Cacti

Happy happy painting today - have been obsessed with all the great forms of cacti on my many walks through Walnut Creek Park with Lulu over the past year and 1/2 here in Austin. This is a large piece - 30" x 40" and I could not have had more fun doing it. I'd freed myself up from any worry by telling the prospective buyer that I intended to paint cacti however I wanted and then if she happened to like the result, she was first in line to buy it.

So glad I went with that approach. For one thing, it allowed me to just have a juicy good time. For another, the way I want paintings to look has been changing so I have no idea if someone who liked earlier paintings would like what I want to do today. So I can just go with today's experiments and not worry.

I have to say that I totally dig how it came out and almost want to tell my lovely friend that she can't have it after all. But that's not very sporting! Besides which, I think the spirit I want to embrace is "generosity because there is always more than I can imagine coming next!"

One of the things that really worked for me was listening to one of my AA speaker tapes while I was painting - just kept me laughing and feeling so connected to people, the real world, God.