How Does Your Garden Grow?

When I was working with Kimon Nicolaides book in the early 70's I learned that finding a live model was no more difficult than looking out of my window. On the block where I lived there was a fascinating elderly Eastern European woman dressed in 'Old Country' clothing. She pulled a small red wagon and carried a hoe that was almost her height. She appeared most every day during the fall wandering silently down the road stopping to pull matted leaves and debris from between parked cars.

She piled her wagon high with this dark and matted mulch taking it back to her garden.

I admit that I would watch for her. I was intriqued and mesmerized as if I were looking through a keyhole into another, distant time. As soon as I would notice her coming down the road I would bolt for my sketch book. All the while she worked I drew. There were times when I went out to walk beside her attempting to catch her other worldly quality on my paper. She did not seem to mind. We never spoke, I don't imagine we knew the same language, yet she inspired me greatly.

Two of the sheets here were done from life on 18x24 inch newsprint. The third is a sheet of four studies using soft pastel and conte crayon.

The Natural Way to Draw

In 1970 I recieved a gift copy of Kimon Nicolaides The Natural Way to Draw. The book sets up fifteen hour a week schedules for drawing. It took me several years to have the confidence to start. Once I began I quickly became dedicated to completing each exercise in this wonderfully rich book.

The idea is to work from life and/or using the live model which often I did. Though living out of the loop, as I did during that time, I also freely used the Domonkas Library art book collection...that's what I did here:

These three memory studies after Diego Rivera were done on freezer wrap paper with woodstove charcoal in 1978.

Helping Hands and Mighty Companions

This present turn into my sixth decade has opened a fascinating and unexpected space. I watch the pendulum swing back into the early days when I was moving through the world dreaming of life as an artist. It was a bumpy start. I had been violently pitched out of the system and had to invent a way to stay alive. Yoga was my first life line, I made attempts each day to stop the panic attacks by learning how to breathe s l o w l y. Without dwelling on the drama it is possible to state that I was well educated at 18 years of age in the awareness that there are at all times 'Helping Hands' to assist when it seems that all is lost.

It was then that I met my angel Alice Twitchell. I have no doubt that we each saved the other's life in the summer of 1968 even though I never spoke directly of my traumas and I didn't learn of hers until 26 years later as we sat at a campfire on her land in New Mexico. I didn't know until then that she had lost her 18 year old daughter in a car crash 6 months before I arrived on the farm.

In the summer of 1968 I traveled with an acquaintance to the 300 acre Twitchell farm in Southern Ohio and possibility wrapped its arms about me like a life preserver pitched to a drowning soul.

I have twenty six years of magnificent, extraordinary letters from Alice. I've written memoirs about her and I keep a photo of her on my desk at all times. Thirty years my senior, artist/sculptor/painter/yoga practitioner/Baha i/gardener/advanced soul, she demonstrated an extraordinary level of balance and peace that I wanted with all my heart to emulate.


Her handmade life and her environment were intoxicating in their natural earthy beauty and simplicity. Her lifestyle gave me a visual imprint of what I wanted my own sweet life to look like. I have wavered not a day.

A year after I met Alice I began a relationship that included regular travels to Cape Cod. My first stay was in South Truro and my second brought me to the enchanted cottage owned by Lenore Tawny in the Wellfleet area where a good friend was housesitting for the summer. Everywhere my eye turned, indoors or out, I felt wrapped about by images and inspiration of the possible. I was beginning to see evidence of what life as a Woman Artist could be.

This India ink drawing on newsprint paper, 9x12 inches was done in 1971 in my then fanciful style during my solitary wandering on the isolated Wellfleet beach.

In 1968 I fell down the rabbit hole and almost disappeared. In the late summer I met Alice Twitchell, the artist angel who saved me. And from that moment on I once again knew my direction. Late in the year while I was working in the Coven Tree boutique/gallery on Coventry Road a hardcover book fell of the shelf into my hands. Titled Introduction to Yoga Principles and Practices by Sachindra Kumar Majumdar it opened me up to a world of extraordinary words and oh so exotic images. I began to read and then study voraciously the Sutras and the poetry of the Vedas and the Upanishads.

