A Hallelujah Kind of Mess

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.

Twyla Tharp

Let's face it - there is not much color about in winter, and encountering a little or a lot in late January is something to be treasured.  This morning, my palette and brushes and the pigments in all those dear little pots, tubs and tubes are singing and dancing and come hithering like fin de siècle cabaret dancers.

Purple, scarlet, saffron, cobalt and turquoise - the vivid hues are enough to make one swoon.  All swooshed up side by side on the palette, they're almost indecently sumptuous, and swirling them round and round together is something else.  Even the exuberantly spattered floor here is fine arty stuff, and probably much more so than my daubings and smearings on canvas, paper and all over myself.

I can't paint my way out of a paper bag, a telephone booth or a tardis, but that is quite all right.  I am running away today, but without ever setting a foot beyond the threshold of the little blue house in the village and into deep snow.

What a splendid sticky "hallelujah" kind of mess I am about to make - it's just the thing for a gray day like this. Oh yeah, we can do this, can we ever...