts Waiting For The Others To Come... Pigment ink on 6"x6" Bristol Board. Bottom: These are three other Girl Scouting drawings I did for past Illustration Friday prompts "Instinct" (Bristol Board), "Leap" (Bristol Board) and "Hat" (Moleskine notebook ball pen drawing).

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Here we sit like birds in the wilderness.
Birds in the wilderness.
Birds in the wilderness.
Here we sit like birds in the wilderness,
waiting for the others to come.
Waiting for the others to come!
Waiting for the others to come!
Here we sit like birds in the wilderness,
Waiting for the others to come.

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I must have sung that song thousands of times. Brownies, Daisies, Star Scouts and all other iterations of the youngest of Girl Scouts are always the first to assemble, which means they are also the first to get bored waiting. This is a song the leaders like the girls to sing because the incoming girls could join in alternating tempo. As A Brownie, I longed to be like the big Girl Scouts. They were fun, interesting, active and very pretty. I did not like the leaders. They were old, stiff, strict and killjoys. I promised that if I became a leader, I would be the most fun leader ever! That was my ambition. I wanted to be a Girl Scout leader!
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I have been a Girl Scout since I was five years old, in fact I may have been born a Girl Scout because all my older sisters and brothers were Girl and Boy Scouts and my parents were sponsors and supporters of scouting. I was a Brownie, a Junior, Senior, college Cadet (in the Philippines, Senior came before Cadet), a camp nurse, an Assistant Quartermaster for an encampment of 250 girls, a leader of my own troop of special Girl Scouts in wheelchairs and crutches and finally, my daughter's troop Adult Leader.
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I attended the First Asia Pacific Regional Jamboree attended by thousands of Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and Guides from Asia and the US. I traveled all over the country as a Girl Scout representative of my Council and happily missed the last three months of my high school senior year! When I was nineteen, I did my public health nurse internship in Antique where I volunteered to be the nurse at an encampment. There I met the governor's wife who was also the president of the council. She was an elderly lady. I think she was in her sixties. She thought it would be fun for me to come along with her on her travels all over the province. I visited every town and city and met the young Girl Scouts. It was a fun and memorable experience even though it took me away from my public health nursing duties. It was at the height of martial law though, so we traveled with military escorts. I did not understand the rationale for it but after I finished my internship, the following year, there was a new governor who was not sympathetic to the dictatorship. He was assassinated. He was the political rival of the ex-governor whose wife took me all around the province. I learned so much from Girl Scouting. It helped me build my confidence because I was a very shy girl. It taught me to be accepting and tolerant of others. It gave me courage to sing even though I am out of tune, this however, may not be a good thing at all.

Play Day

I have so much to do today but I am playing instead. Do you remember making your own toys when you were a kid? We made a lot of our toys, including pedal skates, trucks, telephone cans, paper airplanes, toy guns, spider arenas, "tumba patis", the list goes on and on.

We did not watch television during school days. The lucky children went to school at seven in the morning, went home at five in the afternoon. It was a long school day. We had supper, did homework and studied until we went to bed. We also had chores. On Friday afternoons we started playing. We watched television at our neighbor's house at three o'clock until 5:00 o'clock in the afternoon on Saturdays. It was the only television set in the neighborhood. We played all weekend indoors and out, went to church on Sunday morning and played outdoors until five o'clock in the afternoon. We all went indoors before the church bells pealed to signal the Angelus. Sometimes the parents played outdoor games with the children, like softball or chase. We liked hanging around the elders who gathered together and tell stories. The old women wore patadyongs and we all addressed them grandmother in Ilonggo which was "Lola".

I say "lucky" because we did not have to work and help our parents earn a living. Some children as young as five years old had to peddle merchandise to augment the family income.

