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Walking through the aisles at the stores, it is clear that “Back-to-School” time has come around again. Although there are no longer any back-to-school kids in my house ( thankfully at times especially during these sad and scary days of the increasingly dangerous spread of Covid and its variants ) for me it is still a new beginning of sorts. For me it is still a new beginning of sorts because it is the time of year when I again go down the back-to-school supplies aisles to get a new one of those many “planners” or organizing calendars that they sell this time of year. I am due for another one being that the calendars usually run from July to August of the following year. I love shopping through them since they come with all kinds of fancy organizing designs and layouts. My favorites are the ones that help you ‘color code’ to keep things organized. When paging through my planner or calendar organizer from the past year, I came across this quick gel pen doodle that I had filled in on one of the many unused pages. It is not unusual for me to find unused planner pages as I tend to go with my own flow as life comes to me; and though I have usually taken pride in my organizational skills, I am pretty far from being a strict planner. On top of that, prior to my Covid vaccination shots this past Spring of 2021, organizing a busy calendar of events, plans, travel, etc. clearly wasn’t what life in this world called for or even allowed in some cases. So, needless to say, the pages unused for planning in recent times are many. Now I am starting to think that with this new calendar I am going to need it more than ever as events get scheduled and then rescheduled again with the end of the summer once more bringing uncertainty on this earth. Doodle on old calendar planner page:  Actually, it is not unusual for me to find random doodles in notebooks of any kind; but when I came across the quick loose sketch in one of my actual sketchbooks pictured below, I remembered how seeing that loosely drawn sketch ( artwork that in general appears unfinished and a pretty lethargic effort ) had put the subject in my mind to doodle a similar posture again on one of my many doodled planner pages. Sketchbook page:  I believe that I did that quick sketch in my sketchbook a long time ago and first found the figure in an ad or something like that. It was interesting to me that I doodled the likeness twice, so I decided to give the subject and her posture more focus by creating a painting. To expand on the canvas, I just thought up different elements and created a setting to place it. The painting itself became inspiration for another series of painting ideas that I have had spinning in my head to do as a creative exercise. Those painting imaginings that I have can be part of an art project that I can ‘go-with-the-flow’ and plan to expand upon later. Painting on 8 x 10 Canvas: 
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As we celebrate Father’s Day this month, I remember a blog from years ago I called “Remembrances of Loving Fathers”. In the blog link below, you can see the artwork I did of my Dad and where I reflected upon his “heartfelt sentimentality, his endless generosity, and his genuine & giving spirit.” “Remembrances of Loving Fathers” All those that knew and loved my dad miss him so. I know that my husband had great admiration for him as they shared a mutual love and respect for each other. To say the very least, the same could undoubtedly be said about my now young adult sons and their dad. Here is painting I did of my sons Sam & Joey and their dad ( my husband, Kyle ). It is based on an old favorite summer vacation snapshot of my boys that shines light on the love and happiness they continue to share when they are together. { For the painting, I customized the palette for their t-shirts to match our traditional family board game colors: A blue painted t-shirt for clear-blue eyed Kyle. A bright yellow t-shirt for the warmth of my sunshine Sam. And an emerald green shirt for the lucky Irishness of loving Joey. - - Red is my game piece color. }  Unlike in the Spring of 2020, on the first of this month of April 2021 we got to say, “Happy Opening Day” in the U.S.A. ~ Baseball is back for the fans ( ...socially distanced style. ) Here are some hometown baseball players from seasons past that I painted:  “The Timeless Charlie Hustle and the Geometry of a Rose” Blog Link: "The Timeless Charlie Hustle" and the "Geometry of a Rose" - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder  “Number Eleven and the Four Elements” Blog Link: 'Number Eleven and the Four Elements' featuring Barry Larkin - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder  “Bench Number Five ~ The Earth is a Baseball” Blog Link: Bench Number Five ~ The Earth is a Baseball - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder  The Flame Throwing “Cuban Missile” Blog Link: Hope Springs Eternal on *Opening Day* - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder  “Dat Dude Double Play” Blog Link: Hope Springs Eternal on *Opening Day* - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder   “Fly Me To The Moon” ~ All Star Home Run Derby Champ Blog Link: Hope Springs Eternal on *Opening Day* - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder  Remembering #8 This