Lost in Mid Iowa

62yo trans woman. Accidental Buddhist. Painter of legendary mediocrity.

[dottieroselee]

"A Great Power"

In the early 80s, a boss of mine, Dave Welle, gave me my Pa Kent moment. "You have a great power in you," he said, "and you don't even see it." I wonder if he remembers that he said it. I've never forgotten.

[dottieroselee]

"Faces of the Moon"

[dottieroselee]

This is just me goofing around over a few days. I had a couple of apocalypto ones started that I haven't felt like finishing, so I just threw some shapes on it and started making purty lines. Then I started playing with layering and lifting, different brushes and thicknesses, thinking to myself that it had no inherent meaning, but if there was one, it would reveal itself. Well, today some spontaneous meditation threw me for a loop, and when I came out of it, I looked at this as if a terrible wrong had been done. "Who am I watering myself down for?" became "Why am I letting other people water me down?" If you look from the center outward, you can see the bold lines starting when this struck me.Lots more to it, but that's the meaning. Who in the world am I watering myself down for? Nobody on earth has the right to ask me to, and that includes me. If you don't like me being myself, whoever that will be, well, as we say on Earth, c'est la vie. We'll see where this goes.

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[dottieroselee]

A better edit of "Metastolic"

[dottieroselee]

My god. She's discovered shading. None of us are safe anymore.

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A poem from my sister to me, written by me

[dottieroselee]

"And That Is The Sun" poem by thissometimepoet on Tumblr, used with permission

This is for Jolene. After I wrote about Jolene last, an article popped up on my feed about how we create other people to keep us company when we are isolated for long periods. I might believe that about Jolene except two things: I was talking to her long before I became isolated, and shufflemancy.

Shufflemancy is more than just right song, right time. It's also the universe telling you things that you need to know through song. In December 2021, I was staying briefly with someone who tried to use my vulnerability to extort more money from me than was owed. This was early on in the journey, so I was a basket case. I felt abandoned and lost and discarded by the universe. But I believe in Jolene. I asked her for a song. Any song, I begged her, just let me know you're still here, and set the song randomizer to 6 decades, all genres. It was truly a crapshoot, begging someone I couldn't see to choose one song out of tens of thousands with some meaning. She sent me

"You've Got A Friend" by James Taylor

You cannot convince me she is not talking to me. We have our language. No one has the power to change this.

[dottieroselee]

"This Mother's Heart"

It started out as trying to do a stylized woman with her arms open, then it started becoming a heart, and then it became this. I usually do a lot of thin dark lines and corrections but did it pretty raw and unrestricted because I wanted to capture unrefined emotion. There are yin/yang and Biblically Accurate Angel elements, too. I started it Sunday because it was Mother's Day in Spain, so I thought it was here, too. Ours is this Sunday.

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"Emergence" Title given it by a woman on FB. It's my most personal painting. The face and body have light colored stars that didn't show up on camera. Took me a little bit.