Jude’s Threshold

Here am I gone awol yet blogging at you from Raleigh during a break from this Spring’s family spree on a lovely day in May. Cool breezes are blowing and thunderstorms may lie ahead later today but for now the weather is simply scrumptious, y’all!

But fast typing is a must since I shall soon be whisked away for a Mother’s Day massage at Epona & Oak: ‘A Fashioning of Style & Wellness’…well, you know I can hardly wait for that!

Then tomorrow we plan a browse of the new galleries at the North Carolina Art Museum which you can virtually tour on their website where you’ll find links to flickr slideshows and photos of some groovy new art. You may wish to click to view their new and tranquil reflecting pools, too.

Plus, this flower lover hears that the new gardens at the museum are something to see which could mean botanical drawing inspiration for moi.

Therefore, there’s not much politickin’ or astrologizin’ for me this weekend and I hope that anyone reading this vacation post has a great time wherever she or he may browse!

That’s:

Epona & Oak 329 Blake Street Raleigh NC @ 919.828.7500 if you should find yourself in the neighborhood, or visit Epona and Oak if you wish!

Oh, this is brilliant!

Alabama artist and gardener Val Webb’s studio blog The Illustrated Garden displays her illustrations of plants, flowers, and visitors to her beautiful southern garden.

Butterflies show up for refreshing nectar feasts and are immortalized in portraitures of perfection – and with their bio details included, the better to identify them with.

Val gives us Botanical Drawings and Paintings at their finest, so do check out The Illustrated Garden when you may, but hurry – it’s canning time in southern Alabama and there’s one last cantaloupe photo to be viewed!

Care for a brief yet soothing stroll through mystical forests?

Then wake up your sleepy-faced Inner Divine Child and have a peek! You know you want to…

As we drove back today from Raleigh NC to the Athens GA area, it was obvious that NC was third in line, SC was second, and my home state of Georgia was first in the Spring Bustin’ Out All Over department.

Rolling green meadows and pastures – a very cool one with cows and horses fraternizing contentedly – lined both sides of the highway once the Georgia border was reached as if someone had flipped on the greenery switch.

The ‘wide place in the road’ named Ila, GA was particularly spring-like with pink-blooming plum trees, yellowbell bushes a bit past their prime but still beautiful with their willowesquely drooping branches, and Bradford pear trees whose white blossoms were in process of giving themselves over to pale green leaves.

March 20 officially marks Spring Equinox for 2009 so get out your puddle jumpers and ‘brellas because in southeastern US – and soon the whole of creation where applicable –  it’s time to flower.

And since each one of us is the’ flowering of his/her generations’, how would you like a Tulipa ‘Maytime’ portrait for starters?

http://secretmoonart.blogspot.com/2009/03/tulipa-maytime-under-full-moon.html

Flower On!

If you’ve never been introduced to Western Australia’s Pale sweetlips, here’s your opportunity to meet and greet:

http://dreamyfishart.blogspot.com/2009/03/pale-sweetlips-returns.html

Not sure about smooches though…you’ll have to suss that one out for yourself.

Tropical storm Fay has killed 4 people already and is on her way toward the Florida Straits and the Gulf of Mexico, and is set to sweep through Cuba first, they said on my TV.

Fay – or ‘Faye’ in my family! - is a faerie-esque name that I’ve always liked and have even used it for one of my archetypal drawings, Faye’s Magic Lamp. Not much magic in stormy Fay, however, and I wish all well who may find themselves in her path.

It does seem that bad weather follows eclipses and August has been replete with Solar and Lunar lunations, hasn’t it? And August, forever my least favorite month, isn’t over yet.

So here’s a small something for the 17+ers (which may be two out of three readers, as I realize daily – otherwise who keeps searching for the word, ‘weed’?)…anyway, you may have seen this drawing’s image on this very blog, but here’s the original publishment of Faye’s Magic Lamp:

http://cosmicpersonadesigns.blogspot.com/2005/11/fayes-magic-lamp.html

And how about a link to a brief Cosmic Art SlideShow for the Moon Art-inclined?

http://secretmoonart.blogspot.com/2007/11/check-out-my-slide-show_25.html

There! now you’re all hooked up, but no weed included, you naughty monkeys…well, except for:

http://judecowell.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/dreamyfish-art-slender-weed-whiting/

Assuming there are still a few rabbitfish left in the oceans near Western Australia (for I don’t like to think that there aren’t) this link shows you my paltry version in colored pencil of a Three-spotted rabbitfish who sports, funnily enough, three spots:

http://dreamyfishart.blogspot.com/2008/06/three-spotted-rabbitfish.html

How do you know it isn’t your Art Karma to bubble yourself on over to Dreamyfish Art?

