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

(Parenthetical Project) 8

Here's my Inauguration Day story. 

We have Dan the Man, a trusty tile guy (same guy who did a bathroom renovation for us), installing tile in our mudroom which directly abuts the kitchen where I usually eat. Because I want to watch/hear inauguration proceedings without tile-installation noise, I set up my lunch on a tray and take it to my study. 

I place the tray on the table there and start to reach for my laptop to get it set for inauguration viewing. The tray slides off whatever I perched it on, and almost everything on the tray slides off the tray, making more cacophony than any tile installation. 

Homemade soup (broccoli, chicken, kale, carrots, olive oil, bone broth, snow peas, and spinach) in a 20-ounce handpainted bowl; half an avocado; a serving of homemade cole slaw on a favorite ceramic plate; a small bowl of dried pumpkin seeds; a 16-ounce glass of water.

Onto a fabric-covered chair, an open heating grate, a pine floor with spaces between boards, and a decorative metal bowl filled with river stones and three votive candles.

Soup bowl loses a big fragment; plate breaks into pieces.

A peaceful transition of power. Go, Joe! Go, Kamala!

No Other World but This One
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

Turn Me Into Song, Sing Me Awake
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 6

Coming up empty today—nothing to write.

Let go. 

Let in.

Downy Woodpecker Percusses an Improv Solo
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

 

After Flinging My Coat on a Chair
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 5

I cut snippets from an acrylic skin I created several years ago. The skin consists of free-form scribbles made with fabric paint, dried thoroughly, over which I spread gloss gel medium, also left to dry thoroughly, thereby creating a plastic sheet or 'skin.' 

sample acrylic skins

I cut my snippets without knowing how or if they'll bring cohesion to my starts but, magically, they do. The random bits of scribble offer up something different from what I'd ever think to—or be able to—draw in context, and I can move them around first without having to commit. Win, win.

Though Not the Way You Planned It
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 4

Saturday evening I collapse into several minutes of wholehearted full-bodied therapeutic cathartic tears-streaming laughter in response to the closing scene of Episode 10, Season 1, of Ted Lasso.

Grace on a day otherwise grouchy.

The Most Ancient Language
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

Close Both Eyes to See With the Other
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021