🐄 Cow pose

2023 reboot

I’ve been sick since Christmas. There must be at least three flu or cold bugs floating around and I think I caught them all.

Today was the first day of 2023 that I woke up and could breathe easily without my sinuses feeling like Count Basie’s drummer was doing a solo inside my nasal passages.

On top of that, I think I’ve been anemic. So about a week or so ago, I started monitoring my iron intake. It was low. Really low. Was maybe getting 30 percent of the daily recommended intake.

I’ve had tell tale food cravings since last fall, complete with a late night trip to Montana’s Restaurant for take out. Who craves liver anyway?

So I’ve been rebuilding my iron supply and I think that’s why today, as well as being able to breathe easily, I also had energy. That has been missing so far this year (and perhaps missing since back into the fall, now that I think about it).

It feels like 2023 is getting a reboot.

I’ve been thinking about paintings — paintings that are almost done (have a figurative piece started last year that I’m hoping to complete in the near future), paintings I’m dreaming of doing and paintings that are complete but can’t stop thinking about.

This plein air sketch of cows grazing is a painting my mind keeps returning to, it’s a simple scene of cows in a field during Art Lab Studio’s “Edge of Winter” plein air retreat last November.

It was a gray day, not a lot of light to create the form of the cows. So I just indulged myself, kept my expectations low and enjoyed observing the way the cows behaved.

A few of the cows watched me watching them. Some of them stared for a bit before turning around and walking away. A couple of people were parked in a pick up truck on the other side of the road watching me watch the cows.

Plus there was one wasp that was intensely interested in my oil paints.

It was a bit surreal.

But the bit I keep thinking about was this one cow that looked like she was doing yoga. She stretched out her front legs as if doing “downward dog.” Then transferred her weight to her front legs in order to stretch her hind legs. Cow pose? As she did that, she curled her tail up into a tight little curly-q and then snapped it out straight again as she took a step forward to graze.

I didn’t know cows could do that.

And I didn’t think I would show this painting to anyone (other than the artists at the retreat) but here it is.