MUTTON BUSTIN'

Our town hosts an amateur rodeo on the weekend of July 4^th at the County Fairgrounds just a couple of blocks from our house.

The beginning event is the Mutton Bustin’ which is kids riding sheep.  There aren’t many rules.  The main goal is to stay on the sheep as long as possible.

If you’re lucky a rodeo clown will catch you before you bite the dust.

 If you’re not so lucky…

 …the clown misses.

 Even a cowgirl with a pink helmet gives it a shot and comes out with a very high score.

 My favorite was this guy.  He had a look of grim determination and he hung on with just one hand for most of his long ride.

The sheep bucked and ran so fast the poor clown was seriously challenged to keep up.

 But he was there for the catch when the ride ended almost at the fence.

 The young man walked back past the rodeo princess with his prize money and got a big high five from the judge.

ANTIQUE GLASS TWO - Another original by me

I've been working on more watercolor paintings of glass bottles.  I have a small collection of vintage bottles I've found in thrift shops and dusty basements which I sometimes set up for still life scenes.

This one I decided to do by switching around colors from those of the originals.  The gray color you see here is masking fluid I applied to make sure the white of the paper was preserved while I applied the background. 

Here I've started to add some pretty unconventional colors to the jars and bottles.

Then I pulled off the masking and continued to paint in the details.

The final piece I named "Antique Bottles Two"

 Because I'd already done a painting of this scene with more realistic colors.

They are both for sale along with many others at my Etsy Site:  Watercolors by Leenie.

National Poetry Month Day Thirty

Prompt:  Artist Max Ernst was one of the pioneers of the Dada and Surrealism movements.  Be inspired by some of his painting titles (use the titles directly in your poem, in  part, or just be inspired in a surreal way): the fireside angel, eye of silence, birth of a galaxy, everyone here speaks Latin, murdering airplane, the wavering woman, two children are threatened by a nightingale, dream and revolution, totem and taboo.

Eliot Phone Home
Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale

As long as old men sit and talk about the weather

Measuring out their life in wind speed and temperature

As long as old women in the room
Come and go talking about old men

I’ve had this overwhelming question.

I lift and drop the question on my plate

Like a wavering woman

Do I dare? And Do I dare

Disturb the Birth of a Galaxy?

And how should I begin?

I grow old… I grow old…

And I won’t come back from the dead

To answer...

If heat rises, then shouldn't hell be cold?

And if hell is cold

Then Mars ain’t the kind of place to send your kids

And there’s no one there to raise them if you did

Here it’s just my job eight days a week.

And now where’s their Dada?

They’re burnin’ up my shoes with aerosol.

Yes, there will be time to murder and create.

Before the taking of tea and toast.