Everything I made in 2011 (except for the 70+ mason jar paintings and the 50+ dilapidated building prints) is up on my website. Please check it out here.

If you are ever interested in purchasing a painting, my original work is always for sale. I also have the ability to make prints for a more affordable option.

Also, you can contact me through my blog (or just email beth@bethmeadows.com) if you ever have questions, comments, or just want to send me some good vibes. I am always appreciative.

Thanks for your support- verbal, written, and monetary!

Make me feel this way when we're old

Animaniacs was pretty smart, and (because I am, too,) I loved it when I was a kid. They could say things that actually meant something, and it was entertaining.

I always think of this song whenever I hear the word pistachio. I also trace my adamant aversion to high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oils back to Yakko, Wakko, and Dot. Thanks, you guys.

I've been buying No. 2 pencils and pretty stationery lately. I've written a few letters, but it's a difficult habit to form. I want to write more.

4th Year Studio

Some Lovely Things

I'm making a functional piece for the Salvage Show that is about letter writing, so today I've been collecting quotes about the fading art.

Here are some of my favorites.

Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls; for, thus friends absent speak. John Donne

A letter is a blessing, a great and all-too-rare privilege that can turn a private moment into an exalted experience. Alexandra Stoddard

A letter always seemed to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend. Emily Dickinson

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine. Samuel Butler

A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill. Jane Austen

Poets don’t draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently. Jean Cocteau

A Letter is a Joy of Earth- It is denied the Gods. Emily Dickinson

I did the second run for the Juicy print yesterday. I'm really excited about picking up screenprinting again- I've got some ideas brewin'.





I decided to entitle this print Juicy Jangles, which is Juicy's nickname when she wears her bell necklace. Yes, she has different names for most occasions.

I made It Don't Come Easy last fall for my show at the Birdhouse in November 2011.

I put a lot of things I had been thinking about in this piece. It references my business endeavors that fall under the moniker With Bear Hands, the 100 (well, 99) mason jar paintings I made last year, and also the inclinations I was having at the time to start making abstract paintings.

I wanted to make a painting about the things I've been working toward, the things I've wanted for so long, all the hours spent in my studio and devoted to art, where I want to go from here. I wanted to talk about how chasing a dream (that you can't even see) can feel terribly unnatural, like domesticating a wild animal. And even when things seem to be shaping up around you, how you still might feel the inclination to run off into the wilderness- naked, with no possessions- and never come back.

But making this painting was really enjoyable, and that's the curious thing about art (or maybe any dream). It can feel like it's going to kill you, and at the same time, the act of doing it can ease all amount of frustration.

***

It Don't Come Easy
acrylic on canvas
2011
36" x 30"
$1500

8 x 10 prints of this painting are for sale here.

I've noticed a trend lately in my life. It has come to my attention that over the past year or so, I've been attracting men who can best be described as Honey Badgers.

In the beginning, I'm attracted to their honest personality. They're the kind of person who will say what's on their mind, and it's refreshing. They might be cynical and slightly judgmental, but, truth be told, they say what I'm probably thinking anyway but would never verbalize, and it makes me laugh.

There comes a point, however, when their demeanor takes a turn, and they say something like this:

I don't care what other people think of me. I say what I want, and if people don't like it, screw them. They can quit hanging out with me if they don't like me.

I'm not lying, about four guys have expressed this exact sentiment to me over the past year or so. The first time I heard someone say it, I thought, "Wow. How cool. I wish I had that kind of confidence." By now, however, the novelty has worn off, and I realize the fine line between honesty and tact.

The last time a guy said this to me was a couple of weeks ago, and his face morphed into a Honey Badger's as he said, "... I don't care anymore. I don't give a shit..."

It was awesome.

So I've been thinking about it a lot lately, asking myself some questions like:

If they don't care what other people think, am I foolish to believe they care what I think?  
How am I attracting these men when I actually do care deeply about what others think? 
Did something happen to them that made them this way?  
Were they born Honey Badgers? 

I like psychoanalyzing people, and men with the Honey Badger Syndrome have proved to be the most intriguing. You know what my research in the field has found? Do you know what they all have in common?

Each had something traumatic happen to them- a heart-wrenching break-up with a girl they were madly in love with, the death of a close family member, abuse.

I'm no psychiatrist, but if I had to put two and two together, I'd say their not giving a shit was all a ruse. Instead of showing grief or sorrow, they decided to become apathetic in order to cope with something they couldn't control- abandonment, love lost, whether romantic or familial. Their "revenge" for what they could not change became not caring.

To prove this theory even further, it makes sense for me personally because I've always been one of those dumb girls who likes to take care of broken men. I've never understood how, but nurturing females will always find the wounded male, and vice versa. It's as if we have a magnetic pull that draws us to one other. It's a catastrophic recipe, but for a time, the Honey Badger finds someone to love him, to take his mind off his hurt. It doesn't take long, however, for him to become restless, to remind himself that he doesn't give a shit, and off he wanders to lick his wounds or find someone else to love him for a little while. 

Whether my theory is correct or not, it's helped me deal with the fact that the Honey Badger can't be mine. I still give a shit for him, I hope the best for him (always), but it's easier to let him go.

Hopefully the next time one saunters across my path, I'll have the gumption to resist him all together, no matter how much watching him tear the head off of a cobra makes me (devilishly) laugh.

This is the second post in the series Single and Ready to Eat Pringles.