Know Your Own Bone

Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life, as a dog does his master's chaise. Do what you love. Know your own bone, gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it and gnaw it still. However mean your life is, meet it and live it; and do not shun it can call it hard names. It is not as bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. Humility, like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. Superfluous wealth can you buy superfluities. Money is not required to anything necessary of the soul. - Henry David Thoreau.

... hard words, good words, words for me today...

Fertile Emptiness

"Crisis, change, all the myriad upheavals that blister the spirit and leave us groping - they aren't voices simply of pain but also of creativity. And if we would only listen, we might hear such times beckoning us to a season of waiting, to the place of fertile emptiness." - Sun Monk Kidd from When The Heart Waits

Waiting is not something I'm good at. Waiting has always seemed to be a huge waste of time. For Pete's sake, I'm an American. We don't have to wait for anything anymore. But now, I'm in a time of forced waiting. It's uncomfortable for me and a fearful place because I might fall behind, get passed up. Standing still is not normal, I'm always racing towards whatever I think I need to get to next. In an effort to embrace the waiting I'm re-reading When the Heart Waits. (Every creative person needs this book by the way) It's not easy to be still in heart, mind and body. I have found that sitting under a pink tree has been one place I can sit still. Right now, I do my best to be still, to just be, to breathe, and to not worry for just 30 seconds. Trust me try a pink tree - sit under one. Breathe. Be. Wait.

Still Learning to See

Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush a fire with God: but only he who sees takes off his shoes. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

For the first time I saw the difference in sunlight and I couldn't have missed it if I tried. I spent five days in Miami for work and returned to California late in the night. I woke early the next day to the strange light in my room. What a different color the sun is in Miami - strong, piercing and white. While in California it is gentle, yellow, creating softer shadows. I was delighted to realize that I'm finally seeing the different light. Watercolor is the medium of light. So after all this time, I see the difference, but can I paint it?

Training one's eye to see to paint the light on a flower pedal or the shadow on the field might seem like a completely different task than seeing in one's life. I have to work on seeing the sacred and not labeling someone or something before I truly see them. Sometimes I see what I so badly want to see, because it's just easier. When I paint a still life in strong light I have to look for the light on, let's say, the apple. I have to leave it blank because on my palette there is no white. The light, the white is the paper. It would be so much easier to take heavy white gouache and place it where the light hits the apple after I'm finished the painting. But it doesn't look nearly as luminous or true. I sometimes do that with people. I've decided he is wonderful but I have not seen. I myself paint in the light because I didn't look for it so now I have to paint it in trying to make him work in my painting. Over the years, I've learned that before I start painting, I need to sit still and look at my subject matter for a while before brush hits paper. You look for the lights. You look for the colors you see in the shadows and in the reflections. You look to know, so when you finally paint, you do so in certainty. And you keep looking all the while you are painting. Another wonderful paint metaphor to be applied to life, especially my life. So now, I put my shoes back on, lace them up and leave the bush I thought was burning. I never will stop looking for the sacred in life and people. But, I plan on taking my time to really see before I take my shoes off again.

Zinnias from my garden painted August 2007

Seeing

"The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what he saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see" - John Ruskin

Oh, to see better... and then what do we do with what we see - paint it, photograph it to help others see and see things we the artist don't even see. So much of my painting these days has been about "finishing". I'm forgetting to see. This quote by John Ruskin, Victorian art critic and artist always makes me stop and open my eyes. (By the way, he also didn't think women could paint or draw ... hmmmm) Beyond art, do we see the man we pass on the street or who makes our morning coffee?

Some of the art work I enjoy most are those in which the artist paints something I would have missed, that I would never have caught my eye let alone attention. Andrew Wyeth's work sends me to the moon. If you're looking for a good art book get this one. I just never get tired of it and BOY can he see. The picture to the left is in the corner of my parent's garden - they've watched many a bird fight over that bird bath.

... and then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. - Anais Nin

Today when I was painting these Gerber daisies for my friend Deb's birthday, I thought of this quote. As this is my first blog, in many ways it's a bursting from my tight little secure bud of not showing my art work. But here I am finally... saying "I'm an artist" outloud. Better late than never ...