We enjoyed running after the firewood vendor. He had stacks of fagots on top of his cart which was drawn by a carabao. We would run after the cart and hitch a ride. I recall it now and think how dangerous it was. The bundles could have toppled and crush us. We ran after the carts carrying sugarcane during the milling season and pulled the cut canes for munching. I broke my front tooth from one when I was ten and later paid a hefty sum of seven hundred dollars to have it fixed in the U.S.

The coconut wine vendor peddled "tuba" a fermented alcoholic drink from the coconut milk. He walked around with his pants folded up to his knees, he wore a hat, was slender and dark-skinned and carried a sickle around his waist.

During the holidays we had feasts and plenty of neighborhood celebrations. In the summers we caught swarming dragonflies, grasshoppers and beetles. Sometimes our play was interrupted by a funeral procession. I always remember the dead children. They had small white caskets being carried by four adults. We would stop our play and stand on the side of the streets. I think it was both a sign of curiosity and respect. The elders always took off their hats and the women did the sign of the cross on their chests. The mothers of the dead children had their faces covered with veils and the men had red eyes.

Our neighborhood was surrounded by a row of mansions and millionaires' houses. It was uncanny how that happened. There were about twenty or so working class families and the children played together. Some of us were poor. We did not have government entitlements, welfare or aid. Our parents worked and tried to earn money any honest and virtuous way they could. During calamities and disasters we tried to salvage what very little we had. I remembered queuing for flour, butter and bulgur wheat distributed by the US relief agency representatives after a hurricane. The wheat had weevils but we cooked them anyway after we picked the weevils. Most of the good supplies were pilfered by the government officials and sold in the markets. I remember we had to buy my overalls from the market, they were considered U.S. relief clothes but we paid for them anyway.

On some Sundays we went to church in the afternoon at the cathedral then spent the evenings at the public plaza where we listened to the outdoor orchestra concerts play Mozart, Sousa, Haydn and Wagner. There were also ballad competitions sung in our local dialects. Father spent evenings debating religion with the other men under the trees.

There were bullies and sissies. I look at us then, who would have thought how we would end up? Not bad though, my friends and playmates grew up to be doctors, nurses, lawyers, judges, professors, principals, teachers, engineers and housewives. I still wonder how Junior, the bully ended up? I have not heard about him. I wish him well.

The Rubber Band Bandits

Did you play with rubber bands when you were a kid? I was a rubber band bandit. I won so many games and contests. At one point my arms were wrapped in rubber bands from the wrists to the elbows. Next to marbles, the rubber band game was my favorite. I also liked card games, cigarette foil wrapper games, cowrie shell games and playing with money (coins) but it was considered gambling so I tried to not play that game so much. The object of each game was to accumulate as many of the marbles, rubber bands, etc. from skill and strategy games.
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Last week I purchased more art supplies (of course). I bought several packs of of 6"x6" Bristol Board pads, more pens, more larger sized Bristol Boards and oil paints. They 6"x6" boards are the cutest things, just the perfect size for a quick sketch. I started doing these sketches for some stress relief. My work has taxed me mentally during the past six months, I am actually surprised that I am not snappy, not that much anyway. It's probably because I am an all-around-nice-person and can't help it. I am also happy-without-drugs.

The View From My Heart...

Lifting you up...

I cannot look at you but I see you,

I cannot hear you but I listen to your voice,

I cannot touch you but I feel your love.

You are my sisterfriend.

I don't know who sent you or how you came

or how I went to you.

It does not matter now.

All that matters is we care for each other

...and I love you.

Be well my dearest beloved Arija

My counsel, my guide, my wise friend.

You have given me so much.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

You taught me to love

when there was a good reason to hate.

You taught me to trust

when there was a good cause to disdain.

You always believed in me,

You always held me up high,

Now I summon every strength,

every thought,

every love,

every prayer.

Be well my beloved friend.

Confined, Unconfined

Stranded (below), oil on 36"x48" stretched canvas and Free (above), oil on 30"x40" gallery stretched canvas.

