Notes from when I created this painting which is part of a series of canvases that I am working on over time: 

Is It Bigger Than A Breadbox? ~ "TV Land", "Saturn", "December", and "Parrot Wallpaper"

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… a screenshot of the old photo shared:

…the painted canvas:

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Sketchbook study with a vintage magazine ~ #tidesofeternityart
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Baseball begins today in my hometown of Cincinnati, the birthplace of Major League Baseball here along the Ohio River. 

To start the season, former Cincinnati Red, Todd Frazier, will throw the ceremonial “First Pitch” on this “Opening Day” in Great American Ballpark.

Here is a painting I did of Todd Frazier back in 2015 when he was the All-Star Homerun Derby Champ during the All-Star Game weekend at Great American Ballpark midsummer of that year.

Back then one of my favorite tunes, Frank Sinatra’s renowned hit “Fly Me To The Moon” was Frazier’s up-to-bat song; so in the graphic speed-stream strings of the flying ball I added the song lyric “Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars…” scripted in the wind. I also drew *the man in the moon* to look like and characterize the face and expression of the old-fashioned “Mr. Red” mascot including his signature old-timer mustache.

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The month of March is managing to “come in like a lion and go out like a lamb” once again as spring is beginning to show its graceful arrival.  Here is a photo of some early springtime blooms against a bright and beautiful blue sky that I took on an evening stroll the last Sunday of March and shared on my Instagram profile with notes about “VanGogh vibes” and the composition’s reminded inspiration of Vincent VanGogh’s famous “Almond Blossom”​ painting.
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I note this photo as an Instagram share because Instagram allows me to add a song to my posted image and as an additional expression of the inspired springtime feels Van Gogh’s painting and images bring, another very favorite, Rachmaninov and his Symphony No. 2 { Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27: Ill. Adagio specifically} accompanies the picture in the post with some musical artwork that brings with it a similar springtime sense filled with the season’s beauty, peace, and hopefulness that Vincent VanGogh's and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s incredibly beautiful art reflects to me.

​This time of year is bringing to mind this framed art I have in storage that is “old” many times over. I had to ask myself, why is this old, “old” piece noteworthy now?  Of course the most timely and obvious reason could be that the celebration of the Irish and St. Patrick’s Day is right around the corner. ( Not to mention that in Cincinnati it is 75 degrees on this day in the middle of February. …Am I to think that it is spring already? ) I could add to the reasons my life-long fandom with college basketball and the colleges noted in this blog that are participating in the present buildup to “March Madness” going on now.  All of those reasons make some sense, but for whatever reason I may find, the timing of it does feel connected and I will note that the remembrances of it that made me feel like pulling it out to share here in this collection of artwork came during a beautiful week hiking in Sedona, Arizona with my husband to celebrate our 31st Valentine’s Wedding anniversary. - - The hopeful post hiking part of our Arizona trip to include going to see the Bengals in the LVII Super Bowl in Phoenix was canceled from our Arizona travel arrangements.  Some say we should question the NFL referees about that. …Truly though, that is a happy-go-lucky comment about the NFL Refs because I was soon over the loss, even tough I do find the whole spectacle of the Super Bowl a curious reflection of the times of my life since, as my dad would often remind me, I was baptized on the very first Super Bowl Sunday so many years ago. ( Back then in the winter of 1967 it seems that no one hardly knew about it with tickets being only something like $12 and the stands only partially full; and the halftime show was a school marching band. )  But the real truth be told, whether a team wins or looses really doesn’t make that much of a difference in my life ( other than I wish all those involved well ).   For me the great value of our Arizona vacation this winter was found in the land, in the hiking through the incredibleness of that Sedona landscape.  It is in those kind of places and those kind of activities that I never fail to find some kind of peace or happiness, not just in feeling and seeing the fresh air and beauty of it all, but in uncovering the calm and inspired meditativeness it can bring.  Like so many who appreciate that region and others like it recognize, there is something awe striking about the land that you can especially feel in places like Sedona, a feeling that can make you feel empowered and humbled at the same time knowing that all the earth is filled with the spirits of those who have walked it before.  

In that spirit of reflection, when I got home from our travels, I made a trip to the back corners of our basement storage and was able to dig out this very old piece that I am finding seasonal this year.  That’s how most my creative motives start, I just go will a feeling of things that come to mind.  I go with what pulls my interest, and I do find that naturally it does happen to flow with the seasons and holidays in a personal way.  In this case for this blog, it is an old piece of my art that my dad gave to me in the late 1990’s after he got it freshly framed about 10 years after I made it.  The creation is based on something I made in the 1980’s when I was away at college and started a little business selling t-shirts and posters of the design. Though I wasn’t a student of art ( I would call myself “self-taught” ), as I have mentioned throughout my blogs, the creative drive has followed me as early as I can remember.

