Well, it seems that now would be an appropriate time for the female element of this outfit to contribute her own two cents. Our lives have recently been what I would call fairly adventurous as of late, at least for the poor souls blessed to live in cow country, usa. Sunday found us at a Missions Aviation Festival in Lancaster, where I had the delight of flying in a bush plane which serves tribal missionaries during its day job. For one as easily amazed as myself, this was an awesome experience (and I mean truely awesome, not simply just the colloquial use of that word). In all my wonder and picture snapping excitement I recall turning back to my dear husband (I was in the co-pilot's seat :) with a look that surely did not belie my excitement, only to receive a modest shrug in return. I suspect he was more entertained watching my reaction to the trip than the trip itself. Such is the story of our lives.
I'm still plugging away at my artwork, though I'm prepared to break the most recent vow I made to myself. Somehow, I often manage to lose my dedication to completing one peice before I move onto another, as a result I have a myrid canvases lying about in various stages of incompletion. A strikingly bare wall in our dining area had me previously commited to finishing a painting so that our space might have a little more decoration. And though I feel the future for this particular canvas is far more promising than most, I find myself once again tempted to set it aside in favor of my newest diversion.
Our trip to the Missions Festival has again renewed my awareness of the human condition around the world. It is so easy to become detached from the reality that billions no different than myself do not live the life of the quintessential American. That coupled with a trip to the bookstore where I spent many happy minutes staring into the eyes of protraits taken by Steve McCurry and I feel very motivated to produce another portrait in pencil. I've spent so much time trying to teach myself even just the fundamentals of oil paint that it has been years since I've sketched the likeness of another. Like many others, I have long been struck by the image of Sharbat Gula, known the world over simply as the "Afghan Girl". She has a beautifully haunting gaze and since the eyes of my portraits are generally accepted as my forte, this picture seems a fitting reference. Although this is a copywrited photo, I have no intention of selling any finished product, so I don't expect that appropriating the image for my purposes should be a problem.
Oh, and I nearly forgot the other bit of excitement we've had, and on the same day as our flight nonetheless! We had an unwelcome visitor of the rodent persausion in our home on Sunday night. While sitting at the computer, I was startled to see a furry grey blob scurry across the floor. As it franticly made it's way to the perceived safety beneath the refridgerator I quickly announced to Gene with a shriek of shock and indignation that there was a mouse in our kitchen. It turned out that I was incorrect in my assignment of "mouse" to this fuzzball, it was more accurately a vole. To make a long story short we pursued the poor thing for a healthy ten minutes before we secured it in a tupperwear bowel. Only after having displaced much of the furniture in our living room, rooting through our hall closet and mcuh banging around underneath the fridge, oven, dishwasher, and desk did we finally succeed. The vole chittered vehemently at one point at it raced across our floor with the bumbling humans in hot pursuit and I couldn't quite tell if it the was sound of fear or of laughter. However, my murderous intent quickly vanished by the time we had it captured and I was able to perform a closer inspection of the critter. It was just a little guy and my appreciation for its healthy will to live (to whatever limited extent a rodent is aware of the precariousness of its life is an entirely different discussion altogether) found me tossing it into the woods accross the street with an adament charge to never return. I guess at the heart of it all, I'm still just a girl.
