"The Stories I Tell Myself" - mixed media on wood panel (plywood, uncradled) 12" x x10"  Available here and at Artfinder.

​I couldn't resist sneaking a figure into the seascapes month.  But you knew this would happen, right?

The stories we tell ourselves are not only about the people we love and the relationships we have with them. We also tell ourselves stories that form a narrative of our lives — and the narrative is everything. - RENATA GOMEZ

An article on Medium reminded me this week of Brené Brown's story of, well, the stories we tell ourselves.  

We have some powerful narratives going on in our noggins.  Stories about the person sitting across from us.  Stories about that thing in the past when the bottom dropped out of life for a time.  Stories about people we see but don't know.  Stories about people we do know but into whose heads we cannot see (ie: everyone).  But I think the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are perhaps the most powerful of all.  And they aren't always pleasant.

​"Interrupted Raw Places -oil on panel, 7" x 7".  Available here.

The thing about resisting definition (in art and in life) is that you have to be comfortable not knowing exactly where the edges are.  Which, as Roethke so aptly pointed out, may leave your back wheels hanging almost over the edge.  I suppose this is the same as living at the edge of your eyeballs, which we've touched on before, dear reader.  The place we strive to be in order to know we are really, really living.  

"Lean Into the Wind of Our Days" - mixed media on wood panel (plywood, uncradled) 20" x 16".  Available here and at Artfinder.

​We must protect and keep the small flame we carry from being blown out, we must lean into the wind of our days, and we must accept and not run from the shadow we cast for being human.  
- MARK NEPO, The Exquisite Risk

It is an odd  and wonderful synchronicity to be simultaneously painting abstracted seascapes and also nearing the end of another soul-bending Nepo book.  His words inform the paintings, and then the paintings reach into the book and grab more words for themselves.  Like these:

Nothing is solved on our journey, not in life or in a book.  Rather, we are, through love and suffering, ushered into a wakeful living that clarifies and softens our experience into something irreducible and precious.

Oh yes.  Wakeful living is not for the timid, I tell you.  And I am a little saddened to think that nothing is solved on this journey, though.  Yet there is a sweet freedom, perhaps, in giving up all the effort to find solutions and pour it into living instead.

"Gully" acrylic on wood panel (plywood, uncradled), 18" x 14".  Available here and at Artfinder.

​They cut out her heart, and they left her dead, in a gully, for the forest to swallow.   - Neil Gaiman, Snow, Glass, Apples

​In preparation for the coming month of seascapes with the amazing Pauline Agnew, (I know, I know, Pauline Agnew this and Pauline Agnew that...what can I say?  The woman is that good) I decided to work on a large self-portrait of sorts and get the figure out of my system for a bit (as if that's possible).  Still focused on capturing emotion, which isn't always smiles and malarkey. 

Simultaneously, I received my copy of the Neil Gaiman graphic novel adaptation of Snow White and was gobsmacked by the art, the twist on the story and the depth of emotion captured in the book.  Perfect timing for an angsty portrait and a week of feeling a bit stuck in the gully.

This piece began as a paint over - a little green gold mixed with gesso over what was a very dark painting.  The odd geometric shapes of the gesso underpainting were an interesting way to begin.  Continuing with paint pens and more gesso, creating a form to be inhabited by the portrait.  Many layers of acrylic paint and acrylic paint mixed with medium for glazing.

And now that this one is finished, I can spend a month by the sea (well, kind of sort of) with my toes in the salt water...or, erm, paint. :)

"Where the Smoke Blows Back" - acrylic on plywood (baltic birch, uncradled)  18" x 11" x .5".  Ready to hang (back has been pre-wired for hanging).  Available here and at Artfinder.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.​
 - Shel Silverstein, Where The Sidewalk Ends


I've never been a slow walker.  I like a pace that is purposeful and brisk.  Slow and measured?  Not  in my wheelhouse.   But you know that pesky universe...it makes me  do the things I wouldn't normally do to get to places where I might not otherwise arrive.

When the smoke blows back, it is instinctive to hurry scurry outta there.  But in my hurry, I miss the smoke signals, so to speak.  The lessons in the blow back.  And so I am trying to slow my roll.

"The Still Point" - mixed media on wood panel (baltic birch plywood, uncradled)  28" x 11" x .5"   Ready to hang (back has been pre-wired for hanging).  Available here and at Artfinder.

​breathe kindness
in this sacred space

inhabit the still point
balanced between
inhale and exhale

- Tatiana Sakurai, Fields of Creation, Lightworker Training

I'm looking for the still point.  Unlike in my more youthful days, when stillness was the last thing on my radar.  Remember youth?   When drama and excitement were everything?