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Twenty eight years ago I did this oil painting on a 36"x48" stretched canvas when I was in New Jersey. I remember feeling stranded due to the visa restrictions for legal immigrants. I was waiting for my permanent resident visa. Around that time the US Congress granted all illegal immigrants US citizenship. My fellow nurses and I were legal immigrants and therefore not included in the automatic grant. We obeyed the immigration laws of the United States of America and therefore were penalized by having to wait five to ten years for our permanent resident visas.
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I finished the above painting yesterday. Sometimes it amuses me how painting comes so easy at a certain time. I was able to execute the image in two days. Then as soon as I get cocky and confident that I can start another painting, I stumble and I struggle. I have already done my study so I painted two children. I could not get their eyes. I had this 30"x40"canvas almost finished and I kept getting stuck on the eyes. I finally scraped all the paints then painted a crone and then a woman and then another child and another woman. I came up empty. I ended up with a black canvas. That's what happens when you mix all the colors. The blazing cadmium and dark chromium pigment all turn black. I am once again back to where I started.
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Yesterday was an auspicious day despite my onerous day at work. It was my dearest son's seventeenth birthday and my beloved sister Leah's birthday. I am blessed by my connections to these two wonderful souls, they enrich my life. Yesterday, I also made a mistake of not locking my mobile phone keyboard and it dialed the first letter M entry on my directory. It happened to be my dearest Gemini twin sisterfried Manon Doyle (I love that name, she told me the second “n” is silent. I love it even more now). My friend Manon is a prolific, explosive and passionate painter of women. They are intense paintings. They are very rejuvenating. They tug, nudge, trigger and evoke my senses. She called me back and I had the most fascinating and exciting conversation about painting and painting materials first thing in the morning! Manon and I share a passion for going overboard with purchasing art materials. Manon talked about my painting and she used complimentary adjectives that equally humbled me and tickled my vanity. I told my Manon that it is not easy. Every painting is a struggle, a feat and a journey of emotions and senses in the deepest and highest order. She of course shares this notion. The funny thing is that we both think each other as the expert in capturing emotions and painting women. The truth is, she is a step above the ladder, I am looking up to her. We don’t have to struggle with painting of course, it does not have to be. One can paint by numbers or copy photographs but then it becomes trite, or one can paint still life images.
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Painting is a very tactile experience for me. I hug my tubes of oil paints, run my fingers across my canvases and gently caress my brushes when I clean them. I once took a tube of cobalt blue paint with me to sleep. I set it on my nightstand before closing my eyes and picked it up first thing in the morning. It cost $45.00 for a 1.2 fl. oz. tube and in 1982 it was an expensive item for my registered nurse salary, I earned $9.75 per hour. I remember painting my first still life, a simple painting executed in a primitive painting style. I wanted it to be so, yet every time I look at that painting I am flooded with emotions as I remember the autumn of my twenty fourth year. It is my favorite painting.

Crash!!!

Yesterday I painted
until tomorrow
became today.
Early in the morning
I resumed painting.
I erased this and that,
added this and that,
moved this and that,
swiped this and that,
brushed this and that,
dabbed this and that.
It almost looked perfect.
Then my easel dropped
My hand could not stop
the big gash of oil paint
across her chest and face.
I worked fervently to rescue her
but time was running out.
I had to go to work
to earn a living.

She has to wait.
She seems very patient...

Away

Detail of a painting on a 30"x40" gallery stretched canvas which I started today.

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If I told you that I made over 300 drawings last year, would you believe me? It's alright if you don't, I can't believe it either, but I did. I gave away a lot of them as gifts or if someone asked for it and I was feeling generous at that time. I started oil painting again today. I am very happy about that. Even though I really enjoyed drawing last year, I missed not painting. I have drawn almost everyday for over a year and a half that I did not realize that I actually painted several large pieces last year. Not much compared to the number of paintings I did in the past years. Still I miss not painting frequently. Part of it is because I don't really have a studio and since I paint large canvases like the one above, my painting materials and equipment get in the way. I have decided to more painting instead of drawing this year. These were the paintings I did last year and an unfinished painting waiting to be picked up again.

