On Expecting Good + My Word for 2013

our list of dream house features, posted on the kitchen magnet board

" We are allowed to have the courage to desire our good and the expectations of our good being fulfilled."

~ Julia Cameron​

I saw this quote this week and it stopped me in my tracks.​

You see, I've been trying to evade my word of the year. I've danced around it, tried coupling it with something else so it wouldn't stand out as much, I've even toyed with other words altogether.​

But this quote... this quote is telling me

"Are you going to CLAIM that word once & for all, or NOT?!​"

Ahem. So, I offer you my word for 2013: Receive.

It was hard for me to even type it, I kid you not; it felt physically uncomfortable.​ Which is probably exactly why it's time for me to claim it.

"It's selfish and ungrateful! I'm already blessed, who am I to ask for more?"

"What if I added 'expand' in front of it, then at least I have to work a little bit for what I receive."​

"Seriously? Receive??? Pfft!"​

Yes, receive.​

Receive love. Receive beauty. Receive good, expect good. Receive money. Receive JOY. Receive friendship. Receive connection. Receive a dream house with oodles of natural sunlight AND a perfect man cave. Receive new experiences and insights. Receive health. Receive success and recognition. Receive opportunity. Receive meaningful work. Receive compliments. Receive peace. Receive silence. Receive the Divine. Open myself to more good things than I could ever imagine - just because. ​

Though one would think this would be an easy enough task, for some of us, it's harder than it looks.

It's not about being ungrateful or feeling there's not enough, far from it. It's about feeling worthy of receiving good - even material goods and dreams come true.

It's about saying "Hell yeah, I want this!", then feeling at the core that it could actually ​happen.

Ms Cameron speaks of "the courage to desire our good and the expectations of our good being fulfilled." I'm pretty good at the desire part; it's that second part that gives me trouble.

But I'm ready to give it a shot. Though it still makes me squirm and I'm terrified of being judged for it, I hereby declare that I am ready to receive good and expect it.

Declaration complete. Now, I put it into practice...

Four Weeks of 40: 40 Artists That Intrigue, Inspire or Delight

You didn't think I'd forgotten, did you?

Week two of Four Weeks of 40 is here and it's all about art!

This week I've compiled a list of 40 creative individuals who, for some reason or another, intrigue, inspire, or simply delight.

I stuck mostly to visual art: painters (though many were fluently creative in multiple mediums), a few photographers, and, just to keep it interesting, I threw an architect/designer into the mix.

In some cases I linked to an official artist's page, others  to something generic like a Wikipedia article. Sometimes I simply linked to a Google search for images, because the images are what speak most to me about that particular artist (note: with this last one, there may be images that aren't by the artist, but are somehow tagged so that they show up).

Voici, in no particular order, artists that intrigue, inspire or delight...​​

1. Henri Matisse

2. Frida Kahlo For those who know me well or follow me on Facebook, I'm sure this comes as no surprise!

3. Wassily Kandinsky

4. Maurice Denis

5. Kees van Dongen (image below via WikiPaintings)​

The Corn Poppy - Kees van Dongen

6. Emily Carr

7. Paul Klee

8. Claude Monet

9. Odilon Redon

"My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined." - Odilon Redon

10. Pablo Picasso

11. Diego Rivera

12. Ansel Adams

13. Edward Weston

14. Marc Chagall

15. Edgar Degas

16.  Mary Delany

From a description on the British Museum's website:​

"At the age of 72 she [Mary Delany] began to imitate flowers in paper collage as an ‘employment and amusement... '... Her skill was such that the great eighteenth-century botanist Sir Joseph Banks declared that these collages were ‘the only imitations of nature that he had ever seen from which he could venture to describe botanically any plant without the least fear of committing an error'.​"

17. Vincent Van Gogh

18. Gerhard Richter

19. Frank Lloyd Wright​

20. Henri Rousseau

21. Jean-Paul Riopelle

22. Gustav Klimt

23. Amedeo Modigliani

24. Mark Rothko

25. Henry Darger I learned about Henry Darger in a documentary I randomly picked up at the library; though I find some of his art disturbing, his story fascinates me. The link is to the documentary trailer.

26. Georgia O'Keeffe

27. Edward Hopper

28. René Magritte

29. Paul Cezanne

30. & 31. Frances and Margaret MacDonald (image below by Frances MacDonald McNair (watercolour) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

32. Rolf Armstrong

33. Man Ray

34. Lilias Torrance-Newton

35. Jean-Paul Lemieux

36. Maud Lewis

37. Lawren Harris

"We were told, quite seriously, that there never would be a Canadian art because we had no art tradition." - Lawren Harris​, Canadian artist and member of the Group of Seven

38. Edwin Holgate

39. Tamara de Lempicka (image below via WikiPaintings)​

Self-Portrait in the Green Bugatti - Tamara de Lempicka

40. Joan Miro

"The works must be conceived with fire in the soul but executed with clinical coolness.​" - Joan Miro