New painting: Divine Mercy

A new painting based on the revelations of Saint Faustina concerning Divine Mercy. If you want to know more about Divine Mercy go Here.

What I read in 2009

It's that time of year again to look back and see what I read. Here is the list, not in any particular order:


1. Firestar by Michael Flynn
2. The Christian Philosophy Of St Thomas Aquinas by Gilson, Etienne
3. Andy Catlett: Early Travels (Port William) by Wendell Berry
4. Rain Gods: A Novel by James Lee Burke
5. Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford
6. Schoenstatt's instrument spirituality by Joseph Kentenich
7. The Alchemy of Paint: Art, Science and Secrets from the Middle Ages by Spike Bucklow
8. The Hunters: A Novel by James Salter
9. Hannah Coulter: A Novel (Port William) by Wendell berry
10. Relentless: A Novel by Dean Koontz
11. Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner
12. Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
13. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Harper Perrennial Modern Classics) by Annie Dillard
14. Guide for the Perplexed by E. F. Schumacher
15. The Scarecrow Michael Connelly
16. How to Read a Book (A Touchstone book) by Mortimer Adler
17. The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book) by Neal Stephenson
18. Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence by Lauro Martines
19. Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Enterprise) by Tim Parks
20. Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture Ross King
21. The Beekeeper's Apprentice: Or On the Segregation of the Queen/A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes (Mary Russell Novels) Laurie King
22. The Vindication of Tradition: The 1983 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities Jaroslav Pelikan
23. The Brass Verdict: A Novel Michael Connelly
24. Night and Day by Robert B. Parker
25. Dean's List by Jon Hassler
26. Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long by Eliot Coleman
27. Dead and Dying Angels (The Dos Cruces Trilogy) James Mangum
28. The Shack by William P. Young
29. Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1) by Stephenie Meyer
30. Rough Weather by Robert B. Parker
31. How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits (and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine by John Jeavons
32. Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times (Mother Earth News Wiser Living Series) by Steve Solomon
33. What Happened at Vatican II by John O’Malley
34. Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
35. Sepharad by Antonio Munoz Molina
36. Second Nature: A Gardener's Education by Michael Pollan
37. Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
38. The Kitchen Madonna by Rumer Godden
39. The Seville Communion by Arturo Perez-Reverte
40. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) by Barbara Kingsolver
41. Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine by Barbara Newman
42. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
43. A Rulebook for Arguments by Anthony Weston

I had a couple of themes going: I read several gardening books during the worst drought in my entire life. The reading was great but the weather discouraging. Maybe I'll give the serious garden another try this spring since we are have a ton of rain this winter.

Florence, Italy was another theme. I am hoping to go to Italy someday and began some basic history reading.

I indulged my guilty pleasure of crime fiction with my standard authors: Connelly, Parker and Burke.

I discovered the novels of Wendell Berry. Maybe the timing is just right but these books really resonate with me on a very deep level. I have checked out a bunch more to read over the holidays and am looking forward to it.

Re-read a couple of favorites: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Brideshead Revisited, both terrific. Brideshead is in my shortlist of all time favorite books.

I also read two vampire books this year- my first ever and probably the last- although one should never say never. Not my cup of tea.

Overall a satisfying year of reading and again I give thanks for the library without which I would not be able to read near as much.

Merry Xmas

Go here for a bigger image.

Now that I have sent out my Christmas Cards I can show you my painting I did this year to put on the card. This has become a tradition now that I have been doing it for three or four years. This years the painting is a little bit grimmer that it has been in the past several years. I guess it reflects how I am feeling about the state of the world these days. Things seem to be getting darker. But I love Christmas because in the darkest time of year we are reminded of the INCARNATION. The light has come into the world and the darkness can not overcome it. Thanks be to God.

I also thought Pope Benedict's 3rd week of Advent message went well with my painting so I am adding it as well:

"I see here in St. Peter's Square so many children and teenagers, along with parents, teachers and catechists. Dear friends, I greet you all with great affection and I thank you for coming. It gives me great joy to know that in your family the tradition of the Nativity Scene is still kept. But it is not enough to repeat a traditional gesture, however important. Try to live in the reality of every day what the crib is, the love of Christ, his humility, his poverty. This is what St. Francis did in Greccio: he created a living Nativity scene, to be able to contemplate and adore it, but above all to know how best to put into practice the message of the Son of God who for our sakes was stripped of everything and became a little child”.

"The crib is a school of life where we can learn the secret of true joy. This does not consist in having so many things, but in feeling loved by the Lord, in becoming a gift for others and loving one another. Let us look at the Nativity Scene: the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph do not seem like a very lucky family, they had their first child in the midst of great hardship, and yet are filled with deep joy, because they love each other, help each other and, above all, are certain that in their history God is at work, present in the Infant Jesus. And the shepherds? What reason would they have to rejoice? That baby will not change their condition of poverty and marginalization. But faith helps them to recognize in the 'infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger', the 'sign' of the fulfillment of the promises of God for all men 'whom he loves' (Luke 2,12.14), even for them!” .

"This, dear friends is what true joy is; the feeling that our personal and community lives are visited and filled by a great mystery, the mystery of God’s love. We need more than things to rejoice, we need love and truth: we need a God close at hand, who warms our hearts, and responds to our deepest yearnings. This God was manifested in Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary. So that Child, that we put in the manger or cave, is the centre of everything, He is the heart of the world. We pray that every man, like the Virgin Mary, may accept as a centre of their lives the God who became a Child, the source of true joy".

We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!!

Veterans Day and St. Martin of Tours

Does anyone see the irony in the fact that Veterans Day is also the feast day of St. Martin of Tours? Martin, was named after the God of War, Mars but refused to continue fighting in the army after his conversion.

This is from Wikipedia: "While Martin was still a soldier at Amiens he experienced the vision that became the most-repeated story about his life. He was at the gates of the city of Amiens with his soldiers when he met a scantily dressed beggar. He impulsively cut his own military cloak in half and shared it with the beggar. That night he dreamed of Jesus wearing the half-cloak Martin had given away. He heard Jesus say to the angels: "Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptised; he has clad me." (Sulpicius, ch 2). In another story, when Martin woke his cloak was restored, and the miraculous cloak was preserved among the relic collection of the Merovingian kings of the Franks.