And while there, please click on the Agora Gallery button to view their slideshow of Art now on display in Agora’s Soho and Chelsea locations, NYC!

Between Astrology, Politics, and the barndoor, it’s been a while since I completed and published a tropical fish portrait…until last evening.

“New Dreamyfish Art portrait emerges”…from the depths of my 12th house imagination, that is!

For those scientist types who prefer botanical drawings to most any other genre of Art, a warning must go out: my Dreamyfish Art fish portrait collection combines the realism of a rendering done as botanically correct as I can muster (with colored pencils on black paper, a Disney-esque effect, some say) with oceanic Neptune’s imaginative faculties, such as I may contain.

This is hopefully achieved by way of visionary, colorful surroundings for these deep-denizened creatures to wander about in…as if the viewer sees them surprised and ensnared within a dream…each fish’s own fondest dream.

Often these species are found at such depths, it’s a monchrome world for the brightly marked dearies, so I created Dreamyfish Art portaits to cater to their private dreams because after all: fish dream, too.

Astrologically this Saturn/Neptune mutuality has much significance within this artist’s psyche:

Saturnian form is supplied by my natal Saturn in Virgo (details; science) in 12th house of behind-the-scenes work (and often of research.) In my natal chart are four planets in Capricorn and thus they are ruled by Saturn. They are: Sun, Jupiter, Mercury, and Mars. The latter two are posited in the 5th house of Creativity, I am glad to say, with Sun and Jupiter conjunct in 4th; Sun/Jup trine Saturn in 12th.

Artistic and mystical Neptune is in mid-Libra (she said, dating herself) and sextiles a Sagittarian Venus, also in 4th house. I like to be and to work at home on projects, as you might imagine.

Also for art-lover Venus is a trine with Pluto in Leo. When Pluto came calling on natal Venus all through 2003, I noticed a deepening effect on my drawing and I tended to know how each piece would appear as they were begun. Dreams of scenes and themes became more accessible to my waking consciousness, a neat trick improved upon by Pluto’s transformative powers!

Plus, the sculpturist feel I had noticed when drawing on 2-dimensional black paper seemed to increase into a hyper-realism at times…something about bringing light out of darkness as opposed to loading up white or light paper with darker pigments.

Yet I do still use white paper for line illustrations, of course. Who doesn’t?

That’s the best I can do to describe how my drawing and experience of drawing changed internally during my Pluto-to-Venus transit. Sitting at my drafting table and staring at a blank sheet of paper, it sort of ‘washed over me’ the day of the first conjunction (of three.) And very obviously, too, for I had not been conscious of the date’s significance until it happened–but soon suspected what was ‘up’ with my natal chart’s transits…and the Pluto transit was the “biggie” for the year, exact on that day.

My Piscean Moon’s hope is that outer results artfully tell the tale in symbols rather than mere words can do as watery Neptune sloshes into Saturnian form, and I hope you’ll find the undersea realm half full at Dreamyfish Art:

http://dreamyfishart.blogspot.com/2008/06/knightfish-pencil-portrait.html

And come on, world…Let’s Save Our Oceans!

‘Gladiolas by Moonlight’ …a partial view… 

Drawing by jude cowell from http://secretmoonart.blogspot.com

Kudos to Slide dot com!

Below you’ll find a link to my freshly created Psychedelic Art Slide Show with all images but one coming from my Secret Moon Art gallery: http://secretmoonart.blogspot.com

One drawing, however, ‘Psychedelly Nelly’ had to be included from Cosmic Persona Designs: http://cosmicpersonadesigns.blogspot.com  for obvious thematic reasons.

And the cool thing is that Slide’s ‘Prism’ style display uses the colors from each image to create the kaleidoscope effect between each image’s view…very groovy!

http://www.slide.com/r/4D7GeQrcoD9_GPK-aAuGc7Nd99tU9Or4?previous_view=mscd_embedded_url&view=original