Hi TODAY is the LAST DAY for the 🏳️🌈 sliding scale sale and the survey (with its shop credit 💸 at the end). All the info is below! 🌱
I woke up to the delightful realization that even though my birthday is next week, we’re celebrating starting NOW. Danielle got up with the dogs (who wake up with the sun, ready to live, and poop) and said “happy birthday, go back to sleep.” I put on my headphones and was out sometime during the second slow exhale — 1, 2, 3, 4 — of my guided meditation.
Aside from these kinds of luxuries, my birthday means self-portrait season. I started the tradition years ago and keep going: noticing how I change, and even more, how the ways that I see myself change. It’s also a nice practice in being alive, right now.
For much of my life I’ve been trying to play a soft song despite the ROAR:
my past that charges me static electric (the old threads clinging all over me, even against gravity; me, shocking the lips of everyone I kiss), and
my future which could be 60 more years or less than a week, which I worry about in detail (when I was a kid someone said, it’s always the one thing you didn’t see coming, so I began the massive effort of seeing everything coming, eliminating potential surprises one by tiny, horrible one).
So you can imagine how important it is for me to stop and paint my hand.
To mix the right red for the creases,
which are the same as last year,
but a little bit better,
a little more themselves
How important it is for me to stop and paint Miko
nestled in my arms,
with the warmth around her eyes, and
the satisfying folds of a good sweatshirt.
How important it is to stop and
spend an hour
noticing
where the light is and
where there is shadow.
Noticing where I am
hard and where
I am soft.
Today is the LAST DAY for two things:
🏳️🌈The SLIDING SCALE is an art accessibility party I’m doing during Pride where all my prints are on the steepest discount ever for queer people who I love, love, love. Codes & info & prints are all at britchida.com
👋🏼 I want to get to know you and understand better how to keep this space thriving. I recently quit my job (!!) to do this full time and am working hard to build something flexible and strong. If you would take the anniversary SURVEY I would SO appreciate it. And then, at the end, you’ll get a shop credit in thanks for your time 💛
ps. the photos from this post are from this month’s Easy Does It lessons on making self-portraits. Easy Does It is our online art community where I write and teach about living a creative life with a focus on painting. We have monthly live classes, and when you join you get access to the full archive of written posts. It’s open to everyone no matter your familiarity with art or having a creative practice. I’d love to see you there!
i just love the way you write. that is all.