I missed the 12am deadline for posting today... But, I missed the deadline because I was "in the zone" so it doesn't count. This image peeks through the door of our new studio in the Pauwela Cannery in Haiku, Maui, and reveals one of the tables on and around which I spent the last 12 hours. I took hundreds of photos on my iPhone today focused on these tables and only a dozen or so will ever be published. If you follow me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/shane) or subscribe to my website (http://shanerobinson.com) you'll see my updates over the next few days. I'm not sure about posting to Facebook since my next few images contain artistic nudity...

I'm on Maui this week working in our new studio. We've leased a 1,700 square foot space in the Pauwela Cannery in Haiku on the North Shore. We were here early in 2010 and as we walked through the corridors, i just knew we would have a studio here. Less an a year later I picked up the keys this morning and now here I am... Sitting in a blank canvas.

I'm a firm believer in The Law of Attraction and that just your thoughts have the power to manifest physical objects and situations in the world. Some people might call it "answered prayer" but I don't subscribe to any of the organized religions or dogmas. I just don't believe there is a "greater power" out there sitting in judgement of our actions.

But I have become VERY familiar with "my gut" feelings on any given situation, encounters, and people I come in contact with.

I stepped off the plane 8 years ago on my first visit to Hawaii, and turned to Roxanne while we were still walking thru the airport and said, "I'm moving here." 18 months later we did. Same holds true with our intentioned move to Maui this year. And also my "gut feeling" that the Cannery would play some role in my new "art" adventures. (http://rsr.me/mauiopen)

So tonight, another piece falls into place. Effortlessly. And I'm sitting in a blank canvas, excited and curious about what we'll create here.

I leave for Maui early tomorrow morning. We've rented a studio space in the Pauwela Cannery in Haiku on the North Shore. It's an old pineapple processing plant that's been converted to shops and artists studios. To say I'm excited about getting into the new space would be a massive understatement. It's one of the parts of our plan to move to Maui this year and is the location of my participation in the Maui Open Studios event in February: http://rsr.me/mauiopen

I mention all this because of the photo of Lexi above. I'm sure animals can experience "happiness" as we define it, but not so sure about "gratitude." I believe gratitude is a more complicated emotion that involves notions of linear time and the ability to compare memories of "good" versus "less favorable" experiences. But she certainly appears to be in a state of gratitude each and every time she goes to the beach (which is almost every day.)

I am very grateful for the opportunity to start working (painting and photography) a week or two each month in the new studio while we continue to work on moving to Maui.

The photograph above was taken with my iPhone and the Hipstamatic app. Besides the great films and lenses to choose from with Hipstamatic, what I like most about the app is "what you shoot is what you get." There's no post-processing or editing of the images. You choose your "film" and "lens" (and optional flash) and shoot.

If I could keep only 1 photography app on my iPhone, Hipstamatic would be the easy choice.

I fully intended to just pull a previously created image tonight since it's Sunday and I just spent the last 3 hours manually pressing almost a gallon of tangerine juice from about 100 tangerines I picked from our tree today. But I just wasn't inspired by anything I've previously created sitting in my iPad's photo album...

So, I grabbed a photo I took of myself in our outdoor shower a couple months ago (that I've never liked and almost trashed several times) and started playing with it in Percolator, Iris Photo Suite, and Brushes. Same "app recipe" used in yesterday's post. The door to our outdoor shower is mostly glass and on sunny days acts like a mirror. There are 4 flections of me in the image above but only 2 are easily visible.