year, along with my hometown, I will also remember one of the most timeless Hall of Fame greats who was a central piece of one of the world’s most legendary teams = “The Big Red Machine”. This celebrated “Big Red Machine” is famously remembered for its renowned starting lineup of players dubbed “The Great 8” who led the powerhouse team to back-to-back World Series Championships and league dominance in the 1970’s. The beloved great of “The Great 8” that will be forever remembered is none other than Cincinnati’s #8: Joe Morgan. Sadly Joe Morgan, whose #8 was retired in 1998, passed away last fall in October of 2020. ~ I will always remember him. When I was a kid in the 1970’s, number 8 was my favorite number and Joe Morgan was my favorite Red. I wrote a little about my memories of those victoriously diverse and dynamic “Big Red Machine” players that Joe Morgan ( the 10-time All-Star and five-time Gold Glove winning best-second-baseman-of-all-time Hall of Famer ) was such a pivotal part of in my reflections on my painting of the whole collection of those “Great 8” players plus their manager Sparky Anderson. I called that piece: “Colorful Success”. Blog Link: Colorful Success - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder  “Colorful Success” = “The Big Red Machine”
See and read about more paintings and memories of some more of Cincinnati's Championship teams in other blogs including: “My Wire-to-Wire Summer with Twelve Stars and A Piece of American History” and ”Opening Day Delay” Sometimes I pull out a sketchbook just to relax and/or to clear and focus my mind. It’s a form of meditation I guess that can often release old stresses or grief and reveal new layers of insight or hope and renewal for me. ...Or sometimes like in this case, it can be mostly just fun. Today I pulled out my sketchbook after doodling in an old calendar a little Polynesian girl wearing a head wreath that I saw in an ad. Being motivated to see and find the simple childlike joyfulness, sincerity, and wonder in life (especially after living through these seriously troubled times in the world and more than a year of an ongoing global pandemic), I recreated the girl in the style of a cartoon. I then meandered with doodling throughout the rest of the page while not thinking too much about what it was I was drawing. When I put the sketchbook down, I reviewed the simple drawing of the young girl and found the figure endearing as if being captured with a sense of awe. Then I looked at the whole drawn page of doodles and reflected further on some of my many perceptions. The round imagery roughly outlined that resembles a figure eight mostly made me think of interpretive forms of the earth & sky and an awareness of the powerful cyclical, interconnected and recycling nature of nature. During this season of this year especially, when the celebration of the earth’s recreation can be found all around on painted eggs and in all that is finding the power to bloom, I like to see the youthful drawing of the young figure reflecting the renewed spirit of springtime. The renewed spirt of springtime with a fresh appreciation of the awesomeness of the force of life and its great potential rediscovered as well as a perception of the concepts of the globe’s circular flow as bringing a healing reflective wash that resurfaces endless growth and the returning view of life as new once again.    My old facebook pages have come around to “Time-hop” share again my painting and some posts with my artwork as well as a little bit of information I learned about the origins of the annual “Ides of March”, the day after “Pi Day”, on the calendar :  I called the oil painting on canvas “Resurrected Tulips”.  ...Also used this artwork in the blog "The Color of Winter is in the Imagination". Spinning-out some spring vibes... { 30’ x 15’ canvas }  This is some artwork that I started playing with around New Year's, at the beginning of this new year January 2021, but I did not get around to finishing it until this week. It is a composition where I reimagined various images, figures, postures, fashions, designs and layers of patterns to create the painting pictured which includes the reflection of ancient universal and eternal concepts of sacred geometry. One of the photos includes an owl painting of mine that I have had floating around my studio space for years that inspired me to add an owl figure in the piece.            Some other new year paintings and reflections that I have blogs about on this website and one of my baseball blogs that also reflects on geometry and includes links to more baseball art: January 2016: "Process Pictures from January 2016 Painting" Process Pictures from Jan. 2016 Painting - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder January 2017: "January March" January March - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder January 2018: "Air to Water: The Revolution of Ten Koi" Air to Water: The Revolution of Ten Koi - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder January 2020: "Facing 2020 in 12 Streams" Facing 2020 in 12 Streams - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder December 2020: "Welcome 2021" Welcome 2021 - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder Baseball Blog: "The Timeless Charlie Hustle and The Geometry of a Rose" "The Timeless Charlie Hustle" and the "Geometry of