"Untitled Gray" Entered for Saatchi Showdown Vote!

I've entered "Untitled Gray" in the SAATCHI SHOWDOWN round that runs this week, from May 19 - 26. Can you please take a minute to give my painting your vote? Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to vote in the past.

On most days, the site loads quite fast, and the voting takes just a second! Thanks again for your support! Wishing you all a productive week and sunny skies.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/showdown/index.php?showpic=139563

Image c Lynda Lehmann. If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my gallery at Imagekind .

Surging Into Sunlight

After a late spring rain, the freshened arbor bursts with life force. Blooming and burgeoning plant-forms grope their way into another season of being, under the whispering canopy. The rhythm of rushing water underscores the call of all things wild and free, into fresh growth, vigor, and sparkling green. Resilient, life unfolds.

The forest shows us the conjoined poles of the Grand Paradox, the dynamic mix and sensuous interplay of masculine and feminine principles, the unknowable yin and yang. From the steady, sure, unfading boulders anchoring the multitude of energies, to the glimmering rivulets vibrating amid fecund shores; from the pristine, continuous blue of the sky-dome to the groping aggregates of rough moss and lichen fields; to the fleeting but certain presence of pungent breeze....

Something stirs in my soul, and it is larger than joy.

Image and text c Lynda Lehmann. If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my gallery at Imagekind .

Midnight Rampage and "Art Cries Out" Protest-Art Website

Deep red-orange streaking curves against a moody dark blue-purple ground evoke a dramatic clash or confrontration in this abstract digital piece. Image c Lynda Lehmann.

If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my gallery at Imagekind .

ART CRIES OUT: A PROTEST-ART WEBSITE


A real-time friend told me about this site, so I checked it out.

http://www.artcriesout.com/homepage.html

"Art Cries Out" promotes and features protest art. For those of us who experience malaise because we have serious peace, justice and environmental concerns, this may be just what the doctor ordered. So go on over and pay them a visit, give them your support, and maybe submit your protest art! I think they take writing as well as images.


I hope to dig up my anti-nuclear posters sometime before or during the summer, to submit to them. This is another way to make our voices heard! I'm sorry for posting twice in 24 hours, but I found this site and I think it's important to get this post about it out there!

"Where the Truth Lies" is available at Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography and will soon be in my gallery at Imagekind . I think this image and title, implying multiplicity, go well with the idea of justice for all.

Sky Blue Universe

View From the Jetty on a Pristine Day -c 2008 Lynda Lehmann

Sky Blue Universe

sunlight bends to grasp and hold
far regions bound to earth.
horizon ties heaven, land, and sea,
the universe-continuum
whose color is the sky.

waters, skies, pass days to nights.
boulders massive, algae slight
bind all to One
grand cycle, play, and song,
transforming dark to light.

- Text and image c Lynda Lehmann 2008


Image c Lynda Lehmann. If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my gallery at Imagekind.

The Time of Her Life

This past Sunday my husband and I walked at a nearby beach. The day was pristine, abundant with sunshine and fresh air. Both the sky and water were the most gorgeous, sparkling hues of blue and the wind was calm. Everything felt right: a truly mellow and harmonious afternoon.

A child's joy is precious. This little girl romping through the water along the edge of Long Island Sound is feeling not only the coolness and refreshment of the water splashing her feet, but also the caress of the wind and the warmth of a giving sun. She is truly discovering life, opening her senses to the wonders of the world around her. Since I wasn't carrying a model release, I photographed her from the side and back.

As adults, we can open ourselves to our "inner child." Taking time out to visit a beautiful place with a spouse or friend is half the battle. Remember the saying "You gotta be there!"? Isn't it amazing how just "being there" can rid us of our preoccupations and open new doors of perception and experience?

Here are a few more photos. I wanted to share the beauty and drama of this setting with you. I shot 245 photos that afternoon, in less than two hours. Yes, I admit to being a camera nut! But who would trade away such joy? And with digital, I don't worry about wasting film or buying prints which I'll later have to toss.

What I like about the shot above is the sense of scale the viewer gets from the tiny figures in the background, while the mass of the boulders anchors the panorama and gives a sure sense of foreground.

Here are gulls seeming to fly in tandem. We enjoyed seeing a lot of waterfowl activity on this sand spit, and shooting in "sports mode" allowed me to capture many shots of them in flight, including a huge gull swooping around with a clam in his mouth. In spite of this wonderful feature built into my SONY Alpha D-SLR, my telephoto could do only so much to bring the scene closer. This image and the others I took of the gulls, are a little far away for my taste. I wish I had been able to get closer to the feeding frenzy and gossip session taking place on that narrow peninsula!

