Sunday and sidewalk art

Spring Table (detail)
acrylic on canvas
12 x 36 inches
Barbara Muir © 2008
(The white at the bottom
of the painting is actually the skirt
overlapping from a girl in another painting
the two paintings can from a diptych or
stand alone.)

It was an absolutely beautiful day today, and
I was pretty busy working on things around the
house, buying art supplies and catching up like
we all do on the weekend. But when I popped
my head out the front door at one point my
neighbours were out with their little daughter,
who is two, helping her draw on the walk up
to their house with sidewalk chalk. Her Dad
was making shapes for her, and she was
bending down very seriously and drawing on
top of the shapes in colour.

I asked them to work on our crooked little
walk too, and looked out later to see a sailboat
and the ocean, and our schoolhouse and a tree.
Perfect. I love those simple shapes.

The painting today is another detail from a
kitchen painting. It's terribly disrupting to
my family when I tackle one of these things,
because I put white paper down over our
kitchen table, and outline where each book,
candlestick, coffee cup, sugar bowl, and vase sits
in the painting. Then when it's supper time I
take everything off, roll up the paper, and start
again as soon as everyone's left the kitchen.
I think that's called plein-kitchen.

Have a happy-disrupting-routines-for-art day.