"Each Day Empties" and "Nothing is Lost or Forgotten" - acrylic on wood panel (plywood, uncradled) 10" x 12" and 7" x 5", respectively.  Available here and at Artfinder.

Possibility is the secret heart of time.  On its outer surface time is vulnerable to transience.  Regardless of its sadness or beauty, each day empties and vanishes.  In its deeper heart, time is transfiguration.  Time minds possibility and makes sure that nothing is lost or forgotten.  - JOHN O'DONOHUE, Anam Cara.

Where has the month gone?

Four weeks of color studies are coming to an end, and I feel like I was just getting started.  From earth to air to fire to water, Pauline Agnew has taken one set of paints and given us the keys to the color kingdom!  I will take up residence there for a while, converting our small tubes to big tubs.  

Meanwhile, out in the world, there is shaking and buzzing, the sight of my sisters (from a safe distance) and the considered contemplation of how to do things in a new reality.  But not yet...Portland is still "closed."  

Five days of caterwauling continues on Facebook and Instagram (are your ears on fire yet?) as we approach the big closing number with Gin Blische on Friday.  The malarkey meter is glowing red, and the top is about to explode!  Just the way I like it.  I wonder what June will bring?

In the studio, week two of the e-course with Pauline Agnew awakened a love of new color palettes, new ways of seeing light and a courage to try even more outrageous things in the pursuit of art.  We aren't yet "elegant and in rhythm with our selves", but we are doggedly determined to make each lesson stick.  

In the park last week, we watched a mother swinging her child around and around in that helicopter way we used to swing our own children, recalling fondly the contagious laughter and the word "again!  again!" which all children know is the universal signal for halcyon glee.  As this painting emerged last week, my painter spirit whispered again again​ to the muse.

I like to think that the constant internalization  of artists makes us sturdy enough to carry the love,  to take it in and pour it out again for others to savor.   As I watch the artists in  my own creative tribe navigate the waters of  current global and personal change, my jaw simply hangs open in awe of their fearlessness, optimism, openness and generosity.  It tumbles out in the art, wraps the world in its arms and whispers hey, here's a hug.​ 

The Oliver quote above made me pause and smile to myself.  It is true.  I can be absentminded....but only because my head is busy thinking other things.  I am always thinking.  Thinking while I walk while I plan while I compose while I write while I paint while I water the plants.  There is a whole world of thought in there which I haven't yet tired of exploring.  Maybe that is just the lot of the introvert.  Or the fertile ground of the creative.  But in the new social order,  I will likely do-se-do instead of grapevine left.  Mind yer toes, there.

This same stillness is oppressive to my newly graduated son, recently returned home from university with his life put on pause just at the moment his momentum was mounting.  His feet ache to race forward, even as mine are stubbornly dragging.  Sometimes our feet all stop their nonsense and meet in the kitchen for conversation and coffee.  

The planets we strained to reach
That was how being young tasted...
​I am no longer young except to those who are older
​In the way that youth moves along 
The conveyor belt
At a consistent distance
- Alicia Jo Rabins, Fruit Geode