The project pictured here in this framed gift was one I did during my years at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  The artwork is a quick, freehand illustration that I made-up about the bars surrounding the city campus that were very popular with the students during my days there. When I started college at 18 in 1985, the drinking age was 18 so most all the students could go to them. ( Today I believe that a good many of the bars noted might be torn down by now. )  In the picture I also included a graphic of a bowl of “Real Chili” which was an equally popular joint for the students to go for some late night eats after an evening bar hopping through the mostly very old, worn and torn, old-school bars in a neighborhood that obviously knew better and more prosperous times. In today’s terms they may best be described as “dive-bars”.  The names of the bars in my creation are written on pitchers of beer which are drawn in a series going gradually from full to empty. I created the artwork then had it printed on t-shirts as well as having posters made and for the most part enjoyed great success with it including having some of the bars hang my posters as art for the walls of their establishments.

Aside from being such a meaningful gift, this particular framed poster is singular to me because it is the only thing I have left of that artwork. For awhile I had a little extra inventory of posters, but the boxes I had left of my full color spectrum printed t-shirts I was casually told were stolen from my closet where I lived in Milwaukee with a gang of girls. ( I guess that it is possible that some others may have profited from them after I expended great effort to create & produce them, or maybe they were just distributed or sported for free, or it could be that they just somehow ended up in the trash. )  I do not really know what happened to the remaining inventory of t-shirts I was having success selling as I was never offered anymore information about them; and I never pursued further questioning about them being taken since at the time I discovered that they were gone I had already decided to continue my college education at Xavier University in my hometown.  Though of course the colorful t-shirts do not matter or make any difference to me now, needless to say however, when I received this almost forgotten one random old leftover poster freshly framed a decade after I created it, I found it such a thoughtful surprise.  After spending many years rolled-up in storage there were some wrinkles and a few slightly torn edges on the poster, but when my dad re-gifted it to me he told me that he and the framer he was working with both agreed that it looked good that way, that they both felt that the worn textures of the paper added to the art’s expressiveness and character and charm. I like it that way too.

It was my Dad who, in his characteristic generosity and support of those pursuing their dreams and a chance to use and develop their skills, was the sole investor who provided the production capital for my little business.  In the positive fashion that I knew, his excitement for me and the belief in the value of the creative and business experience to be gained and the lessons to be learned were mutually understood as worthwhile.  Today he is greatly missed after having to leave us due to cancer. It was in March of 2000 that we sadly said goodbye.

As I proceeded with this creative and business making work in those days way back then, it was my equally missed Grandma Margaret Mary McDevitt Breslin, my Dad’s mom, who I found even more excited about it all.  ​When I shared my endeavor with my Grandma I was quite taken by the interest she took in the project and of course her interest and encouragement of my efforts and industriousness with it as well.  When she first saw the posters & t-shirts she said multiple times over, “Oh Mary Christina, these are all mostly Irish names on here…” as she read them aloud.  As she was reading them, she expressed a spark of thoughtful enthusiasm as if she was familiar with the names as such and as if they had personal meaning to her because , in the big picture, she knew through her life experiences and the times in which she lived that many of the names on the piece were likely connected to her through a shared Irish heritage and a common journey to America.  Upon seeing the Irish representation in my imagery, it was clear to me that my Grandma, relatively speaking, had a much closer connection to understanding the experience of being an Irish immigrant or a descendant of Irish immigrants in her time than I could ever imagine, and maybe even more so in being a descendant of immigrants who also happened to, through trials and tribulations, became successful Irish American business people in the new land that they all collectively came to to put their dreams on the way that her family did in their founding of McDevitt’s Men’s Department Store ( …a “haberdashery” as their type of department store was called in its day. )  As was always the case with my Grandma for a young me, her intelligence, perspectives, interest & encouragement, and consistent loving support { similar to my Mom’s lovingness } meant the world to me as it remains with me.

​When I look back on this project that I did as a college student and the
value of the lessons learned at that place in time during the 1980's, I see them as complex in carrying a great deal of newfound excitement and fun with the discovery of so many friendly new connections and continuing creative possibilities alongside the repeated realization of a series of various not so friendly, seriously hard, life-changing realities encountered and learned some of which are still hard to process and harder to take.  My young "American Dreamer" little "side hustle" entrepreneurial enterprise most certainly did come to provide eye opening knowledge in those times as well as valuable reflections of history before me including a recognition of Irish families successfully establishing themselves in America and in the field of business; but unquestionably, the real treasure of this piece to me is undoubtedly the ongoing unconditional love and pride and belief in the aspiration of dreams shared with my Grandma and my Dad through the expression of the Spirits of Irish Immigrants.


