End of January, very brisk, blue sky, frozen snow, skids of ice, crack and creak of tree limbs in the gusts of wind.  The community has lost several members the past few weeks, memorials to bring us all together, comfort us living ones.  Dances to fight the blues and send all the money to Haiti, and we can only hope the funds actually find their way there.  Small town we are all entwined, and if we keep circling wider, we find still, golden threads of connection.  Trying to envision my future, the steps I need to take now to get me there.  My thoughts fall to my art and how for so many years I have been pushing pushing to get the work out and seen, and somehow this is not the road right now.  I seem to be following the call of homing in, establishing my own venue, and let the world come.  This feels multifaceted, yet liberating.  I am heartened by the words of Peter London:  www.peterlondon.us
"The root and full practice of the arts lies in the recognition that art is power, an instrument of communion between the self and all that is important, all that is sacred."

and this from Rollo May:
"What if imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the fountainhead of human experience?"

 (a revision of my earlier statement): My paintings evolve from an introspection, coming out of an awareness, a sense.  There is a surrender, an aspiration to a holy moment so to speak. The forms that are emerging feel at once unknown, but familiar. For me this is their gift, their revelation, that we begin to recognize some small thing, and start to perceive the miracle of everyday that often lies hidden beneath our modern veil and forgetfulness, but is always there, waiting, beckoning us to see, to feel, and to remember.

I have grouped approximately 15 acrylic paintings on paper and panel, revolving around a prose piece I wrote entitled: “To Hear The Forest Speaking”.  It is my desire, that through these paintings the viewer is encouraged to enter into a metamorphic world where the essence of our original selves is born, our humanness and our connection to the earth.

To Hear The Forest Speaking


You have to give up your cell phone.
Your computer, radio, T.V., blackberry, video game, ipod, stereo.  The contents of your refrigerator, your pantry snacks, coffee, alcohol, give it up for this day.  Your hair color, scenting your body, making up your face, shaving.  Put down your tools, knives, pens and hammers, pots and pans, your boomboxes and briefcases, brooms and vacuum cleaners.
Put down your guns, cut the engines, unplug the cash register, ground the plane.  Leave your watch at home and your jewelry, your papers, books, vitamins, pills.  Leave the hospital, the office, the nursing home and factory.  Close the school, the bank, the mall, and your purse, leave it home.

You have to get out of your automobile and walk,
like a human, into the woods.  You need to go so far in,
you don’t know your way out.

Now listen and breathe, and listen beyond what you can hear, look beyond what you can see,
feel the pulse of a tree, your arms wide open and receiving.

You can’t imagine how beautiful you are, when we all come to find you.