The dream confirmed Martin in his piety and he was baptized at the age of 18.[3] He served in the military for another two years until, just before a battle with the Gauls at Worms in 336, Martin determined that his faith prohibited him from fighting, saying, "I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight." He was charged with cowardice and jailed, but in response to the charge, he volunteered to go unarmed to the front of the troops. His superiors planned to take him up on the offer, but before they could, the invaders sued for peace, the battle never occurred, and Martin was released from military service."

I am myself conflicted about the military. I am not a pacifist but I think we go to war far too often. As St. Paul says "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

By the way, my mother's maiden name was Martin so I feel some kinship.

Pretend

Someday we will disregard the nuts
and build our bikes out of pairs of bolts.
We'll call them "Happy Airplanes" and
sail them over cliffs singing, (crying, SCREAMING):
"WE ARE THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE".

As the ground rushes up to meet us,
we realize the bikes are only bikes
with the wheels falling off.

Why I love Halloween

Halloween was always my favorite holiday. I love the fall. Even though the leaves aren't brilliant like up east they turn colors of some sort. My Dad use to rake them in a pile and we would jump in them before he burned them. We savored the smell of burning leaves. Then there was my birthday a week before Halloween. But all of October was overshadowed by getting ready for Halloween.

Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter: all that is required is that you show up. Eat, open presents, search for eggs then it's over. Halloween I got to prepare. I got to think up a costume and make it myself, none of that store bought stuff. Halloween is the holiday for creative kids. I would sometimes have two or three costumes ready by the time the 31st came around and I would make costumes for some of my friends as well. I went as Dracula, Frankenstein, The grim reaper or the Wolfman. The year I dressed up as the Wolfman I took an old seal skin my Great Aunt had given me, cut it up and glued it to my face. Dedication.



I was partial to monsters. Besides comic books and Mad Magazine I always bought a copy of the latest Famous Monsters Magazine. Ironically I was not allowed to go to scary movies. After I jumped over the front seat at the drive in during Journey to the Center of the Earth (the part where the dinosaur, mistaken for a sidewalk begins to move and jostles the tiny folks walking on his back totally startled me) my mother wouldn't let me go see scary movies. But read about the movie monsters and I bought all of the monster models and meticulously painted them and glued them together. They paraded across my shelves and watched over me as I slept. I dressed up as one at Halloween.

One Halloween when we had gotten a bit older we set up a scary front porch. We draped it with black cloth and I stood over a cauldron with dry ice emitting smoke, dressed as the grim reaper giving out candy with a skeleton hand I had put together from a science kit. We rigged a ghost to fly down on fishing line from the Sycamore tree to the front porch as a kid on the roof let out a blood curdling scream. Other kids pretended to be dead in our makeshift graveyard only to jump up when the trick or treaters came by.

Some parents are very protective of their kids and I am of mine but I knew as a kid that evil existed. I had experienced it first hand in my family. One of the primary feelings that a kid has in that kind of situation is helplessness. How do you fight the monsters? How do you keep them at bay? Maybe one of the benefits of Halloween is that we let the monsters out into the light for a bit, maybe even become one. We acknowledge that the world is not made up of saints but sinners.Our ordinary family can contain monsters and we have to learn to confront the evil in ourselves and each other. And once acknowledged we even dare to mock the monsters knowing they do not have the upper hand forever and that God is even the God of monsters and that He can take the evil that men do to us and turn it into good.

Where the Wild Things Are

I saw Where the Wild Things Are last night and liked it. It is not a kids movie. The overall tone is one of sadness.

We quickly learn that Max feels very alone and confused. His parents are divorced. His Mom is overworked and can't pay enough attention to him, (although she has time for a boyfriend). Neither does his sister, except when she and her friends beat up on him.

This film is a parable about what divorce does to little kids. It makes them confused (They think they are bad because they can't understand the emotions they are feeling and think they are the cause of all the problems). They feel angry, sad, lonely, out of control and sometimes express this all as rage.

The monsters or Wild Things that Max finds on the Island when he runs away are all parts of himself and in trying to appease them he is trying to figure out himself and his own needs.

As a grown up child of divorced parents I don't think one ever fully recovers from the trauma. You go through life wounded like the Wild Thing that gets his arm ripped off. You might put a stick in your arm's place but it's not just the same.

The visuals are great and fit the tone of the movie perfectly. The monsters are convincing, the landscape is captivating and the buildings and models the monsters build remind me of Andy Goldsworthy on steroids.

This is a beautiful but sad movie because it reflects the reality of too many children who experience divorce.

My first mural

Back in the olden days, when I was just a lad, I hung out at a Christian coffeehouse called The Well. At one point I painted a mural on the wall behind the stage where the singers sang. It was a pastoral scene, kind of like the peaceable kingdom.

The Well recently had a reunion (which I didn't attend for personal reasons). They started a Facebook page and different folks have been putting up old photos of the Well and those people who were a part of it.

Someone posted a bunch of photos of my old mural. I probably have photos of the mural somewhere but I don't know where they are so I was happy to see them again. I am posting them here for anyone who would like to see what my first mural looked like.

Pearls Art Exhibit

Three of my recent paintings have been accepted to the Pearls Art Exhibit. The Pearls Art Exhibit is an annual show held in conjunction with the Elgin Hogeye Festival. The opening is Thursday evening, 22 October at 7:00 and is only up until Saturday, 24 October. This year it is going to be held at Back Forty Chiropractic at 105 W. 2nd St in downtown Elgin.

The three paintings I will have on display are:

The Last Judgment
Joyful Mystery #5
Marian Garden

I hope to see you at the opening!

Marian Garden

Marian Garden acrylic/canvas 30"x40"

I finished a painting today-Marian Garden. A traditional interpretation of the Song of Songs sees the Blessed Mother as the subject. Song of Songs 4:12-15 "[my love] is a garden enclosed...a sealed fountain. Your shoots Form an orchard of pomagranate trees, bearing most exquisite fruit: nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon with all the incense-bearing trees; myrrh and Aloes, with the subtlest odors. Fountain of the garden, well of living Water, streams flowing down from Lebanon!"

