The Killer Instinct!

Misty-the mouse slayer!

On this past weekend, my year+ old cat had an epiphany...  She caught her first mouse!
I live in a 100+ old house (renovated of course!), and the basement is separate, so mice in the fall can get in if they are determined. And believe, cold mice can get pretty determined!
So, every fall, they come in, and after about a dozen get caught in the mouse traps and it's done.
Mice are pretty gullible, they can't resist the lure of cheese, so the traps work, year after year... Stupid mice! Learn guys, learn!  Sorry, I digress...
Misty, (the cat!), heard a noise in the kitchen and figured out that it was terribly interesting. I watched her and saw her develop her stalking style, pretty cool.
Finally, the mouse came out and she got it!
You could definitely feel her excitement, and when my son whooped, she dropped it. A first-timer mistake, she'll never do that again!
The result of this is a cat that is totally obsessed...




Undersea Fantasy by me.

She looks at birds out the window, wants to KILL them so she can find out what they taste like! 
She's wandering around wired like she had ten cups of coffee, and only naps intermittently.
And believe me, naps were the point of her day up until now...
Unfortunately, lovely cat though she is, I believe she could go too far on this one...
She doesn't want to sleep at night, she wants back downstairs (NOW!). The mice might come back!




Cat Dreams by Teresa Young

Really, I'd leave her out all night, but she has a bad tendency to destroy plants when not supervised...
I keep telling her, they're not salads, but she isn't listening!

Back to Misty, she can eat, but sleeps intermittently, and as soon as the sun comes up, she figures, at last! And everyone in the world probably knows it's time to rise because of the racket she makes...

I'm really hoping the honeymoon phase ends soon, I'm so definitely NOT a morning person, and cute as she is, this could get old fast;-) 

What's the cure for a mousing obsession?

Reading the whole night through!

Well, two nights ago I did it again...  Indulged my secret addiction and ended up staying up all night to do it.  You'd think by middle age it would no longer be a problem!

Nope, not talking about sex, but reading... I have a terrible habit of not being able to stop! I can stop a movie in the middle and take a break, I can stop a game after awhile and do something else, but I get a really good read going on a quality story, and bang! I'm done for.

When I read a great story it transports me into that world, I get connected to the characters and care about what happens. It's almost like I'm there, I literally almost feel immersed into it. I've never gotten that type of experience out of other mediums. Maybe I'm a freak of nature, but ever since I was eleven years old and I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a weekend, I've had a problem with moderating my reading habits...

Sure, read before you go to bed, it'll definitely help you get to sleep!

Canadian Artist Teresa Young and British Artist Penelope Oakley’s Collaboration 2011

Teresa Young and Penelope Oakley are embarking on their first collaborative artwork together, after they initially connected through the Celeste Prize network, an international artist’s network at the beginning of 2011. 
Their artworks first appeared together side by side at the Camden Art Gallery, London in a Collective Exhibition in January.  From there they both exhibited at the Scoletta di San Giovanni Battista, Venice in concurrent exhibitions in May and June.
Their current involvement together in another exhibition in Mississippi, USA with The Energy Art Movement sees some of their pieces coincidentally again next to each other on the same wall.  Both artists are involved with the UNICEF Arte Maggio 2012 Reconstructing Childhood project.
Strangely enough, both artists were both born in Surrey, Penelope in Surrey England and Teresa in Surrey Canada. Although separated by the Atlantic, they have a lot in common, age group, backgrounds, love of art and artistic approaches. A true product of our electronics age, they have become fast friends although they have yet to meet in person.
Their idea for a collaborative work was a natural instinct for both.  Since Penelope’s flowing style was surrealistic, energetic and dominated by patterns of light, and Teresa’s work was flowing, patternistic and organic, their styles were a natural fit to harmonize together in one piece. With that in mind, Teresa has painted an intricate background in her own distinctive abstract style with Penelope’s artistic style in mind. The acrylic painting is two feet wide by three feet high and the original has now safely arrived with Penelope for her to commence her contribution to the piece.  This as yet untitled work will be exhibited when complete.  Keep an eye out here for further updates.
Two earlier works by Teresa Young can be seen at the JAG Gallery with Penelope’s work at Madeira Drive, Brighton and will be a part of the Christmas AOH 2011 Exhibition……

Websites:  http://teresayoung.artistwebsites.com/ and www.penelopeoakley.com

Beauty In The Face Of Age

 

Having started my art career with portraiture, I'm constantly fascinated by the faces of the people around me...

And seeing faces age and change as people grow older is quite interesting in itself...

It's almost like our lives get written to our features like a computer writing something to a disk...

The old saying goes that the eyes are the windows into the soul, but ironically enough, the eyes themselves are the one thing in our features that stays constant as we age... 

As any portraitist can tell you, the eyes are always drawn the same size and the face grows around it. Which is why our eyes start out looking pretty large in proportion to our face and then smaller when we are in our late childhood and finally, our adult sized eyes are small in comparison to the facial structure around it.

 

But it's the rest of the face that's really interesting...

The eyes might have 'it'... but the rest of the face tells a story! 

 

If you frown a lot, you will develop deep lines going from your nose down to the corners of your lips, and they will look different than the wrinkles that you get if you laugh a lot.  (I know they shouldn't as they are in almost the same spot as laugh lines, but there it is.  They look different as an end result!)

Frowners also have wrinkles in the centre of their face just between their eyebrows, which makes them look stern and tightened up like a bowstring ready to shoot...

People that laugh a lot tend to wrinkle differently, more like they are still laughing somehow.  Their faces can be just as wrinkled as the frowners, but the lines have a softness that is hard to quantify.

But if someone is perpetually sad, they seem to still get the frown style of wrinkles, but it's a softer look, like sadness itself... 

There's almost poetry or a different style of beauty in how wrinkles form...

They are actually something that can be quite beautiful, if you are aware of beauty in the form of lines and patterns.

 Not to mention the fact that wrinkles are much like accents around a subject!

 They can sharpen and highlight features, and can truly bring to the forefront beauty that can't be seen in a smooth face.

Over the years, I've drawn hundreds of faces.  The ones I remember aren't young, but older, more defined...  And the more defined the face, the more challenging it is to capture.

But it's not just me, throughout the centuries artists have always been fascinated by the beauty of the older face. There are good reasons for this, an older face is unique. The lines are different in every person, much like a fingerprint, no two people are alike. Because we all have different lives and experiences, our faces age differently.

Sadly, as I look around at our media and culture I see beauty represented as being typified by only the young face...  And I find this pretty strange because of the demographic of our population!

A large proportion of our population now is older as the baby boomers head towards retirement.

That means we have a unique opportunity to celebrate the beauty of aging by changing our cultural definitions of beauty.  Maybe we all need to be artists in some small way so that we can see it.

Just think 'Beauty in the Face of Age'!


Photos and images by Teresa Young:
1.  Playing Dominoes with Fred Ervine,  2. CloseUp-Portrait Of Diehl Children-Nov. 2009,  3. Grief For A Small Boy - Nov. 1997,  4. Eileens Eyes-Nov. 2009,  5. Daryls Frown - Nov. 2009,  6. Eileens Smile-Nov. 2009, 7. Barb McLean-Dec.2009,  8. Unnamed Abstract-Dec.2009,  9. Unnamed Surreal - May 1998.