I began ever so slowly, ever so tentatively to attempt to quiet my mind. I recall being frightened of what might happen as I practiced learning to meditate. At the same time, and to a greater and far more compelling degree I felt as though I had slipped through a veil. I sensed that here I could find a safe space to heal as I dreamed my artist life into being.

One of the first poems I learned to lean into was:

Save the self by the Self.

Never upset the self.

The Self is the only friend of self.

The self is the only foe of Self.

Yoga helped me to begin to learn that there was another way to move through the world. As an aspiring artist I was yearning to find my voice, a voice that I felt I had lost as a result of deep trauma and violence.

Shown here are two contour drawings from that time period. My living room and my two studio companions, doves Horatio and Sunday.

I Go Among Trees and Sit Still

Prior to my move out of the city I lived across the street from the breathtaking and magnificent landscapes of Lakeview Cemetery. Founded in 1869 the 285 acres of land are modeled after the great garden cemeteries of Victorian England and France.

My morning meanderings would take me into the forests and along streambeds where ancient trees and the sound of water anchored me. I so enjoyed drawing the Standing Ones all around me. My soul yearned for roots and I took great comfort in hours of stillness and solitude.

The days held a rich contrast of nature and culture.

After my morning hikes I would walk around the corner to go to work at a little boutique/antique shop on the famous Coventry Road .

Living and working in this lively cultural zone for five years gave me a chance to become an impassioned student of Hatha yoga and to envision the look and feel of my artist life.

These two works are 10x8 inches. The first a soft pastel and ink on Strathmore. The second a watercolor on Arches paper.

Having Lunch with the Masters

As I turn 60 I'm taking some time to reminisce and reflect on the early days of building a foundation as a visual artist.

During five years in relative seclusion, living simply and going 'back to the land' my days were absorbed in a rhythm of study. I'd bring home arm loads of art books from Domonkas Library. Mr. Domonkas had donated his extensive collection of books on travel, culture and art to the library bearing his name. It was magnificent, and a saving grace, to have access to a wide and diverse selection of tomes similar to a university or museum collection in both depth and scope.

Back at the cottage I invested countless solitary hours pouring over the works of the master artists and drawing, drawing, drawing.

Having little in the way of funds I became very creative in terms of materials and media. I used charcoal from the wood stove and I'd walk to the tiny grocery a few blocks from the cottage to purchase a roll of freezer wrap paper. I'd cut lengths along the serrated edge of the box and weigh the paper pieces down to relax the 'roll'. I loved the smooth waxed underside of the paper which offered a fresh and unfamiliar feel to each piece.
Creating dozens of daily drawings 'copied' from memory by utilizing the illustrations of art masterpieces in library books worked better than any drug I'd ever taken in terms of its positive addictive quality. I couldn't wait to wake up each morning, burning the drawings from the day before to start the wood stove, which also taught me not to get attached to out comes, while readying to dive back into the books, everyday coming back for more.

Here are three consecutive memory pieces, that I didn't burn, inspired by the Three Graces within the painting Primavera (Allegory of Spring) by Sandro Boticelli

The first is done on waxed freezer wrap paper with wood stove charcoal. The second and third are oil on freezer wrap.

Voluntary Simplicity

From 1975 through 1979 my guy and I lived out of the city. We subscribed to Mother Earth News and Organic Gardening magazine and started a new life in a tiny cottage bordered by a field of wild grasses and a large woodlot. We had already given up phone service. Now we added in letting go of the TV, radio and the use of electricity. Our evenings were mellowed by the soft glow of kerosene lamps.

We fell in love with an antique wood stove discovered in the back corner of a country flea market. I basked in the warmth while handstitching a quilt from 22 Oxford shirts previously worn to his job at IBM.



I raised Rhode Island Reds, the chicks living in a box in the kitchen until they were ready to move out to the little shake shingled house beside the compost pile. I named my rooster Tip O'Neil, the speaker of the house.

Bramble, the Old English Sheepdog and Brandy,the Irish Setter were trained to walk along the outside border of the large garden but that didn't keep Bramble from leaning her head in off the pathway to steal the ripe and luscious Roma tomatoes. Munch. Munch.

