First, a note: Something is amiss with my blog. Recent posts that I’ve shared with you have (for the most part, I believe) arrived in your email inbox without the accompanying pictures (also with fonts changing, which you may not notice, but I definitely do!). Finding the solution has been harder than expected and is most frustrating – so my apologies for the less interesting visuals you might be seeing. Your patience is appreciated! For the fully pictured as-intended version, please visit the blog itself.  

The post Postcards from Austria appeared first on saxtonstudio blog.

At five years old, this little girl with sparkly glasses from the small town of Warren, New Jersey, was about to embark on the trip of a lifetime.

She would travel with her family across the Atlantic on board the original Queen Mary ocean liner (where, among many other adventures, she’d befriend a waiter named Tony, who would sneak her extra boxes of Sugar Pops, her then favorite cereal), landing on the shores of Southampton, England. From there the six-some would travel by train to Karlsruhe, Germany. (Of note, one brother was inadvertently delivered elsewhere, after strolling onto a car of the train that broke off and headed to France. Fortunately, despite initial panic, he was found and the family remained in tact!)

Once settled into a little house on a street called Gretelweg, she would walk a cobblestoned path to the bus that brought her to kindergarten, where she mostly remembers drawing a lot. She would also play with the neighborhood children, develop a fondness for Toblerone chocolate, visit castles and lap up their lore, travel on winding alpine roads, gape at tulip fields, and collect a doll from each of the umpteen countries they’d visit before arriving home a year later, by then fluent in German.

It was an impressionable age and may very well, as her father suggested, have unwittingly sparked her love for seeing other parts of the world.

While it wasn’t a long stay, Austria had been one of the family’s travel stops. Twenty something years later, she would again visit Germany (and their old house on Gretelweg, which looked even smaller then!) and would again see Austria, noting the similarly striking beauty of both countries. And now, about 60 years later, she’s off once more to Austria – this time to lead an art retreat in the Alps.

Life works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it? I kind of like that. It’s not exactly where it started, but close enough. And part of me will bring the spirit of “little me” along on this next adventure, where I’ll also, no doubt, be drawing a lot and playing with friends.

Side note: I wrote this pre–Austria trip, and have since come and gone (it was glorious), but am just now getting caught up here on my blog. Retreat details coming next!

The post Where It Began appeared first on saxtonstudio blog.

Revered worldwide as one of the most important modernist style architects, Gaudi lived from 1852-1926. “Over the course of his career, Gaudi developed a sensuous, curving, almost surreal design style which established him as the innovative leader of the Spanish Art Nouveau movement. With little regard for formal order, he juxtaposed unrelated systems and altered established visual order. Gaudi’s characteristically warped form of Gothic architecture drew admiration from other avant-garde artists.”

To view Gaudi’s work is to see “thinking outside the box” at whole new levels. His extraordinary examples, many of which reside in Barcelona, are movement and dance; they’re sugar-laced monuments with creamy frosting; they’re marshmallows and gingerbread, sand-castles, stone, glass and iron; they’re original, dramatic, striking blends of angle and color.

I marvel at the boundlessness. Fantastic. Illogical. Stunning.

The post The Magnificence of Antoni Gaudi (or “Things to Marvel At”) appeared first on saxtonstudio blog.

While the planet continues to shift, rearranging the northeast into some kind of Arctic replica, I took some time away, letting my muse wander among talking dolphins, small dragons and lazy hammocks under a hot, shiny sun. Had a cheeseburger in paradise, looked for Jimmy Buffet’s lost shaker of salt (thought it might be in the old Hemingway home, but no). And I pondered which island on the horizon might be the one that my mother purchased years ago.

Yes, my mother bought an island. She would, not often, but on occasion, do things like that. Buy a convertible when a station wagon would be more sensible. Write a letter to the Queen of England. Buy an island. Maybe to defy an orderly life, to make dreams real, to remind herself during times of inevitable routine that she was more than laundry folded and meals on the table; to remind her four children that our dreams were also valid.

