Blogging joys and sorrows

Sleeping dog with cat food can

Watercolour and marker on

Arches watercolour paper

6 x 10 inches

Barbara Muir © 2013

A friend I met through the blog sent me a wonderful book
on Lucian Freud, an artist I greatly admire.  I was working
very hard on dull administrative tasks when the mailman
delivered this book Man with a Blue Scarf dropping it
between my front doors with a thump, to lift the day into
an entirely different level of pleasure.  This is what we
bloggers do for one another -- with our blogs, our
comments, and the unique and moving friendships that can
arise out of the experience of sharing one another's art and
writing, and caring about one another's lives.

My friend Henriette Sonne, who I met in Florence, and who
I've painted numerous times, said that with the ability
to see into one another's houses via Skype, comes the
responsibility we feel as neighbours, even though we can
be half a world away. When we meet people through their
art and words, we care about their lives.  And this is a
good thing.

In the past month one blog friend lost her mother, and
another was saddened at the loss of a beloved pet.
When my friend, the wonderful artist, George, died
this winter -- friends in the blog world understood that
loss.

This is the best of what the cyberworld can do -- create
communities of people who offer kindness, support,
intellectual encouragement and ideas -- sometimes from
the other side of the planet.

Thank you for being there for me.  And thank you for
the inspiring book!

Today's painting is of my dog Zoey sleeping on her
fake sheepskin rug, with her precious empty cat
food can nearby.  She fished that can out of the
recycle bin by the kitchen door.

Have a sharing-each-other's-joys-and-sorrows day.