Looking good and International Hug Day

 I picked you

Acrylic on birch panel

5 x 7 inches

Barbara Muir © 2014

Off the top, Happy International Hug Day.
I hope you had someone to hug.  If not hug
yourself -- a technique for curing winter
blahs suggested by a very happy sounding
woman on CBC radio today.  She said
hug yourself, and say, 'You are the best!'
Try it.

Now for looking. For an artist looking is like a
drug, and we are definitely addicted. 

But what I wanted to talk about instead was
how we mull things over.  How we see an
image, or person, or face, or colour, or
technique, sometimes over and over again,
are attracted to it, and still hang back like a
high school kid afraid to make the first move
on a date.

A case in point -- I'd looked at these market
flowers when I got them from PegAnn, and
wanted to paint them right away.  But it was late
summer, the day of my mother-in-law's birthday
party, then huge, hard life events happen, and I
didn't get to it.

Whipping back through my photos today looking
for a certain painting, I saw this image and said,
"Yes.  Now's the time!"

Side note:  These flowers were on the reject heap
at PegAnn's booth.  I am a regular in market season,
and she said I could take them.  Their heads where
flopping, their stems were broken, but they were
glorious. I bandaged them with masking tape, and
they lasted most of a week, and now are stars in my
painting.  A happy ending, all from looking hard,
and belief.

Have a loving-what-you're-looking-at day