Here's a view looking from the wetlands out to the open water of the Sound. I was taken by the weathered look and textural features of what was apparently once a dock, and I'll upload some of my recent beach close-ups in my next post. In this saltwater marsh, the holes where crabs had dug into the sand were everywhere. In here, sheltered from the breeze over the open water, we heard bountiful birdsong and saw a great variety of scrubby trees and some varieties of pine I can't name, as well as flowering bushes. Seagulls called raucously over our heads as they made their way down the channel, following the last surge of receding tidal flow.

Here are pebbles in a tidal pool, smoothed by years of surging and receding water. Their brilliant colors are enhanced by their wetness. I'm always fascinated by rocks and pebbles for their surface qualities, mass, and the feeling of enduring presence they convey.

Here are two more images, shot at close range. Notice the gorgeous texture of these mineral encrusted boulders. The North Shore of Long Island is full of huge rocks, left by receding ice at the end of the Ice Age.

I hope you enjoyed these views from our walk on the beach. I'll post more of them next time!


All images on this site are c Lynda Lehmann. If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my Imagekind gallery!

Sweet Calico Goat and Orphan Works Act

This sweet animal has a beautiful calico coat and an engaging and unwavering gaze. My sense of awe and reverence for animals grows, as their soulfulness and apparent ability to feel and even think, become more evident to me.

If you've seen the video that's been going around the Internet, of an elephant painting his self-portrait, no doubt you have felt the same exhilaration that I did, when contemplating how this giant mammal seemed to "think" about the accurate placement of each brush stroke. Even if he was prompted by his trainer, by touch or visual prompts, his behavior is still deliberate in a way we humans have not historically attributed to animals.

I posted the video of the elephant painting his self-portrait in my last post so you can watch it, if you haven't already seen it. It stands apart from the other videos we have seen, in which elephants "paint" to music. In the other videos, the elephants seem to be enjoying themselves but the viewer is not sure whether there is much volition or deliberation behind the seemingly random and free movements.

I think we all have enjoyed many of those inter-species, "love-and-relating" email forwards, as well. The bottom line is that we all want and need love, and it's sometimes easier to find animal behaviors to stand in awe of and applaud, than it is to find laudable human behaviors. Predators in the animal kingdom hunt and kill to survive, just as we take animal life, as part of the food chain. But lacking our level of critical thinking, they don't have all those nasty defense mechanisms that are borne of our human propensity for self-doubt. In my opinion, our self-doubt projected outward leads to a lot of unnecessary tangles and confrontations for many people. Imagine the time and resources we waste being angry at strangers. We may sneer behind their backs or scold them either tactfully or rudely, or we may walk away silently, puzzled by a suspect behavior that we disapprove of, yet vesting our energy in it.

Yesterday while driving on a busy secondary highway coming home from an art show, I signaled to move from the left to the right lane, to exit onto another parkway. The guy behind me not only sped up so I couldn't move over, but he flipped me the bird as he passed me. I was astounded at his random act of free-floating hostility. I'm glad I'm not that angry!

Animals vie with each other for supremacy, but in a more direct way: for physical dominance of habitat or available territories, or for the attentions of a fertile mate. Yet we humans vie with each other on so many more levels and with so much more at stake. What's at stake as a result of the culmination of competing human behaviors is nothing less than the survival of Earth and all her inhabitants!

I think it would be a good idea for us to ponder the interactions of animals and begin to evaluate our institutions and behaviors from a survival standpoint. I've seen squirrels, robins, blue jays, and a baby rabbit, all occupying the same meagre footage of my back yard, all foraging for food while ignoring the others who are doing the same thing in their own way. They are different species, living a peaceful co-existence. Their truth may be "to eat or be eaten," but they are not tied to status issues, political correctness, or supremacy issues. They don't vie over ideologies. Maybe they are lucky, to be at a "lower" level of intuitive and intellectual functioning. As for peaceful coexistence, maybe we humans can do a better job of using our intuition and intellect in more constructive ways.

ORPHAN WORKS ACT

Some of the members of Worldwide Women Artists Online, of which I'm a member, have brought the Orphan Works Act to trhe group's attention. As I understand it, this act was defeated in Congress several years ago, but is currently under consideration again. If passed, this law would drastically reduce your control over your ownership of your creative works, especially images posted on the Internet. I'm not an expert on it, nor on legalese, but I've read enough to know that the outcome of this proposed law is very important to artists and photographers, as well as writers.

Here's a link to a site where you can sign a petition against it. Why not sign and pass it on? This is so important to all of us!!!

