I recently posted about my passion for collecting art. I have a most beloved friend from my Laguna Beach Days (I've also visited her exquisite home in Cuernavaca, Mexico) who met Kathleen Winter while cruising the Arctic last year. (Gawd, I hope I have her name right.) Kathleen writes with words to make a heart swoon. Well, mine did, anyway. She collects art! So, below is a link that will take you to an additional slant to the obsession we share. Her writing is enchanting.

Oh, before I forget! My most beloved friend from Laguna Beach days is Pat Morgan who is a frequent visitor to Journalscape and a brilliant musician and chorale vocalist. (Did I word that correctly, Patsy? She knows all about obsession and art.)

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Noteworthy note: I've tried for more minutes than I care to confess to trying to post a link to the following blog, but I'm a supreme do-do at the art of linking. So, below is a copy/paste of Kathleen's blog that I enjoyed so much.

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Today rescued another painting from the secondhand shop, this one a Quebec winter scene by somebody called Huguette Denis. I really have to stop carting paintings home, but how can I resist when someone has lovingly, with or without what we call talent, rendered a refreshing or uplifting or moving scene on canvas, only to have the movers cart it off to the Sally Ann when the painter dies or is somehow uprooted or when the painting just falls into the wrong hands? My husband rescued a Paul Parsons painting like that, taking it instead of money for moving an old refrigerator out of the owner's apartment. Paul Parsons might as well have reached into his own body, torn out his soul, and laid it out on the canvas, his work is so moving and strong. Not all the paintings I rescue are like that. One, signed Rox Pitre, shows a red and blue tent under a tree beneath the sun, and I just want to be in that tent every time I look at it. The painting is a naive painting not worth a penny to anyone but myself, though it fills me with happiness. Sometimes I break my own rules and cart home a painting that doesn't fill my soul, simply because I see that the painter was technically adept, but I always regret these rescues, preferring weird goats and bereft boat journeys and women seated around coals with bowls of something they are lovingly cooking in a tent. I've carted home work by Austrian painter Rosina Wachtmeister and Haitian master Wilfrid Louis this way, not knowing who the painters were until I did some research after my rescue. Here's one of Wilfrid Louis' pieces - the colours are muted and the figures fill me with warmth and sadness.

I have too many paintings, and today I brought home a snow scene in a Quebec town by the person called Huguette Denis and put it in the kitchen. No one appears to have heard of Huguette, who has signed this painting to her beloved parents, but it fills my nostrils with the thrill of fresh, newfallen snow whenever I look at it, and the houses are not stiff, and neither are the trees or the fences: unknown Huguette knew how to make them live, and for that I rescued her painting from the frip-prix.