I tried to depict an enclosed garden with Mary and Jesus surrounded by the most beautiful flowering plants and a small fountain. Mary is in prayer and Jesus is emjoying the things he made on the days of creation.

Feast day of Guardian Angels

St. Thomas Aquinas on Guardian angels.

113. ANGEL GUARDIANS

1. It is fitting that changeable and fallible human beings should be guarded by angels, and thus steadily moved and regulated to good.

2. St. Jerome, in his commentary on Matthew 8:10, says "The dignity of human souls is great, for each has an angel appointed to guard it." God's providence extends, not only to mankind as a whole, but to individual human beings. Each human being has, by God's loving providence, his own guardian angel.

3. It seems that the office of being guardians to men belongs to the lowest order of heavenly spirits, that is, the ninth order, the order of Angels.

4. Each human being, without exception, has a guardian angel as long as he is a wayfarer, that is, during his whole earthly life. In heaven a man will have an angel companion to reign with him, but not a guardian; no guardian is needed when the guarded journey has been successfully completed. In hell, each man will have a fallen angel to punish him.

5. Each human being has his guardian angel from the moment of his birth, and not, as some have taught, only from the moment of baptism.

6. The guardian angel is a gift of divine providence. He never fails or forsakes his charge. Sometimes, in the workings of providence, a man must suffer trouble; this is not prevented by the guardian angel.

7. Guardian angels do not grieve over the ills that befall their wards. For all angels uninterruptedly enjoy the beatific vision and are forever filled with joy and happiness. Guardian angels do not will the sin which their wards commit, nor do they directly will the punishment of this sin; they do will the fulfillment of divine justice which requires that a man be allowed to have his way, to commit sin if he so choose, to endure trials and troubles, and to suffer punishment.

8. All angels are in perfect agreement with the divine will in so far as it is revealed to them. But it may happen that not all angels have the same revelations of the divine will for their several ministries, and thus, among angels, there may arise a conflict, discord, or strife. This explains what is said in Daniel 10:13 about the guardian angel of the Persians resisting "for one and twenty days" the prayer of Daniel offered by the Archangel Gabriel.

Portrait of YOU as the Good Samaritan

Click here to see a larger image.

The subject of the Good Samaritan has been dealt with numerous times in art by artist such as Rembrandt, Duccio, Hogarth and Van Gogh to name a few. In thinking about my approach to the subject I obviously wanted a contemporary setting in keeping with the parable series I have been working on. I decided I did not want to show the actual good Samaritan in the painting. Instead starting on the left side of the paintings I have the robbers escaping on a bicycle followed by the priest carrying a collection plate full of money, then the Levite, an old hippie, with a tie die shirt and strumming a guitar and finally we see the victim. The idea is that YOU are the good Samaritan being the next person to see the naked beat up man. How will you respond?

To make the painting more personal I painted the beat up man as a self portrait. The man is holding three paint brushes. The robbers can be seen carrying off his clothes and his art supplies. His artist beret is fluttering in the wind.

Violet

Our goat, Violet, died yesterday. She gave birth Saturday to four baby does. We don't know for sure if there were complications but it appears that milk fever was the cause. It is not really a fever but a lack of calcium in the blood that causes a heart attack. My wife called to tell me the news and I left work early yesterday and buried her outside the goat pen.

Violet and Pepper were our first goats. We got them about five years ago when they were a week old. We bottle fed them. Bottle feeding makes goats very tame. Violet and Pepper were like two big, old puppy dogs. My wife would take them out in the field to graze and she would pray the rosary. These two goats became her companions. And they gave birth to some more goats and we kept some until our little goat herd is know up to 16, 15 now that Violet is gone.

My wife has taken Violet's death pretty hard. Grief is a funny thing. It is not something one every totally gets over. And the next occasion for grief is smashed into and added on to the previous grief. Like the Bruce Cockburn song-"You get bigger as you go; Memories like boats in tow."

My wife has had a lot of grief and Violet's death is a reminder of all that she has lost: a husband, a father, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews not to mention things like health, careers, friends and a few hopes and dreams.

The saints teach us that we can unit our sufferings with Christ, as Saint Pauls says in Colossians 1:24 "I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church". It is a mystery that our suffering, united to Christ can help redeem the world.

So, in some way, Violet's death and my wife's grief is a gift to the world being redeemed by Christ. May God have mercy on us all and grant us peace.

Mary and the Burning Bush

From The Burning Bush Triptych by Nicholas Froment

The prophet in the wilderness

The fire inside it was aflame

But never consumed or injured it.

The same with the Theotokos Mary

Carried the fire of Divinity

Nine months in her holy body.



Again it was said of Christ that He is a “consuming fire” (Hebrews
12:29). The fire burning inside the bush is a symbol of Christ and the
bush itself symbolizes the Virgin.

I have been pondering the symbolism of Mary, carrying the baby Jesus in her womb for nine months being like the burning bush that Moses saw.

We learn over and over again from the Old Testament that no person can see the face of God and live. As God told Moses in exodus 33:30, But He said, "You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!" To be fully in his presence is to be extinguished. It is like an ice cube before the presence of a roaring fire.

So how could Mary actually hold within herself the God/man Jesus without being consumed? God had prepared a place for Jesus in granting Mary the immaculate conception. Mary, through the redeeming grace of Jesus, was conceived without original sin and being full of grace continued to live a live free from sin. The purifying fire of God’s presence had nothing to burn away in Mary. She was a vessel prepared beforehand to receive the gift of God’s son. So like the burning burn she is aflame with God’s presence but not consumed.

May she be our example and we too become fire.

Old Etchings

As you know, we are homeschooling our daughter, who has an interest in art. Who would have guessed? We are doing two classes this semester: pen and ink and composition. My wife was rummaging around in the flat files looking for some examples to show Emma and she ran across a couple of old etchings I did in undergrad school at U.T.

I had done a lot of pen and ink drawing and it lead me to an interest in etching. I took several classes with Lee Chesney, who is a great teacher. I went on to grad school at the University of Iowa and studied printmaking. I had a difficult time getting the drift of what my main professor, Mauricio Lasansky, was trying to get me to do in the printmaking program. He thought my work was too cerebral and wanted me to work from my "gut". He was right but I couldn't work from my gut in printmaking. My work for two years was pretty dismal. I finally switched over to drawing and painting and found I was able to work the way he had been encouraging me to work. Since then I haven't done any printmaking. I guess I lost my taste for it. I haven't done much pen and ink drawing either.