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/no-to-orphan-works-act.html

And here's a link to artist Walter King's blog on the Absolute Arts site, where he cites letters from other sources, on the subject.

http://paik.absolutearts.com/cgi-bin/portfolio/art/blogs/read_artblog_entry.cgi?login=walterking&blog_id=969938758748575

Let's make our voices heard. We should all blog about it, too, or we'll become just another casualty of corporate greed!!! (If you want more information on the bill, just Google "Orphan Works Act," as I did, and numerous sources of information will pop up. Spend ten minutes reading, and be your own judge!)

Elephant Paints Self Portrait

Tulip Rapture

Tulip Rapture - Image c 2008 Lynda Lehmann

A bright and luminous display of beautiful yellow-orange tulips, truly representative of the glory of spring. Image c Lynda Lehmann.

I'm trying to get other house and garden tasks done by staying off the computer. As you can see, it doesn't work! Each time I go for a walk at this gorgeous season, I'm totally awed by the beauty I see. Of course I try to bring it home with me. Vowing to avoid photographing more flowers won't help. It's useless to try. I'm an addict!

I'm late in making the rounds this week, but I will be around to visit your blogs!


Image c Lynda Lehmann. If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my Imagekind Gallery, where you can buy prints plain or framed.

Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere....

I try to walk every day that weather and time permit. With each walk I enjoy the air, the sunlight, and views of hills and trees. Our neighborhood looks out at a harbor and Long Island Sound, as so many North Shore neighborhoods do, and the glint of water is never far away. I always come home feeling great, having imbibed in a bit of air and exercise, and lots of beauty.

What makes my walks really special is when I remember to take my camera along. Right now I have a SONY digital-SLR and it's a bit heavy. But it's worth the work of toting it in the hope of grabbing some good nature or garden shots as I go. Sometimes I take my monopod, but that gets in the way at least as often as it's helpful. I'm sure that one of these days I'll trip on it outright, and go flying down one of the steep hills here, camera still in hand. Be that as it may, every find of a beautiful object or scene is a gift, and if I manage to get a decent photo of it, the gift keeps giving. I feel very rich to have my passion fulfilled and the camera putting so much joy in my life, on a regular basis.

All the above shots except for the purple and white orchids were taken just in the past three days, as I labored up and down the hills of my small town, searching for window pots and hedgerows close enough to the street to photograph. I hope you enjoy them, as I'm enjoying sharing them with you!

All the above images are or will be available at Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or you can buy them framed at Imagekind, should you be interested in purchasing them.

Through a Forest, Darkly

Through a Forest, Darkly

Ground thunders

while suspicions steal

past towering giants

whose leaves hiss danger.

Boughs asunder with weight of dread,

sense your sly, subjective gloom.

A haunted conscience

murmurs malaise:

the soul's twilight

in the light of the moon.

Text and Image c 2008 Lynda Lehmann

This image and poem are just a little bit of mischief or shall we say, antic play. I often wonder how much of the anxiety that we are so deft in projecting outward, is confronted by us in the light of day. We are more apt to flop ourselves down on a couch in front of the ever-friendly and reassuring, ubiquitous TV, the world-wide-web of our collective entertainment strivings, than sit down to ponder the state of our personal affairs. This causes us to carry our anxieties into the the darkness and slumber of night, where they will invariably GROW! Wha'd'ya think?

Spring Flame

I'm uploading this image to wish you all a happy and bright spring! We passed the most beautiful flowers hanging in window pots outside a local Long Island restaurant today, and I shot them in spite of a stiff and maddening wind. I manipulated this one in Photoshop, repeating a single blossom to make the composition.

It was my first day out since last Tuesday. Seems I had a little bout of flu, and now I have to catch up on all your posts! I hope you've had a better week than I did, although all things considered, I have nothing to complain about. Happy spring!!

Image c Lynda Lehmann. If you are interested in purchasing this image or any of my art, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography. Or you can buy it framed at Imagekind.

Ethereal

"Ethereal" Image c Lynda Lehmann

Petals clasp sweet sunlit air.

Roots reach deep to suckle Grace.

Graceful tulip drinks her love, grateful for

dear Earth's embrace.

Poem c 2008 Lynda Lehmann

Serendipity was finding this majestic tulip in my garden, upon returning home from a walk. I ran to get my camera and caught it just a minute before shade enveloped it, swallowing all the gorgeous highlights. Only a day later, this beautiful bloom was past its glory. But what a glorious flower it was! The photo is from last year, but since we're not having much in the way of blooming here yet, except for crocuses and hyacinths, I'm posting it to celebrate spring. It's the perfect time to find renewal in both nature and in ourselves. I hope you enjoy my photo and poem and I wish you a happy, healthy, and creative spring!

Text and photo c Lynda Lehmann. "Ethereal" is available for purchase at Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or you can buy it framed at Imagekind.