Inhabiting the still point - the space between

• ​breaths
• raindrops
• heartbeats
• words

I'm practicing  breathing kindness into those in-between places.  On a warm June day with a gentle breeze and the pooch rolling about on the patio, it doesn't seem so hard. :)

 "Squandered" - mixed media on wood panel (plywood, uncradled), 30" x 23".  Available here and at Artfinder.

I am installed in a fairylike place. I do not know where to poke my head; everything is superb, and I would like to do everything, so I use up and squander lots of color, for there are trials to be made. - Claude Monet

Last month's workshop gave me HEAP LOADS of new tools to work with.  And I decided to try to use them all in a mash-up.

So this piece began with two of my photographs put through an app called Image Blender.  It allows you to take two photos (or a photo and an image of a painting, or two paintings) and merge them into one blended composition. (Before you ask, inserting a photo of your own face over your landscape photographs is a terrible idea!)  You can adjust which image is dominant, or blend them equally.  After I saved that image, I ran it through the Notanizer app so I could adjust the values within the blended pic.

​Now that's a LOT of app use for this painter.  But the results were intriguing, so I sketched it out on a large piece of plywood with Artgraf and white gesso.  And asked myself "NOW WHAT?"

Thanks to the course, I have some mad  paint blending skills.  So I went to the book of Monet paintings referenced during the course and chose one of Monet's dark, moody garden paintings as my inspiration color palette. Stealing a palette from a master is a lovely shortcut when you want to be certain everything will harmonize.

Using as wide a variety of paint application implements as possible (extreme variety instead of extreme limitation) and adding 80 million layers of acrylic paint and watercolor crayon (well, maybe not quite that many) -  something happened that made me step back and smile.

"Holy Ground" and "Jagged Edges", mixed media on wood panel (plywood, uncradled) each 10" x 8".  Available here and at Artfinder.

​​And it is often in the jagged edges of experience we refuse to pick up that the mystical strength of all human experience waits.  In truth, any sliver of glass or broken dream will do to puncture our illusions.  There, we will stumble on holy ground.  -MARK NEPO, The Exquisite Risk

There have been some jagged edges in the last few weeks.  And it is so tempting not to pick them up.  Wouldn't we rather sink into pajama days filled with coconut ice cream and Netflix?  Maybe.  But later on we will be glad (so glad) if instead we slayed the dragon of illusion and found the real deal waiting on the other end of a broken dream.

Now that's a lot of heavy lifting for a Thursday during a normal week, let alone one riddled with masks and hand sanitizer and protest signs.  Which calls to mind something my dad used to say to me whenever life heaped manure on top of the sweet smelling rose bushes - find the joy in every day.

The gist of that was this: there is joy in everything, even the stinky stuff.  And it is important, maybe even vital, to grab that joy and stuff it in your pocket without guilt or hesitation.   It is absolutely ok to smile and feel good​ for a moment in the midst of the other stuff.   

So let me ask, dear reader, what will you put in your joy pocket today?  My pocket is crammed with a 7 lb chihuahua  and a handful of air-fried cremini mushrooms (yum).  Leave a comment below and said chihuahua will select a winner at random to receive a tiny piece of original art.  Because YOU, dear reader, make every day sparkly for me. :)

"Is-ness" - mixed media on wood panel (plywood, uncradled) 24" x 28".   Available here and at Artfinder.

Even within our own lives, we tend to compare a happy time with a sad time, a time of ease with a time of struggle, and so, lose the overall richness of an evolving life that has an is-ness of its own.  MARK NEPO, The Exquisite Risk

I am trying not to compare things.

Not this week with last week.  Not pre-pandemic America with the wild, roiling unrest of now.  Not my art with the art of others.  Definitely not my hair with yours, beautifully coiffed reader.  

​A rich, evolving life is messy, but necessary. 

​"Cup Water to Your Tired Face" - mixed media on gallery wrapped canvas, 20" x 20" x 1.25".  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.

When exhausted from the seeming complexity of life and the demands of others, it makes a difference to know that when you cup water to your tired face, it is from one magnificent and nameless sea.  And when you feel the pain of love --mis-given or mis-received -- break your heart, it helps to know what what breaks open is the covering to your soul.  - MARK NEPO, The Exquisite Risk

​Life seems super complicated lately.  And messy.  And painful. 

There are bright spots...a spontaneous movie day at home with family.  Two friends on Facebook having a difficult but very successful conversation about racial justice (so proud of these women), Wonder Mike getting the hang of "sit - stay".  Crisp, clean sheets on the bed.  And cupping water to my face at the end of the day.  

Sometimes that's all  you get.

Sometimes that's all you need.

And you know what?  That'll do.