St. Patrick, meet your better half!  Brigid is a jolly saint of babies, poets, cows, scholars, travelers, and beer (the last attribution mine).  She's a vernal saint associated with the green fire of rising spring energy. I'm doing a Brigid-inspired series now, but what I love about her is this list of her best and deepest wishes for the world.  Read to the end and then get yourself a brewsky.
I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us.
I would like an abundance of peace.
I would like full vessels of charity.
I would like rich treasures of mercy.
I would like cheerfulness to preside over all.
I would like Jesus to be present.
I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts.
I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me.
I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I would like to be watching Heaven’s family drinking it through all eternity.

Last night, I was looking through a pile of stuff on a cafe table: Jehovah's Witness Watchtowers, discarded newpaper ads, psychic services available---you know the sort of thing.  Into my hand fell a 2010 bird calender open to a flicker for December.  I guess he's supposed to be my bird pin-up guy, and he is quite handsome, I must say.  What this has to do with painting, I haven't the faintest-- but it is amazing how Whatever sorts these things out for us and plays them on the movies in our head.  What do these birds mean for my painting?  How many times must I be presented with this image?  Knock knock, who's there?

Etomology of the word flicker:
to move waveringly, flutter: to burn unsteadily... a brief movement, a tremor.. slang, a movie...an inconstant or wavering light.  That last phrase could describe the flame of art which, for many, burns unsteadily. From the Old English flikaren, to flutter.

In last Sunday's Sebastopol Center for the Arts Class, I was doing a demonstration of my very primitive negative painting so-called method.  I was trying to make a floral arrangement or perhaps some trees in a landscape.   I was painting upside down so the painting's "right side" was toward the class.  Sudenly people began calling out "I see a pig! I see a pig!" Many saw a pig's head with an alcohol splash ring on what I regarded as the pigs bu.... I mean, rear end.  So , in the end , a fat little boar of some kind appeared, a sort of Ferdinand the hog, sniffing a flower.  If you're a proponent of spontanaeity in painting, you'll get surprises, like it or not!