“Spirits of Irish Immigrants”

I just remembered how I signed the art “Mary Christmas” since my Dad ( the sole investor in this project ) had endearing nick-names for all us kids in my big family and that was mine since I was born Christmas morning and my first name is actually “Mary”. 

​The list of bars noted here are: O’Donoghue’s Irish Pub, The Gym, The Green Tree, Harp n’ Shamrock, The Avalanche, Murphy’s Law, Thoma’s, Conway’s (2127 Wells, Milwaukee, Wis.), O’Paget’s & Speakeasy, MU: The Mug Rack ( which I think was a bar on campus ), Goodtime Charlie’s, Glocca Morra, The State House, Hegarty’s, Ardmore Bar, and then Real Chili which is a single restaurant (not a chain restaurant) that serves chili similar to Skyline Chili in my hometown of Cincinnati and is also similarly full of students in the late ( or early ) hours after a night on the town bar hopping.



As I was writing out this list of bar names this time around I thought to myself, “What is *Glocca Morra* anyway?” so since the internet has come into existence since the 1980’s, I Goggled it:

Q: Who, What, When, Where or Why is Glocca Morra?
A: It’s a fictional name about a fictional land that comes from the musical “Finian’s Rainbow”.

Wikipedia asks: “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”
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Answer: “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” is a popular song about a fictional village in Ireland, with themes of nostalgia and homesickness. It was introduced by Ella Logan in the original 1947 Broadway production of Finian’s Rainbow.

Here is another new discovery for me and a link to the song in the 1968 Francis Ford Coppola movie Finian’s Rainbow with Fred Astaire and Petula Clark that my google search proceeded to direct me to.  I didn’t really know anything about the movie, or the story, until now. …As we all are likely ( or ‘unlike’-ly ) realizing these days, the internet can have a way of pulling one into colorful tales.  In this movie clip the female character is asked just before the closing song begins, “Sharon, where is Glocca Morra?” and she softly then replies, “Oh, well you see, it is always somewhere… Over there.”
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The about three minute You Tube movie clip highlights this spirit of Ireland and America and a charming older Fred Astaire as Finian.  It is all I know of the movie or the story even, and though quite dated, I still found the little video in and of itself quite poignant yet full of hope. It brought a tear to my eye:
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Finian’s Rainbow: “How are things in Glocca Morra”

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​Both of my parent’s family trees are fully green with Irishness with extensions of family that came from the Emerald Isle to America to pursue a dream or create and build a life here. The McDevitt branch of my big Irish Family Tree ( my Grandma Margaret Mary McDevitt Breslin’s part of my family ) came from Ireland to America and eventually managed to establish themselves in business with McDevitt Department Store.

Above are a couple historical pictures of the stately McDevitt Department Store standing tall on the street corner in the days when business was up and thriving in the neighborhood of Walnut Hills in Cincinnati, Ohio …A district whose businesses for the most part would not survive past the changing landscapes and changing times of mid 20th century America as more and more populations with extra money to spend moved out to the expanding suburbs.

The iconic old beautiful building pictured that was McDevitt’s and distinguishes that part of town is still standing and after being vacant for decades I believe, has just recently been brought new life with the ongoing urban revival of the grand old neighborhood and its new existence as a craft brewery & bar called Esoteric.



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I have many sketchbooks and little notebooks of painting ideas that I think up often.  In the case of these “Animal, Vegetable or Mineral” paintings, the thinking up the puzzle-like process of piecing together the elements, features, or categorical states of being can easily entertain me.  Nevertheless, when I can’t find the time to actually get out my paints to develop these ideas for paintings, the ongoing compilation of composition visions can pull me into a state of over analyzing the possibilities and the what and why of the different pieces of my imagined pictures before I even pull out my brushes.  

​In my intentions for this project I made-up, that over analyzing before I even start to illustrate is not necessarily a wanted part of the creative process as I’d like to just take the ideas as they come when I actually get to the point of putting paint to canvas. That is the way I usually approach my artwork, creating as I go.  For me, the working through my paintings and then reviewing what I see and perceive in them and the feelings the process of creating may bring to light becomes the main value of the artwork as I understand it along with the appreciation of the meaningfulness of the process or the creative ‘journey’ itself.  

For this canvas #14 in my “Twenty Questions/Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?” painting exercise, that strait spontaneity without prior preconceptions was where I came from for the art. In this new year when I found some extra time for this project, I decided to ignore all the previous ideas and layers of notes thinking of different animals and vegetables and minerals for different compositions and just go ahead and paint this model I had just come across in one of my old magazines. 