Here, two blocks from the shore of Lake Erie, in the delicious quiet I began to live my artist dream, drawing and painting for hours each day and riding my bicycle over to receive my 'Tuesday's reviews' while visiting Mr. and Mrs. Domonkas.

This is a watercolor of my cottage and my fella relaxing beside the old wood stove.

Sharmon is correct I was being influenced by Chagall and Matisse and also Miro who taught me that "Every blade of grass has a beautiful soul, courage consists of staying home and close to nature. Nature who takes no account of our calmaties." I've loved that wisdom ever since.

Casa del Mar

Being in the beautiful 'handmade' home called Casa del Mar each Tuesday expanded my vision and stretched my world view.

The stucco home with clay tile roof, wrought iron balconies and brick terraces surrounding sat on a high point of land overlooking the Lake Erie horizon line.

'Mr.' would often take me on 'world tours' leading me from one exotic room to another offering me the opportunity to hold many of the museum quality objects of bronze, clay, glass, wood, cloisonne and fabric collected during his many journeys.

This India ink wash on Arches is 18x24 inches and was painted in 1980. This view from the lake side of the house shows the expansive North terrace room where we usually had our tea and conversations on the artist's life.

Dreams and Reflections

It feels so reassuring to reflect back upon those that have helped me to learn to truly focus and to discover the value in 'keep on keeping on'. It seems that I have long had a 'young at heart' elderly man in my life, a grandfather type, to encourage my talents and skills.

Mr. Stephen Domonkas was such a figure for me. During the year and a half that we met weekly we became friends of the heart, much as I am today with Sir John.

I find it interesting to chat about the patterns and cycles that visit our culture in the midst of so much fast forward movement. There's something stabilizing for me in the 'edge places'. I so enjoy being with someone who has the perspective of 70 years ago while at the same time being connected to their yesterday. I have had similar experiences in visiting with my hospice clients while working as a volunteer.

Mr. Domonkas was 89 when one day he said to me , "I have the heart of a sixteen year old trapped inside this body." Up until that day he had been for me an interesting and wise old man. After that day he became just as he described. He sparkled more and twinkled like a star. He provided me a model that I so appreciated then and which I come to treasure more and more these many years later.

These two images are memory pieces that I created between visits with 'Mr.'. They are painted using India ink wash on Arches paper. Each is 18x24 inches and both are from the series 'Casa del Mar'. I recall each of the items on the tables and shelves. I so loved the vivid colors of the handmade tile surroundings within this the 'Mexican Room' in Casa del Mar.

Do you have room in your heart that infuses you with the memory of knowing where you belong?

The Art of Loving Life

I've recently turned 60 and I am finding it of value to reflect upon a few of the many mentors, teachers and inspirations of my formative days as a young artist.

In 1978 I met 89 year old Mr. Stephen Domonkas, the architect of Casa del Mar. Casa del mar was a small exceptionally designed and truly intimate home. It was also a museum of world art gathered during the Domonkas' nine steamship voyages round the world.

The day we met was hot and steamy, a typical lake front summer afternoon. I was returning art books to Domonkas library on the shore of Lake Erie in Sheffield Lake, Ohio. As I placed a book of Rembrandt's drawings onto the counter I heard a rasping voice say, "Rembrandt, Rembrandt, I remember Rembrandt." I looked at the ancient hand pointing to the book cover and thought to myself, "I'll bet you do."

We visited there in the library that bears his name for a few minutes and he asked me to come and see him at his home to discuss art and travel.

From then on each Tuesday afternoon I'd ride my bike through the impressive wrought iron gates into the circle drive. My wicker handlebar basket would be filled with the roll of my weekly drawing practice. During our visit we'd sip tea and he would give my work a spirited and no-holds-bar critique.

We became dear and devoted friends. His sweet wife, Ruth, often waved her hand at us during our animated chats saying, "You should've married him!"

This 18x24 inch watercolor on Arches was painted in 1979 during the time of my visits. Inspiration for the entire 'Casa del Mar' series was taken from the lighthearted style of Chagall.

Do you consider where your inspirations comes from and who the mentors for your work tend to be?