Seeking Story

I need an enclosure card to place in an envelope with a check. I open a drawer in my studio, pull out a folder, find a postcard-sized start. Didn't really like where it was going at the time, couldn't think what to do to rescue develop it, tucked it away. Don't even remember when that was.

Today it presents itself with just enough of a new light that I think, Huh. Maybe some neurographic lines. Then, Maybe some meandering asemic writing. Finally, Maybe a few white veiling scribbles.

Yup. 

Gonna stop there and put this little layered and enlivened bit of line and lettering into an envelope and let it head south.

The Story Is Inside If I Know What to Look For
3.5 x 5.5"; acrylic and ink on paper
abstract neurographic
2022

Currents Flowing Beneath the Surface

Fluent

  John O’Donohue

I would love to live

Like a river flows,

Carried by the surprise

Of its own unfolding.

---

Surprises of my own unfolding:

(a) A Chance to Risk Everything Without Being Injured or Deposed
(b) Everything Makes Itself Apparent at the Appropriate Time
1.5 x 5.5 bookmarks; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on paper
abstract
2022

Along the Way

Demarking found compositions, two more bookmarks :

(a) I Can Effect Positive Change in My Life!
(b) Permission to Make Mistakes Along the Way
1.5 x 6" bookmarks; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel
abstract
2022

Spur of the Moment

I need a little something by way of 'presentation' for a couple of cash gifts we'll be handing out on Christmas Eve. Without even realizing I've set an intention, I find myself in my studio, sheet of sandwich paper pulled out, paints selected, brush in hand, audiobook playing.

wrapping paper

wrapped!

The Way It Is

One morning you might wake up

to realize that the knot in your stomach

had loosened itself and slipped away,

and that the pit of unfilled longing in your heart

had gradually, and without your really noticing,

been filled in—patched like a pothole, not quite

the same as it was, but good enough.

And in that moment it might occur to you

that your life, though not the way

you planned it, and maybe not even entirely

the way you wanted it, is nonetheless—

persistently, abundantly, miraculously—

exactly what it is.

—Lynn Ungar

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And so it is with these found-composition bookmarks.

(a) Wandering the Banks of Ancient Rivers Like the Waccamaw
(b) Feeling Warm Pluff Mud Squirt Beneath My Toes
1.5 x 6" bookmarks; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on paper
abstract
2022

Serendipity and Grace

Back in August I created a hand-painted, self-folded 'sketchbook,' whipped up a partial design for its cover, and proceeded over the course of a few days to rustle up experimental content for the first two of the sketchbook's three two-page spreads.

I ran out of steam for the last spread. No ideas presented themselves for consideration. I pondered and wondered and mused and kept myself open to forward motion. Nothing.

So I propped the book up on a countertop in my studio to allow for percolation. The book ended up traveling to new locations. Still nothing. It eventually got tucked into a folder and placed in a drawer.

Then, four months down the road: something!

It Is Up to You to Recognize Help When It Arrives
4.5 x 6" two-page sketchbook spread; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel
abstract
2022

For the Record

If I post a painting here, with a title, with its size and media specs, and with a date, it will implicitly and explicitly announce itself as a completed painting. You will most likely see it as a completed painting. You will like it or not. You might click on it to put it in viewfinder mode so you can get an in depth view of its nooks and crannies. Your eye might explore for a bit of time, or for more than a bit of time. Then you'll move on till I post again with either a new work in progress or new completed painting.

I'm going to post a piece here today as a completed painting. I want a record of it as it is right now, because it could be complete, if I say so.

Well, and if it says so. But it keeps telling me it is not. Even though it isn't telling me specifically what step to take, it is asking me to risk 'wrecking' it by doing something. I'm going to have to figure that out by a process of making changes and taking chances.

For right now, though, I present to you

Open for Business

11 x 14"; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on paper

abstract

 2022

Plus and Minus

I set out a few weeks ago to practice addition and subtraction while painting.

And that is precisely what I've been doing of late.

In the process I've discovered with new awareness that visual subtraction often takes place, ironically, by means of addition. Though much may be obscured from view, nothing actually gets taken away. Though I repeatedly have to let go, nothing is ever truly lost.

A bit of the history of this piece:

Look Behind, Underneath, In the Corners, Off the Page

4.75 x 5.5"; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on paper

abstract

2022

Enough Space

I can't find words to pin to the process here, can't find words for all the ways nothing about this piece is what I 'had in mind' to paint when I started.

Maybe that's the point.

The language here is visual, not verbal. The painting comes only in a very small way from my mind.

I sit here now walking around this piece with my eyes, taking an unexpected tour of mystery—inner mystery, artistic mystery, the mystery of the universe.

I got stuck so many times. I got stuck in so many ways. Fear and resistance yammered at me, taunted me. I considered stopping, considered letting whatever was on the page in the moment be sufficient as an exercise.

But I kept returning. The painting kept calling me back. 

I let fear and resistance yammer at me and run roughshod around my studio as I tried out new tools from the courses I've been taking. I made space for not-knowing, trusting that not-knowing held energy and gifts to move me forward.

And forward I moved! To a painting that scratches a wordless itch and feels complete.

Enough Space Hides in Plain Sight to Hold All We Need
11 x 5.75"; acrylic, ink, collage, and oil pastels
on paper canvas
abstract
2022