The Purge

I think of it as having a household wide colonic. We've lived in this house for 20 years together and it's pretty full of my stuff.

Don is a minimalist and I'm an artist/packrat who sees everything as a possible resource for a painting. Either it's a prop, or it's an idea, or it's a newspaper clipping.

Oh yes, I come from a family of newspaper clippers. It's kind of fun to send them through the mail and let some one know you thought of them. But, twenty years later. We gotta let 'em go.

But it's hard

Homecoming

I've been in the not so real world of retired snowbird Florida life. We live in a double wide 'mobile' (but not) home in a 55 or over community. We never thought we'd be caught dead in one of those places but we found out that we fit right in. How's that for a sobering item? We really like it even though we feel too young to be there. Everyone does ;) The weather is the thing. One day of rain in 4 months. Endless summer. We drove home through Tarpon Springs, stopping for two nights to visit with Judy , my longtime gal pal, from my former waitress life and her husband Arthur. Then on to North Carolina for a night and then to Milford, CT for a night and a really great dinner at Lasse's (again) and home to Marshfield in the pouring rain by noon Sunday. I'm purging and taking down the Christmas decorations. Yes, that's the kind of shape this house is in. Back to the real world.

A Day at The Beach

Don and I went to the beach at around 3:30 to avoid the mid day sun. The onshore wind created a mist around the crashing waves. We stayed for two hours and watched the sun set. I feel so alive when I'm at the beach! It was such a treat !

The Other Blog

The other blog is called Just Painting. I don't know how to link it but the address is marysheehanwinn.blogspot.com. Here's the painting I posted today.

Double Blogging

I launched a new blog named Just Painting. This blog is to sort of explore the paintings. I'm finally going to break out of my comfort zone and teach. This will open up a lot of new doors for me marketingwise and it's what you gotta do. Artists who have even a modest amount of financial success, are well organized and focused on showing their work. I'm also learning from my friend's experience, that having non stop pressure to show in a bunch of galleries, definitely makes the work begin to have a churned out feeling. I can't say the paintings aren't nice, although some of them just don't move me as much. Once you're successful, supposedly everything you do is worthy. But I disagree. Sometimes painters get so caught up in the 'glory' moment that they begin to think that every canvas they produce has some monetary value. I don't think all paintings are equally valued according to size. Sometimes a painting is just a level or so above another painting of the same size and prefer to put a higher price on select paintings that I'd rather enjoy myself than give away. That's the way it is. As One painter friend said, "it's not like we're knitting sweaters, same size, different pattern." I heartily agree. Here's a painting that I did of a shed in Nova Scotia.

One Long Skinny Column

Ok, my blog is now one long skinny column. The bio and the archives are still there, but way down the bottom. The new word for this blog is scroll ; ) Here's the full moon rising over Brant Rock which get's it's due today in the Boston Globe, for being the site of the first radio (for entertainment) broadcast from Blackman's Point Trailer Park (it wasn't a trailer park then) to a sister station in Scotland, by a guy named Reginald A. Fessenden. There's a marker in the trailer park commemorating that 1906 broadcast. Brant Rock, so named for the Brants which are sea ducks and the rocks upon which they sat is a small village at the very end of Rte 139 in Marshfield. My first apartment was there next to the trailer park. Now Marshfield is a tony town with high real estate prices and Brant Rock has it's own little white oval outlined in black to let people know you're from there. What a difference 30 years makes .

Messing up The Blog Format

Whatever I did to FINALLY add the link to my painting site, messed up the format. During all the hassle of working with the HTML template, I moved something that I would never recognize, by the way, and now my links show up between posts. Archives seem gone. Is it time to do what a woman I once knew did when her checking account was in disarray? She'd close it and open a new one. No reason I can't add a picture though. This is a view of my studio windows.

Ryan's Christmas Tricycle

Ryan on his first real bike. He was put to bed shortly after the bike presentation by Tommy, his father, my youngest brother. Tom said, "your presence is requested by Ryan.", So, I went up to see him and he asked me for the blue pillow. I got it, rubbed his back, chatted accordingly and thought he was almost asleep when Colin started making noise. Ryan woke up abruptly, and said, 'Colin wants to go downstairs, I want to go downstairs. I want to ride my bike.' He finally found a comfortable sleeping position on top of the blue pillow and Colin's (claimed by Ryan) huge stuffed tiger. I just absolutely adore him. Plus he looks like my baby pictures.

