New Years, A Dialogue by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

MORTAL:

    “The night is cold, the hour is late, the world is bleak and drear;

    Who is it knocking at my door?”

THE NEW YEAR:

    “I am Good Cheer.”

MORTAL:

    “Your voice is strange; I know you not; in shadows dark I grope.

    What seek you here?”

THE NEW YEAR:

    “Friend, let me in; my name is Hope.”

MORTAL:

    “And mine is Failure; you but mock the life you seek to bless. Pass on.”

THE NEW YEAR:

    “Nay, open wide the door; I am Success.”

MORTAL:

    “But I am ill and spent with pain; too late has come your wealth. I cannot use it.”

THE NEW YEAR:

    “Listen, friend; I am Good Health.”

MORTAL:

    “Now, wide I fling my door. Come in, and your fair statements prove.”

THE NEW YEAR:

    “But you must open, too, your heart, for I am Love.”

My 1950s Christmas!

This Christmas card came from my memories of a 1950s Christmas! My family did not have much but my mother who grew up during the Depression and never had a doll of her own made sure her four daughters each got a new doll every Christmas. Also she must have been up sewing night after night making complete wardrobes for each doll but of course we though they came from Santa! My fondest memories of Christmas growing up have to do with dolls!

This card is available through Fine Art America. See slideshow to the right.

My new Christmas cards available through FineArtAmerica.com
http://maureen-tillman.artistwebsites.com/index.html
I hope you enjoy them!
                                       

Haunted Houses by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All houses wherein men have lived and died

Are haunted houses. Through the open doors

The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,

With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,

Along the passages they come and go,

Impalpable impressions on the air,

A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts

Invited; the illuminated hall

Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,

As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see

The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;

He but perceives what is; while unto me

All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;

Owners and occupants of earlier dates

From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,

And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense

Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere

Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense

A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise

By opposite attractions and desires;

The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,

And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar

Of earthly wants and aspirations high,

Come from the influence of an unseen star

An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud

Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light,

Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd

Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends

A bridge of light, connecting it with this,

O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,

Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

Autumn Dryad Now Available on Prints

Happy Fall! This piece is called "Autumn Dryad". It is a hand made collage that sold 2 years ago on ETSY and yet it still gets a large number of views online - must be from my sold section or other places online where it shows up. So today I listed it on FineArtAmerica.com to be available as a print, canvas or greeting card. Being so happily consumed with my digital artwork I still sometimes really like to get my hands in the work and do my collage work.



http://fineartamerica.com/featured/autumn-dryad-collage-maureen-tillman.html?newartwork=true

Patriotics by David Baker

Yesterday a little girl got slapped to death by her daddy,
out of work, alcoholic, and estranged two towns down river.
America, it's hard to get your attention politely.
America, the beautiful night is about to blow up

and the cop who brought the man down with a shot to the chops
is shaking hands, dribbling chaw across his sweaty shirt,
and pointing cars across the courthouse grass to park.
It's the Big One one more time, July the 4th,

our country's perfect holiday, so direct a metaphor for war,
we shoot off bombs, launch rockets from Drano cans,
spray the streets and neighbors' yards with the machine-gun crack
of fireworks, with rebel yells and beer. In short, we celebrate.

It's hard to believe. But so help the soul of Thomas Paine,
the entire county must be here--the acned faces of neglect,
the halter-tops and ties, the bellies, badges, beehives,
jacked-up cowboy boots, yes, the back-up singers of democracy

all gathered to brighten in unambiguous delight
when we attack the calm and pointless sky. With terrifying vigor
the whistle-stop across the river will lob its smaller arsenal
halfway back again. Some may be moved to tears.

We'll clean up fast, drive home slow, and tomorrow
get back to work, those of us with jobs, convicting the others
in the back rooms of our courts and malls--yet what
will be left of that one poor child, veteran of no war

but her family's own? The comfort of a welfare plot,
a stalk of wilting prayers? Our fathers' dreams come true as
nightmare.
So the first bomb blasts and echoes through the streets and shrubs:
red, white, and blue sparks shower down, a plague

of patriotic bugs. Our thousand eyeballs burn aglow like punks.
America, I'd swear I don't believe in you, but here I am,
and here you are, and here we stand again, agape. 

Ghost Elephants by Jean Valentine

In the elephant field 
tall green ghost elephants 

with your cargo of summer leaves 

at night I heard you breathing at the window 

Don't you ever think I'm not crying 

since you're away from me 

Don't ever think I went free 

At first the goodbye had a lilt to it— 

maybe just a couple of months— 

but it was a beheading. 

