Girls Splashing at the Pool

Girls Splashing at the Pool, mixed media

As they say in Britain where I come from it's brass monkies out there! The expression is both rather charming and rather crude when you find out what it means but it is still a cute phrase meaning it's getting rather nippy out there!

Living in Baltimore has been something of a shock to the system for a woman born on a sodden island. Here the summers are so incredibly hot and humid that you have to spend your days up to your neck in water like a hippo if you want to feel semi-human! But now that it is Fall and the leaves are all turning orange suddenly I start missing summer, the humidity, drinking iced tea by the pool and even the screeches of kids while I try to 'chillax' with a copy of People Magazine.

So I'm linking this image I did called 'Girls Splashing at the Pool' to Paint Party Friday because I love how the girl in the front is screaming. It is so wonderful to just let all your pent up energy out sometimes! But it gets more socially unacceptable as you grow into adulthood. It is watercolor overlaid with chalky pastel.

Here's looking forward to winter and looking back at one swelteringly hot summer .....

When Pug Met Chameleon

Reading about how Marvin Gaye's estate is suing Robin Thicke for imitating Gaye's song in Blurred Lines got me thinking about art and whether any image is really original. I guess we are all subconsciously influenced by many pictures we have seen over the years when we create art.

After I did my picture of When Pug Met Chameleon and posted it on Facebook my German friend who I do a German literature class with commented that she remembered that when we read Bernhard Schlink's Das Maedchen mit der Eidechse/Girl with Salamander we also looked at a picture which might have influenced me subconciously:

Das Maedchen mit der Eidechse by Ernst Stueckelberg

My German teacher had a point, indeed, the similarities are quite strong. But the pug's expression in my painting is more terrified. Isn't it amazing the way images get stuck in one's head?