January 2023

“If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced,” Vincent Van Gogh A few weeks before my fifteenth birthday, I decided that I had no artistic talent. I had, just a month earlier, been told by another kid, that I couldn’t draw. […]

art at fort niagara Ernst Wille (1916-2005) was a German artist and teacher who was drafted into the army during World War II. Apparently, he was a better artist than soldier. During the Normandy invasion, Ernst Wille was one of a large number of German soldiers captured by the Allies. Many of those captured soldiers

almost #wordlesswednesdays #blogboost Getting hungry? What are some of your favorite sweet treats?

a book review One of the great mysteries of the 20th century was the identity of the personal librarian to John Pierpont Morgan. Born Belle Marion Greener to an African-American family in 1879, she became Belle da Costa Greene at the age of 16. Her parents were separated, and her mother brought her and her

Underneath the Niagara Parks Power Station, in Niagara Falls, Ontario, which was a working power station between 1905 and 2006, there is a long tunnel. This tunnel was built without the use of electricty. The main tools used were lanterns, rudimentary dynamite, pickaxes and shovels. This tunnel is an amazing feat of engineering. For a

Today, I used my Derwent Intense paints to create this picture of a flower. I’ve been painting versions of this flower for several months with a variety of mediums. They look alike and they look very different. I’m learning, from the process of painting this flower, over and over again, that, even with colors that

Today’s art project is an example of the “reuse” part of “recycle, reuse, reduce.” This is an old spice jar that I decorated with glass paint. I have a few of these. They are good for holding small objects, such as Q-tips or toothpicks. Or you could simply enjoy the jar as decoration and place

It’s almost #wordlesswednesday!!! A few days ago, I went on a day trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario, with family. We went just to look at the great waterfalls with the kids, who live in California and have never seen that great wonder of the world. This was my first visit to Canada since pre-COVID times.

I just finished reading a book called “Never Let Me Go,” by  Kazuo Ishiguro, the 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. At first, it came across as being a story about how children lived and learned in a boarding school. called Hailsham. They were encouraged to be creative through a variety of visual