Juicy Juicy pear painted aceo

This is a juicy juicy pear done on an aceo sized canvas in acrylics - its available. Go next door for the juicy juicy close up!

my etsy shop www.popcornfeet.etsy.com/

This is more the kind of painting I was doing before my eyesight started on its decline last year. Do I miss painting like this? Sort of detailed (go next door for detail) considering its 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches I think...

Well, hard question really. I really liked doing this but my work was painfully tight and I was getting more and more so. I wanted to paint photographically I think and losing ones vision is sure to get you out of that. Or you'll just lose your mind whining about what you feel is gone...

I'm happy with what I'm doing now but I am very proud of what I did last year too...

Cocoon ACEO GIVE A WAY

IF YOU WISH TO BE ENTERED IN THE GIVE A WAY FOR THIS CARD JUST COMMENT ON THIS POST BY WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 5, 2008. I WILL USE AN INTERNET RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR TO PICK THE WINNER BASED ON THE TOTAL NUMBER OF COMMENTS.

If you don't have a blog please sign your comment with an email address so I can email you if you win - anonymous comments provide me with no information!

Please, only one comment per person. I will pay the postage myself, the winner will get the card mailed to them with no strings attached.... and my thanks for appreciating my art!
****If this is something that people seem to enjoy I will try to do this frequently*****
cocoon aceo
Originally uploaded by popcornfeet

I've worked with this image before because it tugs at me. Calls to me... It's special to me... It's simple and sad and nurturing at the same time. It's about caring for myself. It's about taking care of my mind, my sanity and my body... It's how I survive when all I have left is the shell.

I was drawing like this in the summer of '97, months before I was diagnosed but I was symptomatic. At that time I was more concerned with quickly getting feelings down on paper and I don't think I had started using colored pencils yet; I believe when I did this one I was still only using markers. They were fast to work with, had blazing, sometimes shocking, color and they suited everything I needed at the time.


I've done this card before with the theme of overwhelmed. About when it's all - everything and everyone - it's all just too much. How at some point you can't take a thing more - a good thing, a bad thing...anything.... not one thing more. And you know all that works to make it better is collapsing in on yourself. Curling up. Not hearing or seeing anything else until you are ready...

Every once in a while I redo this card because it has meaning to me and I always get emails from people who tell me it has meaning to them as well. Even people who aren't bidding. Sometimes people just write to say I gave words to their feelings... I think thats an important thing so I try and use this image on different cards. The other thing is when ever I list it people who didn't win the auction ask me to relist a card with the same image. I can't replicate cards because no two are ever the same but I can use a main image again.

When I was doing this card for someone an odd thing happened. It stopped being the card Overwhelmed and became the card Cocoon. With this card I put gauze over the image... Some with the traditional gauze look and some just shreds of gauze. When I stopped to look at it ...the meaning had changed. What was once a figure collapsing in on itself in protection was now a figure spinning a protective cocoon... being proactive. Taking care of herself... Waiting out the storm in warm safe place of her own making.

For me there was something very different about this card. It showed a stronger figure. A person who didn't just have to wait for the storm to pass while curled up and hope for the best...but a person who could self-soothe. A person who could make her own safe place. A person who was on her way to 'better' even as she waited.

When I realized what I had in this card it was an empowering moment that I can't explain.

The card was done on a base of mat board cut into ACEO format. Through the main image you can see the base papers and I think that that gives even more of a feeling of vulnerability... The figure is not only curled into a fetal position but you can almost see through her...or partly...like she's fading away. Even so she is protecting herself against the onslaught of life

I'm in the current issue of CARDADDIX

I'm in the current issue!
Originally uploaded by popcornfeet

I'm in the current issue!
The current issue of cardaddix just came out and I have a card featured!

It's the newsletter associated with ACEO MAGAZINE aceomagazine.com/. Subscriptions and individual issues can be purchased at the website.

Buy my art on eBay

Fetal aceo

Fetal aceo
Originally uploaded by popcornfeet

I've used this image before.

This card is about when it's all - everything and everyone - it's all just too much. How at some point you can't take a thing more - a good thing, a bad thing...anything.... not one thing more. And you know all that works to make it better is collapsing in on yourself. Curling up. Not hearing or seeing anything else until you are ready...

