I finished another commission this weekend: The Presentation. This is the story told in Luke 2:22-29 - 40 days after Jesus birth Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the temple. It is a twofold purpose according to Jewish law. The first is a purification sacrifice for Mary after giving birth (Leviticus 12). The second is to present the first born male to the Lord in the Temple (Exodus 13:12-15). The holy family meets Simeon and Anna, two elderly people, who have been expecting the Messiah. The Song of Simeon is very familiar as it is a text used in the compline liturgy which begins:
Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace : according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen : thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared : before the face of all people;
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles : and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

The liturgical feast is celebrated on February 2nd, 40 days after Christmas and traditionally has been a time for the priest to bless candles that will be used in worship for the coming year as well as candles used in homes.

Im my painting I show Joseph, Mary, Simeon holding the baby Jesus and Anna standing at the entrance to the temple. Joseph and Anna are both holding candles and Jesus, himself is shining, symbolic of his being the light to the Gentiles. The doors to the temple are open and the priest sacrificing the lamb is seen through the door.

The Presentation is also the 4th joyful mystery of the rosary. This painting is a commission, and is not going to be a part of my rosary series. I will paint another painting of this subject which will be included in the rosay series.


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Wood and Axes
Last Saturday, as my wife was waiting to turn onto the road that goes into town, a truck with a trailer loaded to the gills with wood and branches drove by. I won't go into the details but my wife managed to stop the driver and arrange for the wood and branches to be dumped at our house. The owner of the truck and trailer is a professional tree trimmer. They had just finished cutting down a huge oak tree. The base was at least three feet diameter. They were going to have to drive all the way from Elgin to Smithville to dump their load, drive back to Elgin, load up again and drive back to Smithville with the last load. So by dumping the wood at our house we saved them a bunch of time.

We heat our house with a wood burning stove so anytime we can get some free wood we are happy. This oak is going to take a lot of splitting before it becomes firewood. I have been using an axe and a sledgehammer to split wood and it works pretty well. But being the internt age and all I decided to search on Youtube to see if I coud improve my wood splitting ability. Well, lo and behold, I learned that there are two kinds of axes: a wood chopping axe and a wood splitting axe. All this time I have been using a wood chopping axe to spit wood. I use a chainsaw to cut wood, not an axe to chop it. So I went over to Amazon and did some researching and ended up buying a new wood splitting axe.

If you look carefully you can see a wedge built into the head of the axe. Pretty cool! I can't wait til it gets here so I can try it out. I normally wait until it gets cold to start splitting wood that way I can get warm twice as the old wood splitting adage goes. I am grateful for the free wood, the new axe, Amazon and all the folks who post videos on Youtube (well not all the folks who post on Youtube: you know who you are).
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New Chicks Arrive


The new baby chicks arrived today. I got a voice message at 5:25 am that the chicks were at the post office. I gave the post office a call and they said I could come around back, ring the buzzer and they would give me the chicks. Which is what I did.



I got them all situated with water and feed.  I took each chick out of the shipping box and dipped it's beak in the water before I turned them loose. I also spread some chick starter feed on a piece of newspaper, besides the feed in the feeder. It helps them get food right away because they instinctively peck the ground. I also set up a light for them because it was a little on the cool side. They will self regulate their temperature by moving closer and farther away from the light.



I was happy that all 21 (I got one extra) were alive and seemingly healthy. I got 9 light brown ones and 12 black ones, some with a yellow spot on their heads. As these are the "assorted chicks" they could be any breed that Ideal Poultry sells so we'll just have to wait and see what they look like when they grow up.
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New Portable Chicken Coop



I have built a new portable chicken coop using an old trampoline frame as the beginning structure. for more details go here.  I'm expecting 20 baby chicks on Thursday from Ideal Poultry.
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Book Review: Cold Eye



I finished reading Giles Blunt’s first novel, Cold Eye, written in 1989. It follows the meteoric rise (after 20 years of  struggle)  of New York artist, Nicholas Hood. Hood is a painter who almost exclusively paints hyper realistic scenes of violent death. Although he is technically proficient his work doesn’t have an emotional impact. The reviewer of his latest group exhibit snubs him and he has a bit of a breakdown. At this point a hideously disfigured dwarf, Andre Bellisle, enters Hood’s life. The dwarf is the devil and of course Hood makes the typical Faustian bargain - his life for fame.
 
The cost is high. Bellisle arranges for Hood to witness murders and suicides first hand. Hood then paints the scenes he has witnessed.  His work acquires an authenticity it previously lacked and his rise to fame is immediate. The unfortunate consequence of this arrangement drives Hood mad. He eventually kills the women he is having an affair with and condemns himself by painting a self-portrait of himself committing the murder.
He is arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death. The lethal injection is botched and he dies a slow, painful death while Bellisle looks on from the observers gallery.

This story is a morality tale about seeking fame above all else. I have often wondered, in our celebrity culture how many of the rich and famous have, in deed, made a deal with the devil. I believe this is something one can choose.

The book is hard to read as Hood is not a likeable character and the violence is extremely graphic. The author does have a grasp of the realities of the art world; the long struggles of the undiscovered artist, the galleries, critics and museums are all portrayed accurately.
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A Little Leaven

I finished a painting over the weekend: A Little Leaven based on the parable found in Matthew 13:33  "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough." I did this as a commission for Trinity Presbyterian Church in Nashville, TN. If the scheduling works out I may be heading to Nashville for the presentation of the painting to the church.

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Hurricane Ike

I took off work Friday to batten down the hatches-according to the Friday morning forecast Hurricane Ike was heading our way. Even on the edge of the hurricane Bastrop county was expecting gusts of 60 mils per hour. So I worked all day putting things in the barn that might get blown around and if I couldn't put it in the barn I tied it down.

Ike veered to the east and we got a few gusts of wind and absolutely no rain. AARRRGH!!! We really need the rain. We did get about 250 evacuees spending the weekend at Sacred Heart Catholic church. My family went and helped out a bit on Saturday afternoon. Apparently our church has gotten a reputation as we had repeat customers from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I know the bar-be-que supper they served Saturday looked pretty good to me.

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Weekly Works on Paper
I have been thinking for a while of doing some smaller works on paper. Since for the most of this year I have been working on commissions I haven't had a lot of time to just paint what I feel inspired to paint. I am grateful for my commissions and I will keep working on them just as hard but I have decided to start doing some painting in the weekday evenings. I am calling these my weekly works on paper. I am going to try to do at least one painting per week. They will be small, acrylic paintings on paper, propably around 14x17 or 9x14 inches. This will be a bit differrent from the oil paintings I normaly do but should be fun. So far I have done three. Here they are:

Hotter than Hell
Here we are in the second week of September and it is still hotter than hell. This summer has been cruel, or so it seems to me. It started off being hot and windy in June. I can see how the mistral can drive a person crazy. I was going around the bend when the wind finally stopped blowing. But it only got hotter. I don't know exactly how many days of 100 degree heat and above we have had: I would guess somewhere between 50 and 60 days.  And the heat is compounded by almost no rain. Now it is only in the upper 90's. I expect these kind of temperatures in August in Texas but we have had them all summer.

It looks like relief is on the way in the form of hurricane IKE. In a summer like we have had it is usually a hurricane that breaks the drought. I am sure hoping we get some rain.

I have given up on the vegetable garden after getting my $200.00 July water bill. So the only plants that are left like it it hot and dry- cenezia, firecracker bush and coral bells keep on going.