One of the reasons I decided on this model for canvas #14 is simply because I wanted to paint her curly hair.  Since I found this figure just before beginning to paint, the other elements were just filled in as I went along continuing to cover the canvas. For an animal feature, on her lifted finger I put a dragonfly because a dragonfly just randomly came to my mind at the time. Then for the mineral elements I added to the background a street of concrete lined with paint and telephone wire. A little Goggle research had me questioning what the technical classification of old tall tree trunks known as phone poles to hold telephone wire would fall under, but the grassy green field on which the poles stand and the road rolls made sure to suggest plenty in the picture that can count for what be could be classified as ‘vegetables’ in this “Animal, Vegetable and Mineral” painting project of mine.


Find an explanation about my painting exercise in the following blog:

“Is It Bigger Than A Breadbox? ‘TV Land’, ‘Saturn’, ‘December’ and ‘Parrot Wallpaper’ ”

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​Canvas #14:
Telephone Poles, A Dragonfly, and Other Images

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Season’s Greetings

​Warm wishes for the season and a snapshot of one of our fireplace mantels with holiday lights and a few old and new paintings including some Christmas Card paintings from Christmases past.

Paintings:

Christmas Cards with Little People in the Season of Peace & Joy

 Lacing Skates
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Good Tidings of Comfort and Joy with Merry Memories of Moxie
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​​Like Canvas #12 in my “Is It Bigger Than A Breadbox?” / “Twenty Questions” / “Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?” painting project, my Canvas #13 also touches on the subject of school. Read about the numbered canvas project I made-up here:

"Is It Bigger Than a Breadbox?" 

My canvas #13 is a painting of a painting of the family dog from my kids’ childhood years.  I created the composition to include what can be classified as vegetables as well as what can be classified as minerals by painting our old dog in a holiday setting with a candle, a strand of garland, evergreens, and a wreath plus red bows, paints, and brushes.

We got our black and white bellied rescue dog in the early 2000’s when our kids were just starting primary school. Being that everyone in my family has their birthday in May ( except mine ​), we named the rescue puppy “Moxie May” and called him “Moxie”.  Since the beginning of school days for the kids, Moxie stayed close to our side ( literally for me, when I was the only one home, he was never less than a foot away from me as he followed me everywhere ) filling our home with love, comfort and joy from those very first days of school until the kids were off to college.

We treasure all those years with Moxie by our sides and recognize what a central part his love and companionship was to our family.  One of my favorite memories of the love, loyalty and joyful warmth Moxie brought to our home can be traced back to each and every morning when it was time to catch the school bus. 

The school bus stop for us was very convenient to reach considering it was just right out our front door at the end of our driveway.  Of course when the kids were very young, their dad or I would walk with them to the end of the driveway to catch that step onto the bus, but as we all got a little older we felt it was fine for me to simply wait with my coffee at the front door for the wave. 

Moxie, however,  never saw things that way. For him the walk to the bus stop was not something he was going to let go of. Moxie never stopped seeing that walk from the door to the end of the driveway as a principal part of his day; and I remember watching his loyal dedication to it.

I love remembering how at the end of the driveway, after the kids jumped onto the school bus, Moxie would attentively stay and stand watch as the bus drove off, and down the street,  and past the stop signs, and around the bend until it reached the horizon and disappeared. It was at that point in time where he would gently nod his head down, make a direct 180 degree turn, and begin his journey back up the driveway.

In his ritual, Moxie then proceeded to continue strait back up the winding driveway. Some days I remember him having an energetic, hopping skip in his steps and others just a calm, peaceful evenness to them. All the same, he always carried on his course up the driveway until he reached the walkway which lead to the house. It was there where the walkway branched off the driveway that he then consistently progressed with a clear 90 degree turn towards the front door where I was waiting.

After making the turn, Moxie would then ceremoniously steadily continue on step by step along the curving walkway.  He continued on step by step along the curving walkway until he reached the stoop where he happily hopped up to get to the front door step at which point he would stop at the toes of my feet and look up directly into my eyes with a sense of peacefulness and accomplishment as if to say, “The kids are alright. I saw them off and safely on their way.” He did this each and every day.

       

   

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​There was a time when my kids were younger that dogs were the main subject of my paintings. I painted many of them until around the time that my boys reached high school and I found a little more time to begin an art print business with the subject of baseball. I then painted quite a few baseball players.

​Like our dog Moxie seeing the kids off to school and then a baseball player who attempts a journey around a diamond, in retrospect, going off into the world and then getting back to home safety is an apparent theme here.

Some of those old dog paintings including our rescue dog Moxie as a painted pup can be found in the blog linked below ( as well as my grown boys’ painted dogs of their own that 
they each got in 2020, the year of the Covid pandemic quarantine. ) :

The Joys Found in 2020

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