The first etching is called "We Could Never Save the Whales". I suppose you could call it an environmental piece, mourning the slaughter of these most majestic animals.

The second etching is one I did of my Grandmother's house. It is really a self portrait as I appear in it four times along with the rest of my family. My family lived with my Grandmother for four years while my Dad saved up enough money to buy his own house.

These were done around 1977.

Up on the Roof

It has been a while since I have embarked on any major projects around the artfarm. When we first moved to the country 11 years ago I did project after project at a pretty furious pace. We inclosed the two car garage and sheetrocked and painted. We added a porch across the front of the ex-garage. We turned the drive way into a garden with raised beds and a fountain. I turned the old pole barn into a studio using materials I salvaged from the old cotton gin in downtown Elgin. We tore down the old stone chimney that had a leaky flu and replaced it with a huge picture window and added a wood-burning stove. We completely remodeled the kitchen, tearing out the old bar and cabinets, rerouting the A/C intake and thermostat, built a whole wall of built in cabinets and built a big island with concrete countertops. We added several gardens, a goat pen, a 13,000 gallon duck pond and cross fenced our land.

I was 43 when we moved and about 50 pounds lighter. I could work all day and come home and work in the evenings and all day on the weekends. But that was then and this is now.

We have been wanting to make one last major change (well, almost the last unless you count our desire to remodel our bathroom) to our house. We want to build a screened in porch along the east facing wall of our house . This gives the whole east side of our house shade. We also want to change the entrance to our house so that you would come in through the screened in porch. The huge picture window moves over to where the door is now. This will change the traffic pattern for the better. We can then have a good place in the corner to arrange furniture for a place to sit and have conversation.

So last spring over the break I worked on the porch for a week. I got all the posts set and the roof on. Then we entered the second hottest summer on record with one day shy of tying the record for most days over 100 degrees. Needless to say, I wasn't too enthusiastic about climbing up on the roof to put on the flashing. The flashing goes under the existing roof's shingles and overlaps the new porch roof to keep water from dripping down between the two roofs. Since we didn't get any rain this summer it wasn't a big deal to have no flashing.

So this weekend I spent about 8 hours on the roof putting on the flashing. It is not easy. The hard part is getting the flashing up underneath the existing roof. There might be an easy way to do it but if there is I don't know it. It is an awkward position to work in, down on your knees or laying on your side, trying to lift up the shingles and scoot a long piece of tin underneath it. I finally managed after a lot of skinned knuckles and fair share of choice words. After the flashing is under the roof it is just a matter of getting it all stuck down with various adhesives and screws.

Now we just have to wait for the first rain to see if it leaks. It is supposed to rain tonight so we'll see what happens. No we can plan on tearing out the entire front wall and moving around the windows and doors. I am hoping to take some time off work this fall to have a big chunk of time to do this. Once you rip out an exterior wall it is good to have enough time to get it dried in, in a hurry.

I can sure tell I am not used to doing this kind of work. I am really sore today. These old muscles are not as limber as they used to be.

how to make a painting

Images were taken during the first day I worked on this painting

Here’s how to make a painting.

First, spend 10 or 15 years learning to draw. Many problems in painting are actually problems in drawing. That is, if you are trying to paint something that is recognizable, which I always do. I have found it helps to be able to draw most things from your imagination. You have to spend a lot of time drawing from life so your imagination becomes informed. If you can help it, don’t draw from photograph; there has already been too much editing done. When you draw from life you get to say what gets left in or left out and what gets emphasized and what doesn’t. It’s amazing if you aren’t sure about the form of something how a little turn of your head will give you clarity. You can turn your head all you want and you won’t get any more clarity from a photo. It is best to know what is behind what you are drawing as well as the part you can see. It helps you to be able to build the form. The other reason for drawing from life: you have time to absorb what you are drawing with your other senses. What does the landscape smell like, what does it sound like, is it hot or cold? Do people come up and talk to you while you are drawing? Whether you like it or not all of this ends up in your drawing. Sure it’s a lot easier to spend two minutes taking a photo as opposed to sitting on a stool for an hour or so but there is no comparison in the results.
While you are learning to draw look at as much art work as you can. Avoid contemporary art. Don’t go to galleries. Make sure the art you are looking at was painted by someone at least 50 years older than you. Go to museums and look at old paintings and older paintings. If you can’t get to museums go to libraries and check out art books. Or look at art on the internet or postcards. Do sketches of the paintings you like. Figure out how the artists gets your eye to move around the painting. Different artists do this in different ways. Analyze how they use color and line and texture and lighting. The reason museums are best is because scale and texture can’t be reproduced and that is an important part of painting. Subtleties of color can’t be reproduced either. Don’t restrict yourself to a certain period. Look at all periods and see what you respond to. This is how you create your own style by borrowing something from the middle ages, something from cubism, something from one artist and something from another. You put them into the blender that is you own creativity and eventually you have your own style. It is not something you can force but something that will happen naturally as you discover what you respond to in art that has come before. Everybody is standing on somebody else’s shoulders so don’t think it is wrong to beg, borrow and steal from the past. That is how it’s done. If anything comes full blown out of your subconscious unaided by the art of the past it’s pretty much going to be crap.
Now you have to have an idea. All art starts in you head. It is best to not have the idea the same day you want to start your painting. Have your ideas six months before you want to start painting and put it in your brain hopper and turn the hopper on. Let the idea bounce around. Pretty soon another idea will pop into your head and stick to the first idea. You’ll be washing the dishes or mowing the grass or driving to work and an idea will pop into your head. Put it in the hopper. While you spend time letting ideas pop into your head look at other paintings by artist who have had similar ideas as yours. No, you are not the only one to have had this idea before. Most art is a conversation with art of the past. You have to become part of the conversation. That is why you need to spend so much time looking at the art of the past. Let their solutions to the idea into your hopper and let them bounce around with your accumulating ideas. Pretty soon you’ll have a pretty complete idea and the idea will feel a certain way.
Now get out your sketch book and do some thumbnail sketches. Don’t try to do a complete drawing of your idea. Just get the basic elements down and try out various configurations and formats. Is you idea a square or a rectangle? Is it vertical or horizontal? Is it huge or tiny? Or something in between? Once you have spent some time doing thumbnails, one will begin to feel right. Once you have settled on the shape and size you are ready to get your canvas.
Once you have your canvas you are ready to paint. Decide on your palatte. This is an individual preference and varies from artist to artist. I use the following colors: Cadmium red dark, cadmium red light, cadmium orange, cadmium yellow, Pthalo green, Pthalo blue, ultramarine blue, cerulean blue, diozazine purple, magenta, black and white. You will also need some medium. I use a mixture of 1/3 linseed oil, 1/3 damar varnish and 1/3 turpentine.


