Patti Edmon Artist

The Art Every Day icon was on my blog for most of November, which is also when I last posted. It isn't that I did work on art every day, it's just that, well, I'm in workshop mode. Ever since I left  Random Arts  in September, I've been in a painting frenzy! A two-day workshop with  Misty Mawn  was a great start but I needed more, wanted to expand my brushes... I'm currently taking a course called Serendipity, with the lovely and talented  Juliette Crane ! It's a year-long class with different techniques, supplies and project each month! Highly, highly recommended! I am stuck on September though, wanting to secure a few things, like faces (still!). My daughter told me yesterday that the girls in my paintings aren't smiling and I said happy lips are harder to draw/paint. Last night I drew 30 mouths, thankfully noticing a bit of improvement. I'm going to try to make the deers in the headlights less grim. I hope all my art pals (and everyone else) i...

The theme of this year's National Chronic Invisible Illness Week is "I Choose To" and one of my choices is to always be emerging from the cocoon, seeking the new and extraordinary, finding and using wings that had been dormant, not settling for a life spent crawling. Well, not all the time. I wake up and wait to see how I'm going to feel for the day and more often than not it's so-so, meaning, no errands, social events or major chores. So, I choose to go to the studio, put on my headphones and blast my fight songs - Rage Against the Machine, Led Zeppelin, Three Days' Grace, Rolling Stones, Tool, well, you get the idea. And then I  gesso a page,  prepare for takeoff... I most always start out with a layer of texture - paper, trim, stuff that will give my page depth. By then I usually have a photograph in mind and I choose a color palette. Hopefully with one or two colors I haven't used recently. That's when I reach high altitude. Paint o...

We've been to our place on the lake a hundred times (well, not exactly, but close). I love the familiarity of watching the birds chat at the feeder when it rains and the squirrels aren't draining the food. The way the gravel in the driveway pinches when I take the three steps to the garage to get a cold water, the fawn leaping out of my way when I take the 4-wheeler out for an early morning cruise, and the comforting smallness of the cabin.  Our love for the lake isn't about speeding across the open water for miles, it's about relaxing, exploring and for some of us, fishing. And for me, the only and best exercise possible for anyone suffering from chronic illness -  swimming. A way to work my muscles against the resistance of the water and restore a bit of strength to my aching limbs.  So, we go to the same cove most of the time. If we're early enough there's privacy and it's stunningly beautiful. I never tir...

Next Week is National Invisible Illness Week - so along with posting another Frozen Charlotte piece that is part of the Seeking Sanctuary series, I wanted to address life with chronic illness, as I do every September.  I have read that it's not good to mix messages on a blog, that the content should be consistent, i.e., I have an altered art blog, so I should post altered art. However, the art wouldn't have happened without the illness and it a big factor in who I am... so, I'll understand if you stop reading! The placement of the accent is the only difference between ‘in-val-id and its heteronym in-‘val-id. I don’t consider myself an invalid or invalid; however, both are quite apt descriptions for the initial years, those spent gathering pieces of a life scattered after a diagnosis that, while thankfully not terminal, in many ways has been interminable. Those hazy, first years of ending one way of life and grappling to ass...