The card was done on a base of mat board cut into ACEO format. Through the main image you can see the base papers and I think that that gives even more of a feeling of vulnerability... The figure is not only curled into a fetal position but you can almost see through her...or partly...like she's fading away. On top of the image are webby papers, gauzy papers and glass beads. There is a haze over her. Its more obvious in person...the scan shows more of the figure than you can see when you look at the card.

for sale

Know what's sick? aceo

Know what's sick? aceo
Originally uploaded by popcornfeet

On eBay

Know what's sick? aceo
The mentally ill commit crimes on television that diabetics do not. Has an episode of Law and Order ever focused on a defendant's irritable bowel syndrome?Or has a raging sinus infection ever been a mitigating factor?

Nope and nope....

Bipolar Disorder isn't an identity, or an excuse or a reason to feel sorry for me, it's a chronic illness. And I'm a person... not an illness with a person hanging off a label. It hurts that I can pick a random police drama and, with reasonable certainty, see someone with the same diagnosis on trial for a heinous crime because the mentally ill commit crimes on TV that people with carpel tunnel syndrome don't.


The portrayal of mental illness in the media is endless generalizations; generalization upon generalizion until the kernal of truth is lost. We see creepy, scary folks that eat bugs. The homeless. The stalkers. The people who pee in doorways while reciting the Gettysburg address and make you want to take another way home. Those that are news worthy when they run naked at major sporting events. Movies with fun-loving inpatients who your kids would love to hang with...

What's worse? Stigma or sideshow over-fascination? Despite the media's portrayal; we are not all bug-eating door-way peeing naked streakers or hopelessly hip inpatients. There is a middle-ground to live with bipolar disorder and most of us are there; boring as hell.


Stigma is about shame. Stigma can only go on in the dark so I try and answer questions people ask me:

"It's called Bipolar Disorder, rapid cycling with mixed episodes. Uh-huh. That's a mouthful. Yes, I've hallucinated. No, not often. It's been years, I think.... The funniest one? Well--It's hard to classify the psychotic as amusing but I suppose the funniest one was when the linguine with clam sauce was talking. It did too! No, I swear. Well. What it was saying is a hard one. No matter how close I moved my ear to the plate I still couldn't tell what they were saying. I ultimately decided the clams weren't talking to me but amongst themselves."

I am willing to talk openly about my meds:

"There are a lot of drugs. Mood stabilizers like anti-convulsants that epileptics use. (I feel on safe ground here because a drug used for epilepsy doesn't pack the drooling-stigma-punch of Thorazine.) There are drugs for depression. Oh, and the anti-anxiety drugs, the sleeping pills and anti-psychotics are used (The last one can be a bit tricky. While people say they want information, I lose a lot of folks on the anti-psychotics.)"

The drug side effects:

"Some make me tired. Confused... Liver failure.... Acne.... Hair loss, except of course on your chin...where it grows.... Weight gain. No, this one didn't make me gain weight but I gained 80 pounds on a different one. Yes, that was a lot of weight. No, your right. Haven't lost it all."

When people ask if I see and hear things "like TV crazy-people do," maybe they don't want to know. "I'm just like you, silly! No one really has those kinds of thoughts. " Well, no one they know. No one with a son in their kid's school. No one behind them in the 10 items or less grocery aisle...Or shops for shampoo at the same drugstore. Or waits on line behind them at the ATM.

Hopefully, being open and comfortable about myself will lessen stigma over time even if it makes my world a little uncomfortable for a moment or two. Or nine.... Granted, copping to hearing clams speak amongst themselves isn't something most people are ready for but most people aren't ready to change their minds about anything without a little push.

About ten years ago I went to a seminar with a speaker who couldn't make a strong point without swearing. And he made a lot of points. After about an hour a proper-looking woman got up and said she wasn't accustomed to hearing that kind of language. The speaker bolted to within an inch of her face and let loose a string of expletives with a ferocity unequaled to anything since the big bang. The audience held it's collective breath and after a minute the speaker screamed at the now pale woman, "Are you f-ing accustomed to it yet?"

It was a point well taken, with me anyway. People live at their own comfort level until they are challenged. Being that in-your-face does have a place but it isn't usually necessary. Just living visibly in the bipolar middle-ground can be enough. Even if people seem a bit queasy at first about talking shellfish I hope living openly will widen the middle-ground and give me a bigger place to live over time.

bondage aceo

AVAILABLE SOON
bondage aceo
Originally uploaded by popcornfeet

Most people think that life's got them. That they are stuck... trapped in situations that they can't get out of... Hamsters on one those wheels.... In bondage to their jobs.... partners.... bills... obligations... wants... needs....

I think the truth is closer to what you won't let go of, chains you to it.

I think we spend our lives wishing for something else all the while dragging what we don't want around with us... always looking over our shoulders to make sure what we have and don't want is still there, wanting something else but never getting so far away from our comfortable misery so we can't see it.

