If you’ve stopped by it’s should be obvious that this website is due for an upgrade, but I thought I’d do a quick post to say yes I’m still alive and painting. Most of the work in the gallery is from another place in my life and things have taken a very different direction since. My website and gallery will be overhauled as soon as the new work is ready to be documented, but to give some idea of what’s been going on in my life I’m going to link to this thread I started on art and autism.

In the meantime feel free to look me up on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jpohl

I’ve been a little busy with household matters and setting up my studio, but finally got around to checking out the Giller Shortlist. It looks like there is at least one more book that I will have to read in the very near future: Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air. It should prove to be a great read, and a way to learn more about our new home town of Yellowknife. So far I know that the ravens here are huge, and there is a small but beautiful beach. (A local writer was joking about writing an article called “The Top One Beach of the North.”)

Speaking of late nights, I should be catching up on some sleep right now while I can, seeing a plumber is installing a new-to-me dishwasher early in the morning. The plan is that this will help me buy more painting time each day. Wish me luck!

Over the past two years I’ve watched as my husband’s website has grown from a simple concept for a few pieces of paper into an active community site with regular writers, contributors, and tens of thousands of visitors from the four corners of the globe each day. I’ve watched with some surprise and not undue pride as his small hobby and love of tinkering has gradually won the attention of numerous major productivity websites, and even the likes of the Boston Globe, CNN, Pen World, Washington Post, Sacramento Bee, a DIY televison network, Fortune Magazine, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and an interview with the New York Times among others… but today it did my heart much good to see a show of support from our home province. An especially cool little St. John’s based arts and entertainment paper called the Scope with a circulation of some seven thousand did an article which featured diyplanner.com for their “Student Survival Guide” issue. You can read the interview and other articles in the online version of their paper which came out today.

I love to look at other people’s gardens, but I don’t think I realized how much peace and joy working in my own could give me, despite all the thorns from the wild roses. And with a little luck, and a few prayers perhaps, dreams can come true. I planted sunflowers and lavender near the Arctic Circle yesterday.