Have you ever been so enthralled by a book that you were at once inspired to go create and yet totally contented to sit and just be in the present moment? Such was the case for me in reading World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. One…
Tag: travel
Book Review: In the Garden of Beasts
After devouring The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson’s deep dive into the infamous serial killer who plagued Chicago at the time of the 1893 World Fair, I promptly bought another of the author’s titles at my local Barnes & Noble. Due to a series of life events (and overall lack of interest in…
Book Review: Parisians
In case you’re new here, I’m an American who once upon a decade ago, lived in Paris for a year whilst I completed a master’s degree. That year was one of the best and simultaneously most challenging years of my life. I loved the endless charm of the architecture, the smell of the flowers, the…
A journey in purple (part four)
Day twenty-three: We’re in the final push to the end of the class. This is the time to edit out entire paintings and clean the remaining essentials. I don’t particularly enjoy this phase. It feels rather cold-hearted to abandon something that I created from nothing. As I consider this sentiment, I feel like a true…
A journey in purple (part three)
Day seventeen: Today is the first day back after the university’s spring break. I spent the week leading a group of college students on a volunteer trip to the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. Most of the trip I spent considering whether or not I was an effective and inspirational leader. Most of the trip I…
A journey in purple (part two)
Day seven: We can only use seven pigments of watercolor paint: Cobalt Blue Hue, Prussian Blue, Cadmium Red Hue, Rose Madder, Lemon yellow, Cadmium Yellow Hue and Payne’s Gray. I spend lots of time thinking about (but never researching) if Payne’s refers to a possessive person, place or thing. I spend very little time using…
A journey in purple (part one)
A rumor that might be truth: purple sells paintings. A reality I know to be truth: despite color theory, purple is almost impossible to create using red and blue paints. The fact I’m left with: I probably won’t be selling many paintings. Day one: My introduction to watercolor class, held in the basement (ahem lower…
A deluge of consciousness
I “wrote” this blog post while taking a shower. Which is to say: creativity struck me at a very inconvenient time. If I’ve learned anything in my past few years working as a “creative” it is to crank content out when inspiration hits. So, instead of reading a book to gain continuing education credits for…
Make a practice to practice.
I started this blog in 2015, hoping to build a digital portfolio of both writing samples and personal reflections on the things that I found to be important and relevant. Also, I had just finished my master’s thesis and was trying to balance the stress and the tedium of searching for a job. Around that…
Book Review: The Bourne Supremacy
This time last year, I was writing a review for The Bourne Identity, the first in Robert Ludlum’s trilogy. As I discovered while reading that book, the storylines of the book and the movie series are incongruent. Other than being fairly similar in the characterization of the main character, Jason Bourne, the screen writers really…
L.M. Beatty 