I think there are a lot of reason people have for doing this ...probably as many reasons as there are people. Some people fear change and living in known pain is better than an uncertain future. After all we know how heavy the chains are... What will it feel like without them? What will we do with our hands? What will we do with all the time we spent complaining? I think Lily Tomlin was right when she said, "I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain. " People sure so love to complain!


I think some people really don't believe they can get off the hamster wheel and that dooms you from the start. If you think you can, you can and if you think you can't your right too. It's sort of the cosmic version of a pre-nuptual agreement. Sort of like your saying to the universe... Well I think I can sorta do it...probably... most likely.... but if I can't would you mind mitigating my damages? Might as well tattoo FAILURE across your forehead.

Plus there's a lot of letting go and trusting involved in getting what you want - from yourself and others and letting go isn't something most people find easy. I don't, anyway.

I think most of the stuckness in my life is me.


The card looks better than the picture - the card is uneven in height and very glossy so shooting it and scanning it is difficut. This has been an issue with any card Ive done that been a collage pretty much! This one is no different! The card is an aceo blank of mat board and a highly textured black paper (crinkly)... I only used one background paper and it looks like patent leather - its really cool. The chain is a silver plated small linked chain and it all bound there with thick acrylic sealer.

It's all so close to you ACEO

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It's all so close to you ACEO
Originally uploaded by popcornfeet

I saw these stones when I looked down.... they were a few inches from my feet on a beach in Cape May, NJ. I almost just squashed them into the sand by walking on them and would never noticed how beautiful they were... How soft looking, how polished.... how worthy of notice.

Maybe it's always like that. Me. Life. Maybe I always assume what I want off in the distance.... and thinking what I need must be over that next hill.... and I know what will make me relax and appreciate what I have is in that newly published self-help book.

But maybe life is always like the experience with these stones. Maybe I already have within my view and reach everything I need. Maybe what's over the next hill doesn't matter because the only thing you really have is the presant... and maybe what's in that next self-help book really is the same thing that was in the last self- help book, with a new cover.

Maybe there is something to be said for living fully in the moment.

This card was done on mat board cut into aceo format. There is a collage done with art papers under the main image and its all sealed with multiple layers of acrylic sealers. I like this card, its pretty and calming.

Memories ac-Emo ACEO

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Memories ac-Emo ACEO
Originally uploaded by popcornfeet

You may not like all your memories but they make the whole of you.

In each person you know there are things you might not like but that doesn't take away from the value of the person - and the person is the sum of his parts.

As each person person you know deserves a place in your life each of your memories is worthy.

I've struggled with this.

For many years I'd assumed there were things I'd rather forget. But I can't say I'm sorry who I am, who I've become... who looks out from behind my eyes. How can I pick and choose the memories, than? If I lose this one will someone else be looking out from behind green eyes? Or will it take two memories? Or not those two but two others?

Many years later I can see the value in not fighting the memories. Coming to terms with them...letting them rest.... in peace.

The ghosts of the past ac-Emo ACEO

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The ghosts of the past ac-Emo ACEO
Originally uploaded by popcornfeet

How much stuff do we carry forward in to new relationships ? As much as we truly want to end one before we get into another I think most people keep tugging everyone they ever knew along with them...

People call it baggage but I've seen how heavy it looks on some people - I think it's stone.

Doorways...

I did a series of cards using lit doorways in dark places and dark doorways in lit places... I loved them. Their tension....

ac-Emo

ac-Emo
Originally uploaded by popcornfeet

Somethings been bothering me for a while now. My cards are different... The cards I do are so linked to what I write that they aren't just the artwork but more a sum of several parts.


The images click with me as emotions not just pictures. When I post or list them I always include the emotion as text. When people look at them I think they may be attracted to the image but it's the emotion that chimes for them.


I think people like them but I think it's more the whole experience of the emotion than the card itself. I've had good and bad feelings about this. Does that make me an artist? Or a writer? Or really not enough at either to be good enough to consider myself one without the other?


I think what's happening is that they are just different. They aren't just the cards or just the words but a compliation of the two. Like a movie would be just pictures moving across a screen without the emotion of words. I've decided I'm fine with it and decided to call them something different from now on.

JUST PASSING TIME ACEO

Time has a problem and a bad reputation. People blame a lack of it their failures but don't like an excess of time either.
If they only had the time to spend with their family...exercise... go back to school. If they only hadn't been so pressed for time they would never had chosen that job...that car.... that husband. Having lots extra time is seen as something that will get you into trouble... Too much time to fill is seen as a retired man who gets on every one's nerves... Too much time between where you are and what you want is seen as excruciating...