Ghost elephant, 

reach down, 

cross me over— 

When a Sale Brings a Tear to My Eye

I rarely sell an item I list in my shop on ETSY.com as quickly as I did today - selling my unique little fairyland jewelry box less than 2 weeks after listing it. Of course I am happy, ecstatic even, for the sale but this was one of the few pieces I have done that I become attached to while creating it. These are pieces I really don't want to sell so I price them high enough thinking that will prevent them from selling. And if they do sell, if someone falls in love with them as much as I am and are willing to meet my price then so be it. It just came as such a surprise to me today. So I will pack it up and send it off to Los Angeles to it's new home, but I'll most assuradly have a tear in my eye as I do it.

Description from my ETSY shop:

A special collaged fairyland jewelry box measuring 8" x 5" x 4" with a domed lid and interior with a sliding compartmentalized tray. My collage is built up in layers to portray a deeply forested hidden, fairy house in a tree trunk with a blue door on the front and a secret garden enclosure with a tiny blue door on the back. One side shows a tiny orange door in a stone wall and the other end shows 3 red orange mushrooms growing at the base of a tree. The domed top shows a hidden sunlit clearing in the forest with the text, "Let the little fairy in you FLY"! The domed top, front and back sides are covered in tiny crystals and miniature blue foil stars. I wish I could find this secret secluded place and live there forever! This is one of my most favorite creations ever! It will be hard to part with.

I also listed a little clock I did at the same time in the same fairyland style. 

My new website: http://www.maureentillmandigitalart.com

I am very excited about my newest website, and happy that I managed to build it myself. I did it through WIX.com - they gave me everything I could have wanted for tools. I was able to link the site to my FineArtAmerica.com store plus my ETSY.com shop. I wasn't sure I could figure that part out but WIX gives you so many built in aids that I am confident I can learn whatever I need to for use on the site - given enough time that is! I have included on my 4 page website about a dozen of my favorite digital art pieces that are available on Fine Art America.

http://www.maureentillmandigitalart.com

http://www.maureentillmandigitalart.com

Among Women by Marie Ponsot

What women wander?

Not many. All. A few.

Most would, now & then,

& no wonder.

Some, and I’m one,

Wander sitting still.

My small grandmother

Bought from every peddler

Less for the ribbons and lace

Than for their scent

Of sleep where you will,

Walk out when you want, choose

Your bread and your company.

She warned me, “Have nothing to lose.”

She looked fragile but had

High blood, runner’s ankles,

Could endure, endure.

She loved her rooted garden, her

Grand children, her once

Wild once young man.

Women wander

As best they can.

Summer

 ''Summer has set in with its usual severity.''                                                                           Samuel Taylor Coleridge                                                                                                                        

© Artwork - Maureen Kavaney Tillman

Am I Kin to Sorrow? by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Am I kin to Sorrow,
That so oft
Falls the knocker of my door——
Neither loud nor soft,
But as long accustomed,
Under Sorrow's hand?
Marigolds around the step
And rosemary stand,
And then comes Sorrow—
And what does Sorrow care
For the rosemary
Or the marigolds there?
Am I kin to Sorrow?
Are we kin?
That so oft upon my door—
Oh, come in! 

The Soul Bringer

                                                                   
                                                                                                         

© Copyright Maureen Kavaney Tillman 2013

Flaming June

     One of my most favorite paintings - Flaming June
               by Fredrick Lord Leighton 1830-1896

The Answer by Carl Sandburg

You have spoken the answer.
A child searches far sometimes
Into the red dust
On a dark rose leaf
And so you have gone far
For the answer is:
Silence.

In the republic
Of the winking stars
and spent cataclysms
Sure we are it is off there the answer
is hidden and folded over,
Sleeping in the sun, careless whether
it is Sunday or any other day of
the week,

Knowing silence will bring all one way or another.

Have we not seen
Purple of the pansy
out of the mulch
and mold
crawl
into a dusk
of velvet?
blur of yellow? 

www.Hypersmash.com
Pingates.com

An Observation by May Sarton

True gardeners cannot bear a glove


Between the sure touch and the tender root,


Must let their hands grow knotted as they move


With a rough sensitivity about


Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,


Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.


And so I watched my mother's hands grow scarred,


She who could heal the wounded plant or friend


With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;


I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,


But now her truth is given me to live,


As I learn for myself we must be hard


To move among the tender with an open hand,


And to stay sensitive up to the end


Pay with some toughness for a gentle world.

                     ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Since selling my house and moving a year ago 

 and still living in temporary quarters with my

 daughter, it is the first Springtime in my adult

 life when I don't have a flower garden. I miss

 my peonies especially, and my huge climbing

 rose which should be radiant right now. 

 So I have no beautiful photos to post here this year.

 Instead I am posting a collection of Impressionist

 women in their gardens for you to enjoy!