Happy and Art filled New Year to you all!
Art is all around us- sometimes we just forget its there. For example in front of me is a plastic box full of Christmas cards waiting to be recycled. Every card has a lovely picture or design on it. Then there is the tree decorated with lovely sparkly baubles and lights.My visit to a church this year to see a nativity play enabled me to wonder in awe at the bright and colourful stained glass windows which added to the splendour of the church building.
I am beginning to understand why people feel art is not really  part of their everyday lives. Art is seen in museums and art in museums by default is usually very valuable and this fact separates - art from the community. Art can be seen as something which has to be paid for and therefore out of reach of  most folk's pockets.
 However all it takes is a seeing eye and looking at the world around us. We soon begin to see the art around us for example  in the design on the tin of biscuits you got for Christmas or the sweet wrappers discarded in the bin.Even in the different designs and myriad of colours found in clothes-pegs.

 Today I took some of the original images I made during the visual arts practice and used the computer packages - Paint and Artrage. Unfortunately, Art Rage does not have the paint fill facility which is found in Paint. Paint is not as good at drawing as ArtRage but it is fun trying them out. You could probably download ArtRage now from the internet..Here they are. The first one is made on  Paint.The second one is ArtRage.
My own art development reminds me of the time I found a bird's nest which was made using the materials the bird found in the area it lived in. The nest was made mainly of plastic packaging which was always floating around in its habitat.

The reason I am using the computer software is because it is available to me. My family are always using the computer and it seems natural to do this just now.