Churches, Cheetos, Cherry Blossoms and Angst

Church window – WIP 1/2 sheet of Arches 140# coldpress

Spring has arrived in NYC which means the cherry blossoms are all a-bloom. The Husband and I attended the Sakura Matsuri festival this weekend.  This is an annual Japanese Festival celebrating the cherry blossoms and Japanese culture.  We saw a group called taiko-masala which featured traditional Japanese drumming.  They were great, but not that great that the Husband had to purchase not one, but TWO CDs of Japanese Drumming.  I predict a headache in my future!

Another interesting thing about the Sakura Matsuri festival is that there are a lot of people in costume. Not just traditional Japanese costume, which is cool, but people dressed in what I think are anime and sweet Lolita characters.  I don’t know for sure, but there were a lot of young people there with tails, cat ears, bright pink and green wigs and creepy contact lenses which made their eyes white.

And these were some of the more normal looking folks there.

Apropos of nothing, I had a hankering for some junk food.  Potato chips are my favorite, but I spied a bag of Cheetos “simply natural” that advertised it was made with expellier pressed oils (huh?) sea salt, no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives and as a special added bonus it was gluten-free.

I felt so healthy I ate the whole bag.

The painting above should have been of cherry blossoms, but I haven’t done one yet, so I’m posting this work in progress of a church window.  I liked the sky reflected in the glass and the branches and leaves. While I was painting it I thought of the two instructors recently (Antonio Masi and Joel Popadics) that both said similar things.  They paint with the lines going into the paintings. Don’t paint with your lines going out of the paintings or people will just move on.  So of course when I started painting this I had the tree branches leading right off the page, so I turned it around and have the leaves now hanging down into the center.  Now you can’t move on.  You must stay and gaze.  🙂

And now some good news from the medical industry. Guess what,  a recent study shows that if you have existential angst, and really, who doesn’t, taking Tylenol may help!  You can read all about it here.

angst /aNG(k)st/

1. A feeling of deep anxiety or dread, typically an unfocused one about the human condition or the state of the world in general.
2. A feeling of persistent worry about something trivial. Anxiety

Now you must excuse me.  I’m off to eat healthy cheetos (?!?)and will wash it down with some tylenol.