Vermont art
My wife is something of an artist—not the bizarre, fixed, cold type of artist who obsesses over color spectra and schools of technique and philosophy, but rather the thoughtful kind of human being who tends to see things a little differently and skillfully puts her vision down on a blank page or canvas so the rest of us can see it too. She's not extremely prolific or driven to spend four hours a day in her studio, but probably about once a week she gets the urge to create something. For her the act of creating art is a spiritual experience. In her own small way she emulates the One who created her and expresses something of herself in the art she makes.
Our stay in Vermont last week inspired her to paint a landscape. We saw rolling mountains bursting with fall-colored trees. We saw early American architecture in houses, inns, shops, and covered bridges. We saw the work of artists such as Grandma Moses, Norman Rockwell, and a number of incredibly talented regional painters, sculptors, and craftsmen. If I were an artist, I would have been inspired myself. After viewing the furniture of Peter Maynard, I felt a sincere desire to become a carpenter. Of course a memory of my failure to construct a six-sided box in junior high woodshop quickly squelched that feeling, but Mr. Maynard's furniture was cool nonetheless.
Anyway, one day during our vacation Mrs. Happy really wanted to paint. She hadn't brought any of her art supplies along on the trip, however, so we went to the nearest grocery store in search of cheapo kid water colors, colored pencils, drawing paper, anything that she could use. The grocery store disappointed us greatly. It had drawing paper, but no paint of any kind, no colored pencils, no colored pens, no markers, nothing. Drawing on all the ingenuity at our disposal, we purchased a pad of drawing paper, a bag of Skittles, a bag of M&Ms, a package of Q-Tip brand cotton swabs, and a seven-day pill organizer.
When we got everything back to the hotel, Mrs. Happy put seven different colored candies into each compartment of the pill organizer and put some water in a glass. She dipped a cotton swab in the water, rubbed some of the coloring off of a Skittle, then transferred the artificial dye to paper, thereby creating her own sweet water color painting.
I usually write about things that directly concern the topic of marriage, but today I just want to say that my wife is so cool. Click on the small image below to see her candy-colored painting. Click on the small image below that to see a pencil drawing of her impressions of the trip in general.
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