IV Infusion

Investigative 

vulnerability. 

That's the infusion that penetrates the cells in my body as I conduct my surrender experiment. I move organically and intuitively from mark to color to splatter to snip to adhesion to completion. 

I generate a rectangular tiny-art painting and then cast about my messy studio for materials with which to create finishing touches. I mount the painting on black paper just barely larger than the painting itself so as to contain the composition by outline. Then, in riffling through a bin of potential collage material, I bump into a gardening calendar page featuring up-close-and-personal, larger-than-life Gerbera daisies.

Bingo!

A frame!

Telegram From the Heart: Sit Out in the Sun
4 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, ink, and collage
on canvas-textured paper
abstract
2021

Resuscitation

This trio started as an experiment on the front porch of a cottage on Beaver Harbor in New Brunswick, Canada.

June, two years ago. Bright blue skies. Fresh air. Early morning sunlight.

Played with acrylic and oil pastel on a long strip of canvas paper. Did some cutting up, fiddled with some superimposing. Brought it home in a pile of several such experiments.

Moved it from drawer to drawer.  Sighed more than once at its incompletion. Fell into some negative self-talk.

Then, a few weeks ago, a bookmark sneaked out of it.

Today, a triptych of greeting cards. Couldn't be more pleased.

You never know!

Just a Ferry Ride Away from Dulse
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Unexpected Port of Call
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Responding to the Prevailing Wind
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Casual Elegant

On Monhegan, my dad and I made our own breakfasts, snacks, and lunches and ate them at our apartment at Tribler Cottage, but for dinner we walked the lane to the dining room at the Island Inn. In short order we learned how to snag the reservation that would give us the best chance at a window table overlooking the inn porch, the harbor, and Monhegan's little offshoot, Manana Island.

Dinner was an exquisite experience of 'casual elegant' each evening—with guests just a tiny bit dressed up, dark green bottles of artisan balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil perched on each table, an exhibit of Joan Harlow's oil paintings gracing the walls, windows open to the refreshment of sea breezes, and edible flowers bedecking each entrée.

---

A few edible flowers jumped ship to one of my watercolors.

The Air Smelled of Honeysuckle and Hay
7x9"; watercolor, ink, and water-soluble crayon on canvas paper
abstract floral
2018

Monhegan Madeleines

Each time I've taken a vacation since I began painting four years ago I've debated with myself: Shall I paint? Or leave my paints behind?

Decades ago I had an aha moment while on vacation at Takodah, realizing with sudden clarity that a vacation means to vacate—to leave, to depart from, to move away from—everything! All the things I'm happy to quit and all the things I love fiercely. So it is that I always try on the idea of leaving my paints at home.

But I never regret packing them, because each piece of art I create and bring back home—whether a sweet success or frazzled frustration—is a fully embodied memento.

For me to pick up one of those paintings is to return to the lived physical experience of creating it in my vacation setting—to the soft worn wooden cottage floor under my bare feet, to the bell buoy clanging north of the island, to the tang of late summer blueberries in my mouth, to the dry smell of late-August dust coming in the window from the lane, to the surprise of blue when I thought I'd loaded my brush with deep purple.

I can feel the brush in my hand, feel the granite gem of island that stands under me, feel the salt water that washes the island's every edge.

Sand and Shallows, Salt and Sawgrass 5x5"; watercolor and collage on canvas paper abstract 2018

Been Fishin'

Whoa. Following my vacation, I'm feeling a serious disconnect from social media.

And that is just exactly fine.

Further, it is just exactly fine that I didn't really connect with watercolor paints—the only paints I brought with me to Monhegan Island.

Here's experiment #1, in which I fiddled around on a postcard-sized bit of canvas paper. I didn't like the results at all until I scratched in some mark-making with a white pen and scribbled a bit with water-soluble crayons.

This Was Where the Sun Came and Lay
4x5"; watercolor, ink, and water-soluble crayon on canvas paper
abstract
2018