Moving on into the new year

Thank you for following me on this journey- through this blog. A way to check my pulse in times of dire straits and compare vital signs with far flung friends, this blog has held the thoughts that would not fit any longer in my mind.
Right now I am going to continue blogging...but only through my main blog- Showing up for the Muse- and let this one go. I haven't the time to have two blogs!
My focus is on finding my way in the Miami art scene and sharing my thoughts on teaching kids art, while occasionally painting something worth a few words.
Please know that I am truly grateful for your input and insights over the last few years. Stop by my other blog and say hi- or, even better, click on the follow me button and stay in touch!

Hi

Just writing to let you know that I am adjusting to my new surroundings, which include the dawn of new beginnings and the mourning of old endings. I have physically moved away from family, friends, support systems, and home, and found myself with out internet or phone for the last month. There has been plenty to do with a good job, wonderful students and stacks of syllabi. But above all I try to digest a new found and mostly awkward silence and, when I start to panic, I make room for stillness.
I bought canvases last week!

Past time

Paintings about hands, bones, change, choice, birth and death, white and black

Putting works in local gallery

as the blog theme is sort of my birthday--- what I would do for myself as well as gift ideas for others... that vein- I just put 7 pieces of art in the Bodhi Tree gallery in Sharon Ct. I am keeping the prices the same on the internet and in the store. That means I will take a cut if something sells in the store, but I am very interested in supporting Ellen and Lyn, the two women who own and run the gallery. They are creative women with a passion for collaborating and connecting. I hope their place, which has been open 3/4 of a year, survives. If you are in the area- SHOP THERE!!!!

bed paintings

These are from last week, or so...
the snow does not seem to go away and, like the urge to stay wrapped in blankets, or at least perched on the mattress, and distanced from the chores, will not go away!

irish soda bread and potato soup

Yesterday was a good day to gather and bake. I think, as a group of women, we raised each other's dopamine levels. Lots of laughter and dopey moments, for sure!!!!
Along with the Whole Wheat Soda bread I was able to wip up a great pot of potato sausage soup.
4 potatoes peeled and diced
1 onion chopped and sauteed in oil
3 minced cloves garlic (because I put garlic in everything)
Chicken broth (I had some in freezer from past)
1 Hickory Farms' beef summer sausage, chopped
Simmer for an hour, and then run one half through blender to create a nice thickness. add pepper. Perfect! Serves 4.

Uprooted from the garden of love

Summer painting!
This is about challenges, change, choices, and travel...
acrylic on wood panel
15 x 22 inches
$500

14 days to Valentines

Sometimes I can say it with a rooster and a hen.
They (usually) fall out of my paint brush easy and with personality.
This Valentine has been in the works for years. See the postcards I made of it in 2005, the year of the Rooster. The original is made sewn layers of paper... a collage... of two hearts. Of course, there are issues here, and I recently shifted the value range with paint to lend it some extreme passages of light and shade. Still not sure. The chickens don't look committed as of yet... they appear to be waiting for me, or you, or someone to tell them where to go next. Do you see what I mean?

15 days until Valentines day

and there's a range of emotions to it!


Over the years I have seen girlfriends suffer under the weight of their expectations and I have watched my sons freeze up under pressure.
It's my hope that the holiday can be a fun backtrack down the alley of
cheap art supplies and tacky sensibilities. I have learned to avoid focusing on my intimate relationship and instead create gift cards for girlfriends and non expectant/ non-exploitative male friends.

Hibernation Workshop

Exploring challenges, change, choice, roots and wishes last Sunday.










In the first of our Studio-to-stove experiences, we had a gathering of 7 to delve into bread making and play in new collage media techniques.



























Our next workshop is February 13th, Sunday from 1-4 (must arrive ahead of that) where we will create heart shrines and bake aphrodisiac sweets and spells. Let me know if you are interested soon because space has to be limited.

Ever since my marriage started failing and good friends started dying

I have made a commitment to do things differently. I paint every single day. I love my chickens. Through these two realms I have found a voice for my sadness, my courage, and my faith. Within my daily practice I recall memories and visualize evocative tones that distill symbols into paintable vignettes. My work blends text and image in humorous, dissonant, and melding ways to explore security, panic, and the mortal experience. Because I feel transient as a species, the perpetual conflict between leaving and being is evident everywhere in my work. This duplicity is also captured in the whimsical palette, the playful brushwork and lightness of imagery that lay bare the anxieties of our time. Brushstrokes, text, and nature are strategies I explore in transforming the material to be spiritual and harvesting the spiritual to material.

Here is an installation of work at the MountainCow Cafe in pine Plains, NY, up until March.

