Celebrate the Day

live oaks on the bay

It's been a wonderful time of working on multiple projects in the studio.

Each year I write an article that pertains to the creative energy of the coming year, posting it with my pals David and Sandra over at the wonderful Zodiac Arts.

Finished my first Art House Sketchbook Project sent off on time and completed...whew! I was wondering if that would actually happen. Included here are a trio of sketches.

Next came the completion of the new large painting for Tri-C and Ursuline College Art Therapy 'Simplicity' Symposium...four paintings shipped out via FedEx yesterday for that annual event at which I am the invited guest artist. ...thank you all for including my work once again...it always is a coming home for me.

From FedEx I drove over to the Office of the Purchasing Agent in downtown Norfolk to hand over two hefty packets containing proposals for the Norfolk Light Rail Public Art project. There is a Public Art commission call for 1-9 artists to design windscreen and pavement medallions for the stations. I went to the meeting two weeks ago and decided to throw my hat into the ring. There is a tremendous amount of preparation required in compiling all the necessary pieces and parts to satisfy the commission requirements and of course there is also stiff competition. Now we wait and see.

A new series of studios start this week at the magnificent Contemporary Art Center of Virginia. For the winter semester I'm offering Contemporary Retablo/ExVoto and Saturday in the Studio along with a day long Beginning Blogging for Artists a few weeks from now.

I am grateful each day for all that I have been given in this life and for all that can be shared from a place of creative joy and compassion for all living beings.

May you have a week of walking your path in grace and simple beauty.

Steps and Stages

I'm honored to be invited once again to be the guest artist at the Ursuline College Art Therapy and Counseling Department /Cuyahoga Community College Pre-Art Therapy Dept. Tenth Annual Exhibit, Lecture and workshop. This year the theme is Simplicity: Creating a Vision of Doing More with Less.

This is 72 x 44" unstretched canvas tapestry is in process. It can be seen in an earlier stage in the last post...included here are a few details.

Lately I've been inspired, in my work, to pare things down. Simplicity and simplifying are concepts that I have embraced, in terms of this artist's lifestyle, for many decades.

Even so I have not often applied the idea to my use of color. I suppose more than anything else I am a colorist. I am intoxicated by rich and layered hues. So I'm experimenting and simplifying the colors within this painting. First using a customary riot of color and then applying layers of glazes to 'fog' or quiet down the color range.

I enjoyed realizing that the planet Neptune, which is often thought of as 'a fog' is coming to kiss my sun for the one and only time in my life and, perhaps as a result, I find myself particularly enamoured these days by all things natural... when seen through a veil of mist...the idea of being cocooned and contained within fog simply thrills me.

There are two other canvas that will be traveling along with this one and hopefully they will be posted in the next few days...in bold contrast.

Thank you so much for any comments you may have regarding this unfolding.
Happy day.

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.

Live a Simple and Peaceful Life

Getting ready to head out of town for all manner of wonder-filled art related adventures is a very positive variety of stress. Here at home we like to remind ourselves that "ain't nothin bad happenin"... and yet at the same time it's useful to notice the many opportunities to become distracted from what has real meaning and value...dontcha think? Notice/release. Notice/release.

Related to this is an excellent little link that I wanted to share.. instant refreshment for all us creative types. :-o

Live a Simple and Peaceful Life - wikiHow