People talk in time... My biological clock is ticking. No time like the present. Time stands still for no one.... Idle hands are the devil's playground... A watched pot never boils. And on and on... I suppose there are sayings about time where slowing down and enjoying time is shown as a good thing - For example - Take time to smell the daisy's. But to be honest that one always reeks of 1960's Flower Children and doesn't really ring true to most people. I think they can see the value of it but not the practical application.

But the truth is time is a constant... it's your impatience that's the variable. And it's up to you to see the golden value in your time - to capture all your seconds and than file them away as memories. If you sit back and think about time, it's given you a lot. The passing of time gives you all the good things - all your good experience. Your joys. Your quiet moments between the fray.

Perhaps Memory's gift is gratitude but Time's gift is patience. If you take the two in tandem you can truly be a happy person.

Buy the ticket take the ride Aceo

buy

I've been thinking a lot about goals lately. Goals are good things;I find people flounder without them. But something about being goal-oriented has been bothering me a lot...

People to who focus on goals seem to over-focus on goals, there doesn't seem to be a middle ground. Either you let the wind takes you where it will and you'll end up in life where you do... or you map everything out and measure your success by each goal you meet.

To be honest - I'm not sure the first one isn't better. People who measure their lives from goal to goal achieve more in a measurable sense; that's true.... But what of the space between goals? What's there? What fills the space for those people if only the goals are important?

I can hear the goal- set saying , " The middle is important because I'm on my way to the goal..." But I keep thinking... What about enjoying life outside the goal? Your life is really what's happening around, outside, over and under you when your doing all that planning, reaching, or not reaching your goals. Your goals and your life aren't happening on parallel roads... Your life and your goals are on the same road.

I don't think having an idea about what you want next is a bad thing... it's just that I think you miss a lot of opportunities for enjoyment along your road if your always heading for something. If your always looking to a goal. An end. A way to get on the next train... To move on to the next thing.... To finish what your doing now... What are you doing?

It's sort of like buying your ticket but not taking the ride. Like being in an amusement park, paying for a ride and than instead of getting on it; walking around it to the place in the gate that says - EXIT.

It seems so pointless. And sad. And seems like the way so many people live.

WHAT IF HE WAS JUST CRAZY? ACEO

Available on eBay

I often wonder if he was wrong. I mean, no one's wrong about everything but what if he was wrong about a lot? Or what if he was just as nutty as his patients? I've read a lot about him and he was a bit of a .... well, the guy was... Oh let me just be kind and say he was a carnival of diagnosis codes.

I don't understand why someone who was, without a doubt, on the wrong side of the analysis couch is respected, revered and known as the father of modern day psychoanalysis ... while I am suspiciously eyed because of the bipolar disorder like I might start clucking like a chicken any second.

It's very aggravating.

CHILDREN HURT FOREVER ACEO

On eBay beginning the evening of May 31

I've never used the same image for two different auctions running at the same time before.

The story is sometimes when I'm making a card I will try it two different ways. Most times only one will work and the other will be awful. Or if the second isn't bad... it's not good enough to list. But in this case there was something about both of them that was tugging at me.

I intended to use the image to describe eating issues. It's what I was thinking when I worked on the picture in the first place but as I looked at this card it seemed to be saying something different to me. That happens sometimes. Art sometimes takes on a life and meaning all it's own... and I'm just the vehicle.

When I looked at the card this morning I decided to list it even though there is a card with the same image already listed because this card is about something else.

This card is about how when you hurt a child you change them. They change the second they are hurt...they change who they will be and they change the way they look back at themselves. In a sense people who hurt children change not only their presant and future...but their past as well.

So much is gone. Their voices... their smiles... their frowns... their kisses.... and a way to tell their secrets.

Hurting a child is a terrible thing.

HELP ME ACEO

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This aceo is based on one of my earliest drawings. It was originally done in marker and there is really nothing on it but bold dark color and the word help...small and in yellow at the bottom of the page. The word is even hard to see because at that point the world is dark and closing in...and your pushed down by it... Your faded and fading.

I've tried to use this image before - I know I've had failures but I can't recall if any of them worked as well as this one. Something about it works for what I was feeling that day. And feel everytime the world is foreboding. The days I feel translucent, pale and like I'm not on Earth anymore. Like I don't have the weight anymore, the mass, to be on earth... Gravity isn't keeping me here... and I'm just dissapating into some sad pale mist.