I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from college with a BFA and a BA in painting, printmaking and art history from Colorado University in 1984. Born into a family of artists, curators, and spiritualists, I spent the first 20 years as a world traveler. I am the mother of two sons. The last two decades of my life I have lived in rural Dutchess county and been blessed with a network of artists that inspire my great love for roots with wings.

Resolution in the works

Along with things like exercise and consuming less salt, there is the practice of keeping a daily journal. My history in all three has been a complete failure. I used to have to hide my words. No convincing, through arguments or begging, kept them private. So I snuck pages in the backs of books, in random hidden notebooks, in letters written and never sent. It's pretty insane. Recently, as I start to organize my life, I come across excerpts of pain and risk scattered in the oddest places. Safely hid under barely worn gym gear, or even in the basement freezer. I have started to gather these loose missives and sew them all together so that I can dispose them in one final shape. Everything is out of cyclical order, but there is a spiral repetition to the theme of time and question. So
Now... should I start a real journal? I could do it with a new freedom to be authentic and open.

Cutting paintings in half

It's easier than you think. This evening the county legislators will hold a public hearing on their budget cuts. As of this moment there is no money allocated to the arts. No money for artists to work with school children, no money for 40% of the local theaters' operating budgets, no money for the hospital's healing arts programs, no money for the stadiums music concerts... As a board member of the county arts council and a working artist and teacher I have a passionate interest in things being resolved differently. It would cost each taxpayer 67 cents a year to keep the arts funding level to what it was this year (which was hugely cut from previous years). Imagine if people spoke up and said they thought they could afford to spend that 67 cents!
Lack of imagination may be a poverty of society, but soon we may have a whole generation lacking exposure to anything other than their TV and their cell phone.
Imagine what we would be missing. Is anyone interested in a show of paintings only half there, a concert of music only 1/3 played, a film without editing or ending...?

How to continue

This painting has been sitting in the studio for at least a month. I can't decide if I should touch it, cover it up and start over, or burn it. The 14th colony art group is discussing the therapeutic benefits of burning art... and so the idea of a mass burning- everyone bringing one work of art to burn- and then taking the ashes home to make another work of art... Does that stimulate my brain? Is that something I should do? I've a few works in the burn pile in my own yard... The purpose isn't to manefest another work, just clear the debris.

I think I have been spending too much time sleeping. I go to work and come home and sleep. Unless there are people here. The last few days are the only days the last month or so that there hasn't been anyone here! So I guess I haven't been sleeping too much. I think I have been spending too much time thinking about sleeping!

Deer Diary

Still confused... the idea for this painting is so illusive now... when I try to pin it down it moves away from me. Constantly I have to ask myself , "what am I trying to share?" It's intensely personal...A recurrent yet fleeting dream. Mostly when I see the stag he is behind me, in the corner of my eye. So to look at him head on is a bit strange. Not sure I want it so visible... is that better? Turning the stag into a couch?

a new painting

is in the works. You can see the stumbling and the inspiration. Still have layers of maps to add. After all she looks a little lost.

Bad TV

Been married now 24 years! My husband moved out 11 months ago but is not agreeing to the separation. It's what my friend calls, "bad tv". Script goes something like this:
A:How much will you pay me to never see me again?
B:(Sigh)How much do you need?
A:What?
B:What is it you truly want?
A:How about everything you've got?

Steps to forgive

I think I've stopped dissolving. My painting has gone through as many transformations as my flighty horoscope-gemini-mood-moon-calendar! First I was too illustrative, then unbearably dark and shadowy. A frustrated brainless attack left the paintings a surface victim. Now, after today, I find the line and color are resolving themselves. In my own life I am starting to feel less the protagonist in a dramatic short story, not as much in the guilt ridden shadows, and actually, eventually, more substantial and brilliant. It took measures such as confessional tea dates with very patient girlfriends, driving across states to help a bigger cause, spending time rooted with siblings, working the gratitude list, crying salty oceans, and telling myself over and over that I forgive me. I forgive me. I didn't do it perfectly, but I can believe in more joy.

To go through with this or not

studio wall

Strange days. Where does the time go? Yesterday was a snow day... but after 7 hours painting today I realize that I am barely getting enough done in the studio. What should I be working on? There is the idea of GIFTS. Do I make things for Christmas? What value does the work have as a gift in these times?

What else can I afford to do? 

Started a store in the back of my studio in hopes to pay rent, bring more people in....and a few small items of my friends Rosemary and Michael have been selling. That is encouraging. 

Today I painted five paintings- three as gifts for neighbors and two that are larger and not finished and most likely unsell-able. They are figurative, symbolic, and intuitive. That just might not cut it on the commercial market. I haven't painted the figure so regularly in a long time- since this studio shot back in 2002.

 Strange days.