Start with a light color like yellow and sketch in your idea. Once you have your idea sketched out start blocking in big areas of color using nothing but turpentine as a medium. Always go by the lean to fat rule: the first layers of paint have more turpentine and less oil. Successive layers have more oil. This keeps the painting from cracking as it dries. Once you finish this layer it will look great, fresh and exciting but unfinished. This part is always so invigorating; the start of a new painting!
At this point in your painting use your intuition. Do what feels right. Let it flow and don’t think too much about what you are doing. Just get your initial idea down on the canvas. You will get in the groove and it will feel great. After several hours the whole canvas should be covered with paint. You are not trying to finish one part before another. The whole painting should have the same level of finish all the time. It is similar to building a house. You don’t start the foundation of the kitchen put up the walls and install the cabinets and appliances and then do the foundation of a bedroom. The whole house comes up at the same time, first the foundation then the studs, then the roof, etc. You get the idea. The painting is the same way. This is a fun way to paint and the painting remains interesting during the entire process.
When I first started painting I did a very complete drawing, made a grid on the drawing and proportional grrid on the canvas and transferred the drawing to the canvas. I started painting at the upper left finishing each part as I went along until I reached the bottom right corner and then I was finished. That way of painting works but is incredibly boring. It is like doing a paint by number. Don’t do it.

Continue working on your painting building up another layer adding some shading and tonality. Once you have got your painting’s second layer finished it will look pretty crappy. You’ll think, “What was I thinking, this is terrible. How can I ever finish this and make it feel like my initial idea?” Now the thing is, not to worry. This is normal and every painting has to pass through this phase. Kind a of like when the cute kid hits the awkward, gangly adolescent stage. They'll eventually turn pretty but it takes a while.
Now is the time to stop using you intuition and begin analyzing. Remember all those paintings you spent time looking at? Now is the time to remember all you learned. It is your job as the artist to be in charge of how the viewer looks at your painting. You have to decide how his eye will move around your painting. What will he look at first, where will that lead him next and so on until he is back where he started. There are many ways to do this. It is your job to figure out how to make the viewers eye travel around this particular painting. This is not easy and this is where most artists give up. It is easy to start a painting but very difficult to finish one. If you can’t get past this middle step you are doomed. So be analytical. Step back from your painting and close your eyes. Imagine a blank canvas then open your eyes.

Where did you look first? Be conscious of how you eye moves around the painting. Does your eye get stuck somewhere? If so that is bad. You have to figure out how to keep the eye moving. These are all problems of composition. If you have analyzed enough paintings you will be able to analyze the painting you are working on and get it to a successful conclusion.

finished painting: The Holy Family

It is also helpful if someone else who has a trained eye can look at your painting in progress and tell you how they look at the painting. Most people can’t do this. When a person looks at a painting and the painting is successful their eye moves around the painting in a pleasurable way without them being aware of it. People only become aware of it if they take the time to be analytical about painting and most people don’t. So spend a lot of time getting this part of the painting right. Your painting should still be pretty general without details because you are moving stuff around and changing shapes and tones and colors to get your eye to move the way you want it to.

Once you are convinced that the composition is working then you can begin to add more details and finish the painting. Be sure you are aware of things like consistent lighting, and the temperature of colors, interesting textures, and such. When you are done your painting should embody the idea and feeling you initially had. It will in a very real sense be the incarnation of your beginning idea. If the painting has fulfilled the original concept in its form then you have succeeded.

Some paintings go easier than others and it is usually that middle section that is longer or shorter. In my experience the longer and harder the middle part is, the better the painting is, if it can be resolved successfully. Not all paintings can and those that can’t should get thrown in the trash heap.

Pope hosts a meeting of artists

Pope Benedict is hosting a meeting with 500 artists in the Sistine Chapel on November 21, 2009.

Pope Seeks to Restore Alliance between Art and Faith

Pope Benedict XVI hopes to establish a dialogue towards a new and "fruitful alliance" between “art and the Church”

"Ideally the Pope is taking the plunge in launching the dialogue. How will the artists respond? The should begin to respond through their works. Then we would hope to encourage a certain resonance for these works within their national communities".

The hardest part was the selection of artists who will meet the Holy Father. The choice – said Archbishop Ravasi - was made with particular attention to the artistic level achieved, taking into account the different geographical and cultural contexts.

I guess my invitation got lost in the mail.

New painting: Knock, Knock

click on the image for a bigger version

I finished the painting I have been working on. A fellow blogger, Paul Nielson, made a post a while back about a painting by Warner Sallman, Christ Knocking at the Hearts Door. He didn't think it was a very good painting. Sallman actually got his idea from Holman Hunt who had done a painting The Light of the World. So I decided I would see if I could make a better painting than Sallman's. Both of these paintings and mine as well are inspired by a scripture from the book of Revelation. St. John tells of how Jesus is going to spit out those believers who are not hot or cold but are lukewarm. Then the famous passage: Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.

So my idea for the painting is to have Jesus knocking at the door of a house. The people in side are entertaining themselves, watching TV, exercising and listening to music but they are all doing it in isolation from each other. Did they hear the knock over the noise of their lives. Will they pause, or turn off the ipod long enough to see if there is someone at the door? The border is made up of fast food, except for the bread and wine of the eucharist on a background of lime green. Jesus also has bread and wine in his hand and is ready to share himself in the eucharist with those are are willing. Paul made the good point that this bible verse is not an evangelistic verse aimed at non-believers but at believers who have lost their first love. To this end I have included in the house two paintings, one of Warner Sallman's famous head of Jesus and the other hanging over the sofa a landscape by "Christian" artist, Thomas Kincaide, the painter of lite.