a Rose" - Chrissy Breslin Schroeder I just came across this sketch folded up in a stock of old sketchbooks, designs, ideas, etc. that I must have been playing around with a long time back... The subject is my mom when she was a young lady. ~ I'm thinking that at the time I just folded it up because I didn't think much of the artwork or really give it that much effort ( or maybe I just never found the time to finish it ), but I like it now and am reminded of what a kindhearted beauty she was. Marian Gabriel { "Mimi" } Fox Breslin ( 1933 - 2003 ) :  I am the youngest of her and my Dad’s ( Leo J. Breslin, 1928 - 2000 ) seven children. Together they had three sons and four daughters making theirs a family of nine. I’ll add this other find I also came across this past week while putting away the stash of Christmas decor and collectibles. It’s my mom’s hospital card from the day I was born. ~ As is probably so for many or most people about his or her birthday, I’ve always found the numbers and date interesting as far as numbers and dates go. My mom always told me that it was peaceful to be in hospital the Sunday I was born and away from the hyperactivity of Christmas morning. ( She had all her 7 children within 9.5 years. ) There has never been a time that I could not imagine how that could have been the case for her.  This January is so welcome... Wishing us all the best in 2021. Organizing old photos on this New Year’s Day & added a slide file of painting process pictures to my blog on this website from July 2018 { "High Summer (2018)" } Slides of Process Pictures from Artwork in that Blog:  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Here are some pictures of the joys found in 2020 and my painted Christmas gifts that I surprised each of my sons with since both of them got a new puppy this past year. In February 2020, my Joey, who loves to spend as many winter weeks as possible in the mountains skiing, got a Bernedoodle he named "Gigi". - - And then around Thanksgiving, my Sam, who is loving life living in Chelsea, Manhattan, got his French Bulldog named "Sprout". *Gigi* the Bernedoodle:   The real Gigi ~  *Sprout* the Big City Dog: { Sprout's painting background is based on one of Sam's spontaneous texts to me of the wonderful settings found in his neighborhood of Chelsea, Manhattan. In particular in this case, it was a texted photo of a beautiful garden with tall sunflowers growing right along the side of the road that I remembered and reviewed for inspiration in the painting of Sprout. }   The real Sprout ~  A picture of Joey & Sam after opening their Christmas gift surprise. ( The artwork in the background of this photo is my brother’s acquired painting by my Great-Grandpa, William P. McDonald, of my great aunt. )  A Little Slideshow of Some of the Process Pictures of the Grandpups: When my boys were younger, there was an era when I painted dogs all the time. I used to call my home studio space the dog pound because when you walked into the room all you would see were so many dogs… all kinds of dogs each with a different expression staring down from the stacked rows of shelves encircling the room. Here are a few images of some of my old dog artwork that I was able to find on my current computer. ( There are many more pictures of my dog paintings, but they are on an old computer file. )   A “Redbone Coonhound”. (…haha, that is what my photo file’s label says it is.) :     I remember creating all kinds of various background designs, patterns, and abstractions in the paintings...      This one appears to take some inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright...  This one I created to donate the artwork to a fundraiser for my sons' high school. ( The school building constructed in 1960 is made with tan colored brinks that are distinctive of that time period. - - I believe that was my inspiration for the layering of the tan rectangular abstractions behind the dog. )  These hooks… During my “dog period”, as my son once jokingly called it, I crafted stock loads of these wall hooks with many different pictures of my dog art and sold them at art shows, etc. Here are a couple pictures of the wall hooks I was able to find in my photo files. Similar to my St. X Golden Retriever, one of them is a drawing of a Cincinnati Reds theme dog that I sold with my baseball art when painting baseball players later replaced my subject of dogs.   This old snapshot of a collection of painted dog tiles is looking like what we would call a ‘Zoom’ meeting in 2020…  A while back, I painted this guard dog canvas sitting on our fireplace mantel.  An old painted canvas with a dog subject just created out of my imagination.  ....And finally and most memorable to me is a little oil painting of our beloved family dog “Moxie” when he was a puppy. Our family got “Moxie May” as a rescue dog the May Sam turned 9 and Joey turned 6 and he stayed loyally & lovingly by our sides until after both the boys were well off to college. ~ Here is a photo of a wall in our new home with the Moxie puppy painting looking at us through a stream of captured sunlight.  |
AuthorI am a 'self-taught' artist who can hardly remember a day when I wasn't in the process of creating something... Thanks for visiting my site where I can share some of my work. Archives
August 2021
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