We never saw the island. I’m honestly not sure she ever saw the island. The island that might one day be a family gathering place, or an artist retreat, or a healing place, or who knows what ~ a dream without limits. It could well be that the island was no more than a single palm tree on a lump of earth bulging from the Gulf of Mexico. Or it could have been a small but bona fide piece of paradise. It was sold, so we’ll never know ~ but the idea of it ~ the loveliness, the throw-caution-to-the-wind of it, the hopefulness and cheer of it, lives on in me.

………………

An Island Lost

Stars like freshly polished gems,
Close enough to touch –
A sprinkling of stardust
Soundlessly rests on giant palms
And sweeps across the sea,
A silent chime,
The whisper of a song
With familiar, forgotten words from
The language of dreams.

How far the distance between then and now?
A heartbeat? A century? All of time?

A story unfinished, a vision unseen
Green and blue on sandy shores
Ripe with adventures not taken.
A red sail, a setting sun,
Flowers in our hair.
An island lost awaits
A barefoot waltz,
Promising secret treasures.

But instead, a more reliable path.
Feet on solid ground. And yet ~

And yet,
A cactus grows in winter, and
Mysteries breathe in hickory trees
Where cardinals, red and fit,
Watch from lofty branches.
A poem from the future,
And guiding stars
like freshly polished gems,
Close enough to touch –

Stardust falls on me,
On you,
Then, and now,
There, and here
Inside this sky
Where dreams wander
And Prometheus plays
And Shakespeare sings
And Copernicus soars
And hands are held
And laughter swells
And love is forever
And ever.

~ P. Saxton

The post Margaritaville and The Lost Island appeared first on saxtonstudio blog.

Of course, the truth is that sometimes (most of the time) I just have to use my imagination ~ but that’s not too hard with doors like these.  Ah, what stories they could tell…

The post Some Doors I Have Known appeared first on saxtonstudio blog.

Don’t know how the March weather will play out this year ~ we’ll just have to wait and see ~ but the old phrase “in like a lion, out like a lamb” conjured up some fond lion-memories for me.

It was in Kenya, about this time of year back in 1990, that I captured a small lion family on my old Chinon 35mm. So I thought I’d share part of a sequence that delights me now almost as much as it did watching it unfold in front of me then.

They look so sweet, don’t they? We were reminded that despite appearances, they are killers ~ and we were only 20 feet away . It was an extraordinary treat being so close, but I was equally glad for my zoom lens (and that Mama Lion decided we weren’t a threat and could get back to her nap). What a beautiful wonder they are.

The post March: Like a Lion appeared first on saxtonstudio blog.

Unplugged is when you decide to stay away from all work and computer / electronic connection.

Very unplugged is when Mother Nature steps in to be sure you fulfill that intention. Something along the lines of a rainstorm. Drenching your laptop. Unrecoverable. Which is what happened to mine on my “unplugged” trip ~ just so there was no cheating, even if I’d wanted to.

The bad news, of course, was having to get a new laptop sooner than I’d hoped. The good news ~ it was a liberating 7 days. I highly recommend it. Just one caveat: be careful what you ask for. The universe just might give your request an unexpected boost!

In any event, thought I’d share a small taste of what I did instead of checking emails and monitoring facebook pages… (Thank you rainstorm?)

The post Getting What You Ask For appeared first on saxtonstudio blog.

Me, Relaxing

Thought I’d share a few paintings that came out of my Kenyan experience several years back. More haunt my mind and lurk in my paintbrushes, but there are so many paintings to paint and so little time…

Kenyan Landscape / 5’X7′ / © Patricia Saxton

Flower Lady / 4’X4′ / © Patricia Saxton

Kenyan Plains / 9X12″ / © Patricia Saxton

And here’s me, capturing great shots. Looking younger too. Ah… Hakuna Matata.

Me, Captivated

The post Kenya Inspired appeared first on saxtonstudio blog.