This blog is getting a reboot. I’ve tried to be serious and grown up, but I gotta go back to my roots: stories.
I see the world in stories. I laugh at the goofiest things – and you might as well come along.
This morning, my sister, the artist, showed me a new set of paintings. “They’re about new life. Butterflies.”
Me, I am a big fan of cliches, as you’ll see. I said, “I don’t see any butterflies.” She had painted a green background with a round yellow area in what might have been the sky. It might have been irises for all I could tell. She’s an abstract painter.
So then I looked closer. I’m not sure if you are supposed to look closer with abstract work or step back but I was sitting at my computer so stepping back would have required getting up. Not sure it was worth all that.
“There are red splatters on the painting.” My mind flew to cliches because I’m a big fan of cliches. “Is this post-butterflies? What happened to the butterflies?” I started thinking of big predator birds which, by the way, weren’t anywhere in her paintings. Maybe they already flew away. I didn’t ask. I wanted to be a support like any good sister would.
So I asked her if butterflies were good symbols for new life.
“They’re safe,” she wrote me. Did I tell you we were texting on our computers? You may have figured that out from the not-getting-up-from-my-computer comment, but now you know for sure.
Anyway, my sister sometimes types goofy. What she actually sent me was “Sage.”
I almost asked her if butterflies smelled like sage, but she can get testy about her typing. So I just asked her if sage was helpful in creating abstract paintings.
Her exact words, and I’m not taking this up, were “You are such a help.”
So I’m on a quest today to find out how sage and butterflies and abstract skies combine into a new painting. I might even let you see her results. (Probably not mine, though.) Stay tuned.
