Watching the paint dry

Yes - I'm waiting for the acrylic paint to dry and as it's a heavy application, it's going to take some time so I'm writing on the blog.
This is the last canvas and maybe I've said it's a Chinese red colour and "The year of the Horse" keeps coming to me and as it IS the year of the horse, that will be its title.
It's tempting to put in a symbol of the horse but the black marks from dipping in paint my steel ruler and printing it on the canvas will have to stand for the horse. I can just visualize an audience trying to find where the horse is in the painting!
I also wanted to insert a bit of gold for the Chinese new year but fortunately I have just thrown out my gold paint because simple is the game!
(There was a bang just behind me and I thought it was the canvas with still wet black paint falling on the carpet but it's okay, it was the plastic box which is waiting to be filled with funeral information) These strange things are supposed to be meaningful happenings but I fail to understand this one.
I remember seeing a documentary of Lauren Harris painting in his living room, using oil paint and standing on the off-white carpet. That's my kind of man - you can feel what is the right spot to do your painting and you can't fiddle-faddle around worrying about getting told off if you choose someone else's precious space.


I watched Pavarotti's life on PBS last night. I saw him on television before anyone had heard about him, he was teaching young hopeful opera singers how to project their voices. I held my breath with hearing the sounds from his throat because it was so rich and powerful. I was disappointed in him divorcing his wife but the other night when I watched Steven Hawkin's wife on T.V. I learned that I should not have blamed him when he did the same. The wife said she had to look after the family and that was her life whereas Hawkin's life belonged to the world and it had to be separate.


I got ten copies of two photographs yesterday. One that Brenda took when Willy and I first got together. We're laughing and look so young and happy. The other is the most recent one of him in the wheelchair and me at the back of it. I'm thinking the two pictures could go in the plastic box for the blurb they make at funerals.


I read Paul St.Pierre's book at lunch-time but picked up Jane Austen's biography at 9 p.m. when it's time to put other things away and have "my time". It's wonderful to read how her life was and isn't it earth shaking to know her father who was a clergyman sent new babies to someone else's house for them to be nursed until they were toddlers. And then when they were eleven or twelve they went to boarding schools. He took in boy pupils and had a sort of boarding school for a long time. How would you feel if you were one of his children? It would have been hard to understand.


I think the black paint is dry enough now for me to pick up the "Year of the Horse" and paint the edge of the canvas. I do this so I can put in screw-eyes at each side with wire to hang it and not have to frame it.
I must say I don't understand why these last three have such a rough look to them but hope I can leave them the way they want to be.
I have one painting I did before these and know must get it out to study and bring it to life because it needs it. I'll name them all, make a list of titles, medium and price then stack them carefully for June 28th.  signed "Year of the Horse" Doris