The card is done on mat board cut into aceo format. It started with a background collage with multiple art papers to enhance the main image. The main image is of a peice of art work I did several years ago.

SHE EATS ACEO

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I did this picture a very long time ago and never did anything with it. Me without a mouth. I look at it from time to time and think - how can I print this? How can I look at this? How can anyone? Who would want to see this hanging in their home above their sofa framed? No one, of course.

I keep coming back to it though and it occured to me today, its not me without a mouth, it's me without a voice.

Eating disorders. What can I say about them that hasn't been said? It doesn't matter if you eat too little or too much... very few people who have an ED haven't done both. I've been both too skinny and too fat. Multiple times. When I was too skinny I felt much bigger and when I was too fat I never felt quite as fat as I was... I never am quite in the same place as my body.
And I didn't get for a long time... this whole thing - what makes you eat beyond being sick... and what makes you not eat..beyond being sick? What is it? If that picture is me now how long do I have to go back in my life to find a picture of myself with a mouth? A voice? How little would I be?

When I did this photograph about a year ago I couldn't imagine doing anything with it... but I kept it.

Maybe if I gave my little girl her voice back I wouldn't have to eat to keep her quiet... and wouldn't have to not eat to give her power and control. Maybe my little girl does have a voice if I can just find her...and let her speak.

This card was done in standard ACEO format of 2 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inchs on heavy mat board. It started with a background collage with multiple art papers to enhance the main image.

THREE ORIGINAL PAINTING ACEOS ON CANVAS

There Aceos are available for sale on eBay. They are all done with acrylic paint on aceo sized gallery wrapped canvases.





Zen Landscape Aceo








Retro Pear Aceo








Still life lemons

For anyone who doesn't know how small ACEO cards are here is one scanned next to a splenda packet!

MAKE LEMONADE PAINTING -ACEO

AVAILABLE

And now for something completely different.... In the past I've only listed ACEO cards based on my art and photography. I used mat board, collaged with art papers...print my photographs on regular, photo, and some pretty darn unusual things ...than put it all together and make a complex card attached to an emotion, feeling or experience.

The simple things in life are beautiful as well... Things with visual simplicity. One thing...Two maybe...just a few colors... No art papers... Something you can put a story to, instead of me.... I paint. I rarely list anything on ebay that isn't an ACEO card done in the manner I described above because...well, frankly they don't seem to sell very often. (Just keeping it real!) There are wonderful artists on ebay and perhaps my selling just the cards...or just paintings...without an attached emotion isn't the same. Maybe people would rather I stick to what I was doing but I had to try... I have this thing in my head... My artist-self - how I see myself as an artist - is wrapped up in my abilty to paint...or not.... and well, if I can, I am, if I can't I'm not...and...oh man, I didnt mean to make this listing a therapy session!

Enough of that! This card is done on a teeny sized gallery wrappy canvas. How do they make them??? Its 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches and I even took a picture of it with a spenda package so you can see what your getting if your not familar with how small aceo's are. The other picture shows it from the side and you can see there are sides :) I have since painted the sides a bright blue like I paint my larger canvas paintings. I have signed it on the front with 3 bars... and on the bottom with my last name. Its sealed with a matte acrylic sealer. As much as I try to get colors correct, its hard in photography... and all monitors are different as well. It may be different when you get it but no matter how it looks on your monitor...I promise the lemons are shades of yellow and the background is shades of blue.

If it doesnt sell... well, thank you for looking!! I have other aceo's listed... My usual kinds as well as a few more like this!

I NEVER SAID THAT! ACEO

AVAILABLE

How many times have I said to someone, "I never said that...." and they swear up and down I did? I go back in my memory looking for a picture of that conversation... Or what is really a reflection of that conversation like the treeline in water ... Sort of the same but not quite as clear. And I think back and I'm still pretty sure and I say... "I never said that."

And again the person swears I did. And I go back and look inside again and this time I not only see the reflection of the conversation but the wisps of time cutting across the image obscruing some of my recollection. And this time I say I never said that but not with as much confidance because memory is an odd thing. As much as I want to trust it... it's flawed.

Recall is a flawed thing. And in the grand scheme of things taking a stand is rarely a good idea. Once I've drawn a line in the sand - who wants to go back? It's so much easier to just say, with a smile, "you might be right"....than it is to say, "I was wrong."

This card was done in standard ACEO format of 2 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inchs on heavy mat board. It started with a background collage with multiple art papers to enhance the main image. On top of the main image are thready pieces ....