The importance of joy

Pugwash Flower People

Acrylic on canvas

24 x 24 inches

Barbara Muir © 2012

SOLD ♥

I've been teaching tonight, an activity that like painting

definitely brings me joy. I feel like sharing this painting
I did some years ago, and then revised adding in the woman,
Maxine.  These two -- Ken and Maxine -- are the Pugwash flower
people, and in many ways they have transformed the gardens in their
area of Nova Scotia, and all the way over here in Toronto
with variants of petunias that didn't exist before.

We discovered Ken years ago just after we first starting going
out to Nova Scotia every summer.  Then Maxine came
on the scene and she is also a vital part of the flower
business, and of creating new types of flowers.  They
are a treat.  I am thinking about Elizabeth Gilbert and her book
on creativity, Big Magic.  She believes that we need to
approach creativity with "stubborn gladness."  I love that
idea.

I wrote about this before -- how my mother was one of
the most valiantly cheerful people I ever met.  I'm grateful
to her.  She stayed delighted by the world, especially by
nature, through serious illness in her final years, and
increasing blindness.  Somehow I got a heaping helping
of her positive energy.  She was critical too, and would
have been devastated about what we're doing to the planet.
She was ultra conservationist.

Soon we are heading to Pugwash and I hope to see this
couple who are adding to the beauty of the world every
day.  They definitely have the concept of stubborn gladness down.

Have a looking for the positive and changing the negative day.