PPF and FFF - Calm in the Storm

The challenge 5 for Fall, Fearless and Fly. The prompts were:

Headline Prompt:  Lifelong Fan:  What or who have you consistently valued or looked up to in your life?  What lessons have you learned from people you admire?
Color Prompt:  Your favorite color now or from childhood or both!
Quote Prompt: "Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator; but among those whom I love, I can:  all of them make me laugh."  W.H.Auden

Today, I am using the first two prompts. The colours in this piece are purple, a colour I have like all my life and red which is a new found favourite (since the second prompt when we were asked to use a colour we least liked)

 I struggled with this as I do not have a person that I have admired throughout my life, I have admired people for periods of time and something then comes up to show me, they are a mess just like me. I don't stop liking them, but, they are no longer on that pedestal that I had placed them. So it shows something about me, rather than them. I am now very careful not to do that anymore! So I started thinking about qualities of the people I admire, Humour was high up there. But humour can sometimes be very cruel.

Time was ticking by and I had almost decided not to do this prompt, when a very busy and chaotic few days, made me recall, a particular friend I had at Polytechnic. She was always calm even in the midst of crazy student life. Pamela was from Taiwan and her English was not 100 per cent and people put her quietness down to that. I was not so sure, so I asked her one day, “How come she was so relaxed and calm amongst us lot?” He reply was the quote by Buddha in the picture above. She said she was Buddhist and mediation helped to center her. Yes, I have always admired people who keep their cool in a crisis. It is something I aspire to. I can appear to calm on the surface, but there is a nasty storm inside! So I want to learn to be like the quote below, calm inside when there is a storm on the outside. (Blues and turquoise are close seconds in the favourite colours list.)

This week has been stormy for me, I would like to think that I kept my calm throughout. So thanks Pamela, even though we have different faiths, both will help us cope with the slings and arrows of life.

The first piece is acyclic (text added in Photoshop) and the second is an oil painting done earlier in the year with text and embellishments added in Photoshop.

Have a happy PPF day everyone.

Linking to

Paint Party Friday

Fall,fearless and Fly