More Text: The Last Judgment

I am continuing to post descriptions of my paintings on my blog as I add them to my web page. Below is the text for The Last Judgment. If you want to see a larger image of this painting go here. If you click on that image you can see details.

The Last Judgment has been a popular theme in Christian art which artists including, Michelangelo, Vander Weden, Van Eyk, and Fra Angelico have pursued. Many of the symbols used in the Last Judgment are reoccurring, such as the saved on the right hand of God and the damned on the left, St. Michael with scales and the newly redeemed emerging naked from their grave to receive the white robes and palm branches.

While including these symbols and others I have also tried to update the subject by including a modern cityscape. In the cityscape are the ubiquitous advertising signs of urban life. These are signs of our overriding desire for security, comfort and convenience: Easy-Fast-Cheap-Pay Later-You Deserve More-Eat-Drink-Be Merry as well as the universal Wal-Mart and McDonalds signs.

The unmarked building in the foreground is an abortion clinic. On the wall is a sign exhorting people to have safe sex. Also on the wall is graffiti that says Kyrie Eleison. People, both men and women, fathers and mothers, file in pregnant and file out with their arms loaded with goodies. The pipes protruding from the clinic deliver the aborted babies into the maw of Moloch. As someone once said there is no sacrifice without blood. The sacrifice we make for our luxurious lifestyles of consumerism is the cost of the unborn, nearly 50 million since 1973. As the people leave the clinic they are blinded by the goods they are carrying and fall off the path into the fires of hell.

Above the clinic is a billboard of Michael the archangel. Instead of dressing him as a medieval knight, I have him attired as a contemporary army man but his camouflage is flames of fire (as angels are often described as fiery beings). Michael is shown dispatching the old serpent, the devil with his spear.

Beneath the maw of Moloch emerge the resurrected children taken in abortion. St. Thomas Aquinas suggests that in heaven everyone will be 33 years old, the age of Jesus when he died so everyone is young. They emerge naked as traditional iconography dictates. They wind up the stairs toward heaven pausing to acquire the white robe of the martyr and the palm branch, another symbol of martyrdom.

At the top of the painting Jesus is shown as the king of heaven with his mother next to him, the queen of heaven. They are surrounded by the saints and angels engulfed in a multitude of rainbow prisms as they are partaking in the heavenly light.

Surrounding Jesus feet, which rest on an orb, are the four living creatures.

This painting is the largest one I have done in a while: 8’x5’. It is acrylic on canvas.

More text

I had lunch with my friend Adam the other day. We were talking about how to promote my art work. He is more interested in marketing than I am but we had a good chat. One thing came out of our talk: while I have a lot of images of my work on my web page, I do not have much of anything at all in the way of a text description of the paintings. For people who are familiar with me and my work, my web page is easy to find but if someone is just searching for a particular image of something unless they get lucky and enter the title of the image into a search engine the chances of finding my work is slim to none. So, I am going to add a text descriptions of my paintings on my web page over the next few months. I thought I might initially post them here as well. Below is the first one I have done for the older painting, Easter Morning.



The title of this painting gives the subject matter away. But rather than try to paint a literal resurrection I tried to paint how the resurrection might feel. I love flowers and zinnias are so bright and colorful, gaudy in their exuberance. The brilliant flowers against the dark sky explode like fireworks, like resurrection. Wouldn’t it make sense to set of fireworks at the end of Easter Vigil?

The table is covered with a cloth, divided up into squares that are the colors of Easter Eggs. On the table is the bread and wine, the Eucharist which is the presence of Christ with us, the resurrected Christ, body and blood, present in the bread and wine. It is not a mere symbol but the reality of the resurrection.

Behind the table is a modern cityscape. This brings the event of the resurrection into the present. It was not just a historical event. The risen Christ is here, in our city, in our town.

On the opposite side of the painting are three houses over which hang three moons, representing the three days Jesus was in the grave. In front of the houses are some strange animal topiary and a man with an Easter basket. This is a reminder that grace perfects nature and what the pagans new about fertility, spring, rabbits, eggs and new life are all signs in nature that point to the greater truth of new life, the new life of the resurrection.

Finally, on the vase is a depiction of Jonah being spit out by the large fish that had swallowed him three days earlier, one of the old testament stories that pre-figure the resurrection. This is one of the oldest images found in Christian art and can be seen on the wall of the catacombs and on funerary carvings of the 3rd century.

The composition is a circular one, which is the only explanation I can come up with for the airplane in the corner. The composition just seemed to need something in that corner. An airplane filled the bill but I can’t really say what that has to do with the theme of the painting, so in that sense might be considered less than optimal.

Looking Evil in the Eye

How hard is it to look evil right in the eye? The news story about the 11 year old girl that was kidnapped and held as a sex slave for 19 years is rattling around in my brain. I am appalled at the enormity of this evil and my heart hurts for this poor girl and her family. Is there any chance that her life will be able to be put back together? Any kind of heinous crime that involves children always seems more horrific to me. Is it the innocence of children that makes it seem so? I can’t help but cry out: God why didn’t you do something; why didn’t you intervene? Why give evil such free reign?

Apparently this perpetrator did not seem normal but his neighbors were still shocked and stunned at the discovery. How would you feel to find that your neighbor was a kidnapper or child abuser or murderer. What kind of neighborhood psychic disturbance is created by this kind of discovery? What kind of bonds of trust are broken? What kind of fear is instilled in all our children who catch drift of this kind of news? The emotional ripples bounce around like a handful of pebbles thrown in a puddle.

I know a lot of people in this country do not view abortion as murder. But I can’t help but think that our failure to look the evil of abortion in the eye has the same kind of psychic resonance. Nearly 50 million abortions since 1973, that is about 100,000,000 people who have committed this act if you count the father and the mother. We all work with, live around people who, for whatever reason have killed their own children. And some more than once… what effect does a serial killer living in your neighbor hood have on you and on your children? How do all of the children feel who were born after Roe v. Wade became law. They are survivors of a holocaust. How come they were allowed to live? Do they wonder about their deceased brothers and sisters, cousins and friends. Can you feel the dissonance? Can you look it in the eye?

