My art mindset as a jpeg file

For fun tonight I made a .jpg file out of my ART folder of images - what I've recently bought and what I want to buy - don't speculate too closely on how many of these mini images I have already bought because the total would be scary.

(To illustrate the "scary" purchasing concept I'm attaching my Yahoo avatar - Sarah with shopping bags - hahaha.)

Immediately in viewing the ART file I notice color patterns I wasn't aware of before. Everything is so bright! What does this say about me...is Sarah someone who enjoys life or is scared of the dark?

A new online friend recently commented that my blog portrays me as someone who enjoys life. Wow - why did that take me so by surprise...happy surprise though! Maybe with the curiosity and humor that seem almost always to be part of my breaths and thoughts (along with the massive anxiety and paranoid and guilt and...), I have made a good stab at being a glass half full instead of glass half empty person - nah! Aren't I still a cynic? But can you love color as much as I do and still be a cynic...

Anyway, back to this JPG file, and its vibrancy... Earlier blog posts discuss my learning to embrace red, orange and pink, colors I had consciously avoided for years (for, I now realize, dysfunctional reasons). Amazing considering my history, I am now known (by about 2-3 people, but that's enough for writing purposes) as someone who loves red.

And that's a good thing - because, No one should be scared of red! (Reclaimed colors, hear me roar.) And red is awesome in a beige house. I also enjoy - and historically have consciously limited myself from - purple, although even today, much as I love its intensity/coolness, all the wonders that are purple, I only want purple in small doses - it's a kind of condiment to red, orange and pink - and blue.

I say blue because today I was thinking, what colors did I use before? Probably good old safe blue, said to be most men's favorite color (and yes I think it is Craig's favorite color, but since when do I incorporate his preference in anything even vaguely artistic), and neutrals - i.e., brown, beige - I love gray but I don't necessarily consider it a neutral...not sure what gray is though...need more blogging and wine to pursue that thought.

It may be hard to believe for someone regarding this JPG, but our first couple of years in our first house, Craig complained that everything was "too brown." Doing my self-critical cutting-to-the-bone thing, my early married self had decided mixing unmatched things was tacky and anything new we bought (towels, furniture, dogs...?) should be brown so as to pull together the colored things we already had.

What?! So the brown brick house with brown trim, brown cabinets and beige carpet, off-white and sand-colored walls was our nest. In a way I was right - when I had less revolving credit than I have today and the Internet was too young to supply me with Daily Painters, our beige-based house did have a certain congruency. It was boring, but congruent.

More than a decade later, having re-embraced warm colors such as red and orange, I am now re-dabbling in blue. Part of my new reluctance toward blue is that, not being a swimmer or tanner or even someone who makes bodies of water a vacation priority, I don't feel worthy of blue, qualified to buy or display blue.

What?! Isn't some huge % of our bodies made up of water? So, that line of reasoning seems like more unfair self-containment...

No! I don't have to float or swim or even drown in water to hang art with blue or blue-green...by creation I am a water creature. (Another topic that needs more wine...)