Simply and Fully

All that’s asked, to bring about potent receptivity to what wants to be seen, is to be nowhere but now. No urging forward to the next moment, no mental processing of the current one. No agenda, no vigilance, no avoidance. You’re simply and fully attuned to the outer reality and to the interior one. In this mode of utter receptivity, there’s not the slightest effort exerted. No searching, no expectation or wishing: simply a resting in whatever is here, now.  (Jan Frazier)

Gobsmacked by the Green of a Fine Day in June
1.5x6"; acrylic, ink, oil pastel, and collage
abstract bookmark
[gift]

Stopping in at Camp Briefly

Blink!

Where did August go? And September? And now October?

Back in August I set up some painting starts to take to camp for an inquiry into using negative space.

The earlier history of one of those starts:

8x10"

One quarter of the above:

4x5"

Last seen (and never posted here, I just realized) looking like this, still back in August:

Revisited yesterday and today, and now mounted on matte board, ready to head to a new home:

Grandma Moses Hangs Towels on the Clothesline at Camp
4x5"; acrylic, grease pencil, collage, ink, pastel pencil,
and oil pastel on canvas paper,
mounted on 8.5x11" matte board
abstract
2017
[gift]

Haiku on the back:

Inner tube, inner

life, laughter, Camp Takodah

gives rise to friendship.

Abundance

Such abundance.

Such satiety, such a feeling of having all the vertebrae in my spine lined up one above the other with just the right amount of space in between, such fullness of heart.

I have painted up a block of wood and mounted Simplicity on it. 

I've written and inscribed a haiku on the back. 

Altogether, this piece of art has become greater than the sum of its parts and process—and its parts and process have already brought me such abundant great joy.

I stake a claim, scratch

a living from the soil, pause

to take long deep breaths.

Now, off Simplicity goes to a new home, carrying with it gifts of summer weather, my painting time at Takodah, and some delicious post-camp afternoon solitudes in my studio.