Hey You! You Need A Lobotomy!

One Hundred Rats. Pigment ink on 11"x14" Bristol Board.

(Pink Floyd - Brain Damage/Eclipse)
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A LOBOTOMY...
Hey you!
Do you need a lobotomy
to drain the one hundred rats inside your brain?
Do you paint or draw with music,
or write to music?
Sometimes I do.
Music gives you courage and
dares you to draw what you are reluctant to make real,
and erases your fear
because oftentimes you are afraid someone will misread
your lines and squiggles
and your words.
So you draw and paint something quaint,
even write something trite.
Do you really care?
Are you afraid?
No?
Good!
Oh, you have no rats inside your brain!
That's good.
Some people are lucky.
They have no rats nor cats nor bats,
They have marshmallows and swallows
Not so shallow yet sterilized.
Do not get rid of all the germs,
they strengthen your immunity.
Ha! Ha! Ha!
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(Pink Floyd - Speak To Me/Breath/On The Run)
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BLACK AND WHITE...
You shall write a romantic novel
about some love gone awry
that's total bullshit.
It makes my stomach crawl.
Tears are salty.
You are confused.
Utter nonsense about colors.
You can color all you want,
the truth is black and white.
While rainbows look cute,
when you mix all the colors together it's black.
BLACK!
and WHITE.
You can call it fancy names
Evil is bad.
The devil is still the devil.
Failure is still failure.
Losing is not winning.
Stop messing up the children's minds.
Tell the truth.
We are not equal.
Some of us were born to struggle.
Some of us were born to mothers who are whores and drunks
and ugly and stupid,
or fathers who are politicians, thieves and crooks.
Stop crying, start struggling.
Be brave.
I am with you.
Stop whining.
So your parents are beautiful and smart and rich and loving,
Give them a hug and a kiss.
Only death makes us equal.
No matter how gilded your coffin may be
or plain like pine
The maggots will still eat your rotting flesh.
You think you'll get cremated?
The funeral parlor dumped your body in the backyard
And gave your loved ones the ashes of the live oak and a boar.
See, even in death, the devil still interferes.
Sorry, you want a cup of tea or coffee?
Cream?
Sugar?
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(Pink Floyd - The Great Gig In The Sky)

Once In A Blue Moon

2009.
It was the best year.
It was the worst year.
I will always remember it.
2010.
Amen.


A Beloved Girl And Her Loving Elephant
Pigment Ink and Graphite Pencil on 9"x12" Bristol Board.
This post was published on 01/01/10 at 01:10 AM
This is
Elie the Elephant
whose first act this year was to renew her love for and dedication to the person who showed her the true meaning of altruism and friendship of virtue,
the Lovely Little Belle
who loaned
Elie the Elephant
during the holiday season to
Little Ces.

Once In A Blue Moon

Once in a while,
Something happens in your life.
Something to punctuate your equilibrium,
Only to toss you from side to side.
Something to give you joy,
Only to make you cringe.
Something to stop your fall,
Only to break you to pieces.
Something to make you laugh,
Only to make you choke.
Something to quench your thirst,
Only to poison you.
Something to guide you,
Only to lead you astray.

But once in a blue moon,
Someone happens in your life.
Someone to surprise you with a smile,
And top it with laughter.
Someone to give you happiness,
And seal it with bliss.
Someone to break your fall,
And prop you up high.
Someone to dry your tears,
And help you find peace.
Someone to satiate your hunger for knowledge,
And speak the truth.
Someone to lend you a hand,
And be a true friend.

To my beloved family, friends and blog visitors, THANK YOU for your support, your love and caring, inspiration and for your visits. May 2010 bring you Good Health, Laughter, Bliss, Peace, Happiness, Prosperity, Inspiration, Knowledge, Wisdom, Art, Love…