a little green for christmas....?

i hope you enjoy this sequence.  it is not always easy to shoot photos step by step as you go - especially if you are working alone. i worked on this series of 1940 (approx.) girls in swim suits on two different days - you can tell by the tablecloth color.  it was last summer.  when i laid down the green-- then the cream colors, on my series of 8" x 8' canvases, i really had no idea where i was going with it, what would be my subject matter?   but the next time i worked on them, i happened to have had with me  a royalty free book of old newspaper ads (dover publishing)  i glued some down (copied pictures) and went to work blending them into my canvas colors.  any questions?
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so merry christmas.
i hope you all are enjoying a merry christmas - later when you are relaxing and sipping your wine or champagne - take out a brush and paint without thinking - its very liberating - er, while inebriated.  trust me.  try some automatic painting - i mean if you aren't going to be all rude bringing out your paints in your  studio/dining room table while your family or guests are seated there eating and talking.
or you might wait until they leave.......  if you aren't too tired from the day of entertaining with family that just doesn't quite gel together - and leave you with an uncomfortable edge as you wonder, who the hell are these people.  or perhaps you will be too frazzled from cooking and worrying if you had just the right kind of food or enough of it or maybe too much of it and your guest will think of you as an overachiever and an overdoer - and they will implore you to just relax - but they won't understand that everything is planned out and has a pace to it - gawd you wish they would leave you to your kitchen.  can't they entertain themselves with TV or a talk about last years christmas (except not that part about dad when he got pissed about a scratch on his car when one of the kids threw a football in the street).  and you wish your sleazy sister wouldn't come in the kitchen and tell you about a secret affair she is having with an  old high school boyfriend - she's doing it not for love, but for the really kinky sex.  and you wonder how you will manage to finish choping up the salad without throwing up in it - you look over to your husband with pleading eyes to signal to get your sister out of the kitchen, but he isn't in tune to you because he is too busy flicking stations with that damn remote trying to find something something skimpily clad - to watch on tv burrowing himself in - ready to ignore everyone and leave you helpless.  damn its his family too.
 and you worry, at the end of dinner were your guests happy, satisfied, did they have a good time, did they noticed that you slightly burned the pie crust or didn't rinse your spinach leaves the mandatory 3 times because you were distracted by the children running into the kitchen or pet or husband because they needed a drink of water just then or a taste of your salad dressing or to steal a pickle or cucumber and perhaps run their dirty fingers through the mashed potatoes before your can get them completely whipped into a nice peak.   maybe you look out the window to the porch and wonder when the hell your brother will stop that nasty habit of smoking - its gonna kill him and leave you with his diabetic wife and fat babies to look after and worry about.  then you start to remember mom.  did she really go through this every christmas?  weren't times easier then - at least you are sure- she didn't have to listen to a sister speak in hushed tones in a long torturous tell-all that is kinky in her (sacred) kitchen on christmas day.  was your mom able to sit down and paint at the end of the day? - nah, you think - nah, not mom, she didn't need to because she handled everything with grace and good humor.  she didn't need to do some automatic (drunken) painting to steal a little of her creative self back.  no, she was wholly mom and cooking for family is all she wanted to do - ever.  her christmas dinner always had a wonderful perfect rhythm and pace -a familiar music and always relaxing, always the same and always the best.  how did she do it?
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oh dear, sorry about that rant.  i better go to bed so i can have this day i just described - its only a few hours away.
email or call me if you get bored and wanted tell me about your christmas day.   i will understand.  me?  i'm gonna start drinking early sipping spiked eggnog.