Among John’s friends are two crows that calls us when their feeder is empty and an uppity squirrel that won’t take peanuts left on the outside table. He’s only interested in taking a peanut  from John’s hand. Occasionally John fills his hand with five or six nuts so his squirrel can take his time turning them over, licking them and inspecting each one until he discovers which is the biggest. I keep suggesting that John buy raw peanuts because his squirrel plants all most all of them, and we’d soon have a peanut farm. My favorite John/animal interaction was when a small opossum sat beside John on the front steps. As the scruffy little guy ate cat food John pulled his tail.

Two Crows – Framed

A smile is not always a smiles, sometimes the teeth behind it point down.  nancymauerman.com

Roxanne

Roxanne

Lines can be as stale as talk. A friend excitedly tells you a brilliant insight or idea he’s just had right there and there in front of you AND another time he recites a thought he’s regurgitated twenty six times before. Can you tell the difference?

Can you tell the difference between a child making lines on a paper to represent a face AND a grown-up, who has made marks on paper for twenty years, and who tries to draw like a child, for let’s say an advertisement? We can tell a kid didn’t do it. The old guy’s lines are contrived. The muscles in his hand and arm repeat old movements just as they do in his handwriting.

Many of the artists we find in art history books have collected children’s art for this freshness. We as adults love being with small children because we can see the world as NEW through their eyes and we’re delighted at the fresh word combinations they discover as they try to explain what they see.

One of the lines in the picture below is tired, can you see which one? I’d say it’s the red circular line representing the outer eye on the left side of the page.

Reading great books can help us see life as new as do great pieces of art.  nancymauerman.com

Elisabeth