Party Elephants

Speak when you’re angry and you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret.
–Lawrence J. Peter

Copyright Beth Parker Art 2011

Party Elephants – 4″ x 6″ Watercolor & Sharpie Postcard
I painted this little postcard from another of Christine’s (Crispur2005) photos at WetCanvas.  They were wood or brass figurines (hard to tell) and if Christine didn’t live in Australia, I’d probably have to go to her house and kidnap them.  I fell in love! 

Lawrence J. Peter (1919-1990) was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and began his career as a teacher in 1941. He received the degree of Doctor of Education from Washington State University in 1963.
In 1964, Peter moved to California, where he became an Associate Professor of Education, Director of the Evelyn Frieden Centre for Prescriptive Teaching, and Coordinator of Programs for Emotionally Disturbed Children at the University of Southern California.

He became widely famous in 1968, on the publication of The Peter Principle, in which he states: “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence … in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties … Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.” The Peter Principle became one of the most profound principles of management from the University of Southern California. It is a heavily quoted principle at the Marshall School of Business.

Another notable quotation of his is that the “noblest of all dogs is the hot-dog; it feeds the hand that bites it.”
From 1985 to his death in 1990, Dr. Peter attended and was involved in management of the Kinetic Sculpture Race in Humboldt County, California. He proposed an award for the race, titled “The Golden Dinosaur Award” which has been handed out every year since to the first sculptural machine to utterly break down immediately after the start.  Source:  Wikipedia

Halloween Blog Challenge

“I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence, but it comes from within. It is there all the time.”
– Anna Freud



Halloween Party
5″ x 6″ Watercolor and Sharpie


Today is the day of the Halloween Blog Challenge.  An invitation went out within our blogger group (that means you!) to paint or create something Halloweeny.  Post it on your blog and comment here, with a link to your blog, so we’ll know where to go look at everyon’s art.

Ryan, from asmalltowndad blog, is away on his annual Halloween camp-out.   He did an amazing painting and you can go see it here.  You’ll LOVE it!!  I did, and I have flies buzzing around my head in it. 

I have had a lot of fun this week, doing all these little paintings.  I like the fun and playful side of Halloween.  When I lived in Huntington Beach, CA, there was always a party.  I have great memories of those parties.  I lived in a neighborhood close to the beach, where most of my neighbors were in their 20′s.  We made Halloween a fun holiday.

Now, I understand that the same (average income) young couples could probably not afford to live where we lived and the houses we lived in have probably been replaced by taller, fancier homes.  I was lucky to have that time in my life.  It was a terrific place to spend my 20′s.  We also had St. Patrick’s day parties, Cinco De Mayo, 4th of July….. you get the idea.  Yeah, we had fun!

About Anna Freud

Austrian psychoanalyst Anna Freud was a pioneer in the field of child psychiatry; she also worked closely with her father, Sigmund Freud, in developing his theories. She was born in Vienna in 1895 and fled to London with her parents in 1938, escaping the Nazi regime. When her father became sick with cancer, she took over his studies, becoming his intellectual heir. She founded the Hampstead Clinic to work with children. She died in 1982.

Party Peppers

“If one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better.”
– Jane Austen

 
Party Peppers
5″ x 7″ Watercolor

The fun part about painting peppers in their shine!  Oh, and the way some are red and green at the same time, or yellow and red.  They are just fun to paint. 

About Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775-1817), the British writer whose sparkling, socially incisive novels remain extremely popular two centuries after her death, is best known for Pride and Prejudice, which she called her “own darling child.” She started writing solely for her own family, and her novels, including Sense and Sensibility and Emma, were initially published anonymously (or “By a Lady”). Nevertheless, she won fame later in life, and she earned the high honor of burial in Winchester Cathedral after her death in 1817 at age 41.