Is it any wonder that we have to put Zoloft in the public water supply to keep everybody perky enough to keep going to work so we can keep buying stuff we don’t need? It’s pretty damn depressing if you ask me.

God didn’t stop the kidnapper of that 11 year old girl just like he didn’t stop the 100,000,000 people who aborted their own children. But if I was God I would suggest you not come asking for any favors until you look that evil right in the eye and stop calling what is evil good.

A Novel Idea

While drinking Guiness at the Dog and Duck with my friend Milton I had an idea for a novel. We were discussing the health care proposal and how polarized our country has become. It seems every vote is won by 51%. Half the people for, half against.

So my idea was: what if the polarization continues at a faster pace until it becomes apparent the two sides can no longer live together? No, there isn't a civil war but an orderly parting of ways. The country is divided in two. All the liberals move to the east or west coast and all of the conservative move to fly over country. Borders are established and two completely independent nations are set up. Now there is no internal opposition.

The liberals can proceed with all of their plans to set up a complete nanny state. The federal government is responsible for everything and everybody's well-being and happiness. There is no restriction on abortions in fact you can dispose of your children anytime they become inconvenient until they are 21. You can also get rid of old people when the become bothersome. All drugs are legalized. And you can marry anybody you want, even your pets and as many as you want. Guns are outlawed. Everybody can have free housing, free food and a free education. The borders are wide open and as long as you subscribe to the liberal code of tolerance you are welcome (no red state people are welcome, obviously.) There is just one religion-Universalism but no one takes it very seriously

The red states get to role back the invasive federal government. Everything is dealt with on a local level. No abortion, no divorce, not even any contraception. No welfare for anybody. Everybody has to be responsible for themselves. Everybody gets a gun. No regulation on anything. Strictly guarded borders-no immigration. Everyone is very religious but there are no Muslims- not sure about Jews and Catholics.

Wait 100 years and see what's what. What do you think would happen? Could make for an interesting book. Of course you'd have to have a teenager from one group fall in love with a teenager from the other group ( probably not an animal) and want to get married which would create all kinds of problems.

Why we Homeschool

“The most important thing that science has taught us about our place in the Universe is that we are not special. The process began with the work of Nicolaus Copernicus in the sixteenth century, which suggested that the Earth is not at the centre of the universe, and gained momentum after Galileo, early in the seventeenth century, used a telescope to obtain the crucial evidence that the Earth is indeed a planet orbiting the Sun…
While all of this was going on, biologist tried and failed to find any evidence for a special ‘life force’ that distinguishes living matter from non-living matter, concluding that life is just a rather complicated form of chemistry.”

From the introduction to The Scientists: A history of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors by John Gribbin

Do you want to know why we decided to homeschool our daughter?

I checked the above book out of the library the other day. I am looking for a good history of science. One of the things I hope to teach my daughter is the arbitrariness of dividing up the world into subjects of study. While on the one hand this is a useful way to gain detailed information about subjects, on the other hand it belies the ideas that all of life is one big stream with many currents. At any given time what is happening in various fields is being determined by the overall direction of the current.

The idea that man has a unique place in the universe is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. It is not geography that makes man unique but the combination of body and soul. Walker Percy referred to man as Homo Symbolicus, the being that discovers symbols and uses language and art to communicate.

It is precisely the ability to communicate symbolically that disproves the idea that John Gribbin asserts: “life is just a rather complicated form of chemistry” Can someone explain the chemical chain of cause and effect that enables Mr. Gribben to assert that life is nothing but chemical reactions and my ability to understand his assertion and then disagree with it. Where does this chemical reaction take place?

As Mortimer Adler says in How to Read a Book- For the communication to be successfully completed, therefore, it is necessary for the two parties to use the same words with the same meanings-in short, to come to terms. When that happens, communication happens, the miracle of two minds with but a ...single thought. “

Where does this single thought reside. How can one thing be in two places at once? Is not this thought actually immaterial and if it is not material how can it be the result of chemical processes? This what Walker Percy called “The Delta Factor”. He wrote about it in his two great books, The Message in the Bottle and Lost in the Cosmos. The ability to communicate symbolically is an immaterial process not a chemical process. There is more to the world than chemistry.

Tom Wolfe in his book Who is Charlotte Simmons, attempts to show the effects of reducing the entire world to nothing but chemical processes. The main character, Charlotte, is studying neuroscience as a freshman in college. Although she comes from a bible believing Christian background she is soon convinced that the gospel of neuroscience is true: life is nothing more than chemical processes. If we are nothing but the sum of all our chemical reactions what is the role of choice in our lives? And if there is no such thing as choice or free will, then what makes choosing one thing better than another. The end result on college campuses is human beings acting like animals and engaging in drunken orgies, screwing everything in site. Charlotte proceeds to make some very bad decisions. Why are we surprised and why should we expect anything different is what Mr. Wolfe is asking. It is not just about sexuality as recreation but the inability to have meaning and purpose in a world of randomness. Ideas have consequences.

I have nothing against science in its rightful place. It is of great benefit to understand the physical universe, its causes and effects. But scientist and writers about science often overstep their bounds and engage in statements that are philosophical and religious as does Mr. Gribben. Who in the public school or in our public universities is going to challenge these egregious statements when philosophy and religion are not allowed in these settings- no one. The stakes are too high, the consequences to grave to allow a child to think that he or she is an animal, is not free to make choices and nothing more than the sum of their chemical reactions; that is why we homeschool.

Reflections on Woodstock and Being Counter Cultural

The 40th anniversary of Woodstock got me thinking . I agreed with the hippie’s diagnosis of our society at the time, too much conspicuous consumption, too much war, too much phoniness, to much concern about superficial stuff like short hair, tucked in shirts and having to wear socks and belts. I wanted peace but mostly I wanted love.

But oddly enough I didn’t get sucked into the hippie’s solution: tune in, turn on and drop out.

For some reason, and I can only attribute the reason to divine intervention, I never took drugs, no, not even once. And it is not because I wasn’t given opportunities. My cousin, who is about a year older than I, was the first person to offer me drugs. We went to hang out at Pease Park and he tried to convince me to smoke marijuana. I don’t know why but I refused. I had always looked up to my cousin but after this episode we drifted apart. He continued to use drugs and at one pointed ended up being institutionalized because of it.

