This morning when I crawled out of bed, shivering from the cold, I looked at the -37 degrees celcius showing on the outdoor thermometer and then I quickly turned up the furnace thermostat and started a fire in one of the wood stoves.
This morning I completed an oil painting that reminded me of a warm summer day in Haines, Alaska. Here it is shown below:
Below is a graphite drawing I completed in 1988 and found while going through my junque. The fancy glasses were in style at that time. Below that, is an oil painting, that I found with it, completed by Aggie in 1992. Aggie’s paintings can be seen in Aggie’s Gallery.
When the hell is it going to stop snowing? And it’s -27 degrees C!
A View of the Kitchen Patio from the kitchen.
February 21st is Ash Wednesday . . . so here is a prayer that I wrote for Ash Wednesday:
ASH WEDNESDAY PRAYER
By Roger Ulasovetz
O Jesus, the ashes on my forehead,
“Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return”,
a reminder of “Tempus Fugit, Memento Mori”,
and a sign that I too will leave this world.
Death surrounds us every day.
Our life too, on earth will end.
My time on earth is short. My years are set.
I know not when my time will end.
O Jesus, help to make me ready, to meet you when I leave.
Give to me and all the world,
the wisdom and the grace this holy season,
while we can, to make this world a better place.
I am sorry to say that my application for Active Status with the Federation of Canadian Artists was declined by the jury panel. As they used the art on my website as the work being juried, I suppose I should assume that there is nothing on there that is worthy of FCA membership.
I have a rejection business card with text that I think suits this event. It says: “THANK YOU for at least thinking of me. SORRY, but I won’t be returning the favour.”
Today I needed to split and bring in wood for one of the wood stoves. But maybe I should clean the chimney first; it hasn’t been cleaned for awhile. Oh my God! There’s 3 to 5 feet of snow on the roof. Well, that’s it for painting today.
After splitting two wheelbarrow fulls of wood and bringing it into the house I had to get the ladder. Where is it? There it is . . . under the deck, with a 5 foot high snowbank between me and the ladder. Whew! Got the ladder. Now up to the nearly flat portion of the roof; the only part I dare clean (I don’t have a death wish), and which I have to clean to even get at the chimney. Oh well better get started. Anyway, I don’t want the roof to cave in do I? Wow . . . what a lot of hard work. After removing about a third of the snow I decided to leave the rest for Wednesday; tomorrow I have to go to Whitehorse and get some groceries. I need food. And anyway, I’m too tired to continue. The the chimney can wait until Wednesday also. Now to get down off of the roof. Damn, look at all the snow on the deck . . . from the roof. More work. I cleaned the deck of snow also.
Now I can hardly walk! All my muscles ache! I’ll attack the snow again on Wednesday; and the chimney too.
Is this painting offensive?
As volunteer webmaster of the Tagish Community website and a resident of Tagish Yukon, I included one of my paintings on the Tagish Community blog site header, with a caption that said: “Weblog Painting by Ulasovetz”. I also included a link to *my* website from a page that was specifically designed to link to local area artist pages and websites. On the “Tagish Business” page there was a link to what I think is the best web hosting site available on the internet and is where my site is hosted and which I recommended to any viewers that may be considering building their own website. On the Tagish “Notice Board” page there was a for sale sign for my house that was actually a link to my website where information about my house resides. That’s it . . . the sum total exposure for myself, a resident of Tagish, on the Tagish Community website.
Now, why this post? I was definitely PO’d because:
If you were me . . . what would you do at this point? I completely purged “Ulasovetz” from the Tagish Community website. There is no longer any reference to “Ulasovetz” on it. I posted a request on the Community blog for a new webmaster to volunteer to take my place. And until then, I volunteered to continue as webmaster, unless the Commuity wanted me to resign before then, in which case I would be happy to do so. I also purged any reference to “Bluehost”.
Are my actions wrong? Should my *purge* not have taken place? Does this Community have a problem? Are their actions correct? At this point I really do not care. I will continue to be an artist, and I will continue with an artist’s temperment. When people like a piece of my artwork enough, it will have found a home and I will continue to produce more . . . as long as I can.
Never, anywhere, in my life, have I seen so much snowfall. And it’s still snowing with the normally peak snowfall periods still to come. At least it isn’t too cold . . . in fact the temperature is rather pleasant at about -10 degrees Celsius right now. Personally I think that any temperature warmer than -20 is okay.
I am still spending time almost every day in my studio and I should have two new giclee print editions available soon.
The pictures below are what it’s like outside right now. The first being a child’s playhouse that I use as a storage shed and the second is the access road in front of the house.