What A Wonderful World

That's a prelude to another photo opportunity. Here's the current star of the show, Ryan Samuel Sheehan on Novemeber 12th 2005, his second birthday. It is said about Scorpios, that they have intense eyes. He is brilliant, of course.

Chrissie

..... is 'Mine Best', which is how she described me one time as toddler and, of course, I never forgot it. She was a great baby. Here she is with Seth, the baby son of her best 'sistah friend', Tasha in January 2003. Babies bring out a motherly glow don't they? She's his "Auntie Chris." There's gonna be a little sister for Seth this fall and Chrissie, like I did, will get the extreme benefit of enjoying babies without actually having them. It's GREAT!

Having Children

How, not easy, shall I say, is raising children? 'nuff said. Luckily, I've been blessed with children I never knew I would have when I decided to opt out of motherhood. I'm the eldest of 6 in an Irish family. All of my younger sisters and brothers except for Anna Marie, my Irish twin who is 13 months behind me, were like my own babies. Then Anna Marie had her own daughter, Christine Marie aka Chrissie, and our family's first grandchild, at 17. She named her after the two of us. She's Anna Marie and I'm Mary Christine. I'm also her godmother. She really was my baby, and my sister still refers to her as "ours". Three years ago I became a mother in earnest (that's when they actually live with you) to a three and a half year old grandson. This event cooincided with menopause and to say it was life changing is an understatement. Much of it was not even fun but I did fall in love with the kid. Here's the little boy, Andrue (on right) with my friend rdl's son Luke. Once again, like the sisters, raising the kids together :D

Some Thoughts on Christmas Eve

Blogging is so much fun yet I am barely able to get to it. My last post was 11 days ago and rdl has come by to look and nada. So....... Merry Christmas......Happy Chunakah....and all good wishes for the season of hope, isn't it supposed to be? This is the time of year where if you are reasonably happy and have suffered no horrible tragedy you need to count your blessings. So many people suffer so much. The rampant comsumerism is a turn off, although, I do contribute my share to the local economy and enjoy a low key gift giving policy. I think it is impossible to make such a big splash every Christmas. It's ridiculous to try. Nice little meaningful gifts are better. Here's a picture of my mother's Christmas tree which I decorated on Wednesday. My favorite part of Christmas is the lights.

A Million Photos

On my trip to Stonington, Maine, this past August, I poked my head inside a fisherman's shack in my endless quest for incredible painting subjects. Is this guy great or what? It looks like room size still life set up just for me :D This painting/photographing quest tends to result in thousands of photos (thank heaven we aren't printing every one anymore) of which some are of reasonably good quality. How to use them? A good enough reason to blog don'tcha think?

Bloggin' Like the Doodah Man

Oh Brother! I had a eloquent post going about the painting life and when I went to preview it it disappeared. Anyway........ the point was.............. Why do we go to Maine to paint when we live here on the South Shore? Working harbors abound and the scenery is classic. You can see pretty much everything New England/Cape Cod locally, several times over. Well, it's all about the trip. Painting's not the same if you have to go home and cook supper. Most of the time, when I go 'home', someone else is cooking and we're all having some wine. A couple of times a year I escape to Maine. Some small island or island chain connected by bridges. Downeast, midcoast, I love it all. This photo is of Cohasset harbor with Minot's light in the distance. It's about 15 miles from my house on a very scenic drive. http://marysheehanwinn.com

The Perfect Winter Day

A perfect winter storm happened this morning. Enough snow to look really pretty, no wind, over in a few short hours and then some sun. So, after painting class instead of running to Lowe's to exchange the wrong can of stain for the right one, I took a drive over to Cohasset to see a display of paintings in the local liquor store, in the mind of showing some of my own there. Great idea, wine stores and art together. It's in a funky old mansard roof building. There is a glass artist there too. Being the day that it was I took the 'abbreviated' Cohasset Tour of the village and the harbor. Here's a picture of the church on Cohasset Common. For those of you who remember the, "Witches of Eastwick", the opening scene with the leaves madly blowing around on a blustery autumn day, was filmed here. It was a BIG DEAL. Cher was sighted at local places. Need I say more? I mean CHER! :D