I continued to be a hold out even though I don’t really remember my parents or Sunday school teachers or anybody else encouraging me not to. There was just some part of me that knew to refuse to take drugs was the right thing to do.

During this time the pain of my family life was growing more intense. After many years of suffering through my dad’s bi-polar illness my Mom divorced my dad. Their divorce had a huge effect on my self-esteem and I, who had once had no trouble making friends, became depressed and a loner.

One Friday, a guy I knew in my Presbyterian youth group and I, were driving together to a youth retreat in Wimberly. On the way he told me he had some dope and wondered if I would like to sneak out into the woods that night and partake with him. Uncharacteristically, I said sure, let’s do it. So we had a plan. I was going to smoke dope for the first time.

We were the first one to arrive at the retreat so we decided to go down to the creek. The creek was feed by a spring called blue hole. The blue hole was surrounded by cliffs that rose straight up from the water twenty feet or so. There were flat-bottomed boats that you could paddle up and down the creek. We decided to paddle one of the boats up to the blue hole. We leisurely paddled up the creek but once we arrived at the end we were surprised to be met with a barrage of boulders thrown at us from the cliffs. Another friend, a real prankster, had climbed the cliffs and thought it would be funny to launch huge rocks at us. We were moving and dodging the rocks until we finally dodged a bit too vigorously and tumped the boat over into the water. Soaking wet, we managed to get back in the boat and back to shore.

Soggy dope meant no sneaking off into the woods and by the next night when the dope had dried out I had regained my senses and “just said no”. That was the last time I ever seriously thought of taking drugs. I had many other opportunities but no longer was slightly tempted.

I am only conjecturing but I think with the high level of psychic pain I was dealing with as a teenager, if I had taken one step down that road of self medication it would have been a trip of no return. Mental breakdown or overdose seemed inevitable.

Instead I chose to get high in another way. I became a Jesus Freak. The Jesus freaks looked like hippies and had the same diagnosis of the culture but instead of turning to drugs they were able to see Jesus as the original counter cultural leader. Poor, taking on the authorities, giving up everything to get the kingdom of God even to the point of surrendering his own life: that was the Jesus we got to know.

My best friend's girl friend had invited him to got to a place called the Well. It was a coffeehouse just west of the University of Texas. Most of the folks hanging out there looked like hippies and there was free coffee and do-nuts but the folksy music they sang was not about the Age of Aquarius. It was all about Jesus and how much he loved everybody. After my friend had gone a couple of times he invited me to go. Sure enough I was convinced that these people loved each other. The all claimed it was because of Jesus and after I had been a few times and with some intense internal wrestling I took the plunge and in a dramatic experience of God’s love became a Jesus Freak.

Looking back from a vantage point of almost 40 years I think if I hadn’t been rescued from my sadness, despair and disappointment I would have either gotten into drugs or killed myself. I have had my ups and downs but I have never regretted the decision I made to become really counter cultural and follow Jesus.

That's me in the middle playing guitar at the Well Christian coffeehouse.

Easter Morning

Click on the painting for a larger image.

I had a request to use an image of my painting "Easter Morning" in a print publication so I had a hi-res scan made of it. Which also means it is now available as a print to be purchased at my web site: BCArtFarm.com

I painted this painting back in 1992. The zinnias seem to be exploding out of the vase and are reminiscent of fireworks, like Jesus exploding out of the tomb on Easter morning. The vase depicts Jonah being spit out by the large fish, an old testament type of the resurrection. The three houses with three moons are for the three days Jesus was in the tomb and the strange topiary with the man holding a basket of eggs is reflecting the natural images of fertility and life that are also associated with Easter. The symbols of the Eucharist are also images of life, the basic food we need to survive. I have no idea why I put an airplane up in the corner.

This painting is in a private collection. I borrowed it back to include in an exhibit that was at the Dadian Gallery in Washington D.C. Of all the paintings that I shipped to D.C. this one that was borrowed got damaged. It tipped over and fell against a corner while they were hanging the show. Thankfully this painting is on a panel other wise there would have been a big rip in the canvas. Upon its return I managed to patch the indention and repainted the area. I don't think you could tell where it was damaged.

Vacation at the Beach

We took our annual trip to the beach. I grew up going to the Texas gulf coast and we have continued the family tradition. We don't do much but swim in the ocean, build a sandcastle and eat lots of good sea food but we find it really relaxing. Oh, we also watch cable TV, which we don't have at home. Usually the food channel but this weekend they had a Monk marathon, and it was shark week on the Discovery channel. Yes , there are sharks in the gulf. When I used to fish I would occasionally catch a small one but they don't seem to bother people.


On our way down we stopped in Shulenburg at one of the painted churches. It is very beautiful but currently undergoing some restoration. One of the entriguing symbols used in the church is the Pelican. the pelican was thought to feed it's young by piercing it's breast and feeding them her own blood. Thus the pelican became a symbol of Jesus feeding the church on his own blood.






St. Mary's has many beautiful stained glass windows and a carved wooden high altar. It is worth your while to stop off if you are in the neighborhood.

We stopped at the Schoenstatt Shrine in Lamar for a bit then crossed over the ferry from Aransas Pass to Port Aransas. Emma and I always get out and look for dolphin. Sometimes we see several but this time we didn't see any.

Sea food always buts a big smile on our face. We ate lunch at Moby Dick's. Lot's of fried shrimp.

We found quite of few shells out in the water (none on the shore) but they had all been found before us by hermit crabs. We practice the "catch and release" policy unless we find an empty one. We found one empty olive shell. The water was very clear and clean. No seaweed or tar and no jelly fish or man of war. Great for jumping the waves or just floating. Emma has inherited her Grandma Betty's ability to effortlessly float.

We made the short drive over to Corpus Christi to meet Lissa's brother and family for more good sea food at Snoopy's.

They have a nice deck, perfect for watching the sun set over the Corpus Christi bay.



After another day of swimming in the ocean and building a sand castle we all went to Seafood and Spaghetti Works to celebrate Lissa's birthday. Julia and JC and Julissa came to the beach with us this year. They brought their WII which I had only played a little bit before. We played all sorts of resort games and I ended up being really sore. I am out of shape and it is pretty good exercise apparently.