Lyme Camp

You might remember that I went to Takodah Family Camp in August 2015, 2016, and 2017 with my daughter Meg and her family. Now, unexpectedly I have taken up residence with them again, this time at their home in Virginia, for what we are calling Lyme Camp in recognition of Meg's recent diagnosis.

Takodah Family Camp runs for a week. My participation at Lyme Camp began mid-December and doesn't have a set end date. I didn't think Lyme Camp was going to have any kind of arts program but it must have had one in the past because, in poking around, I discovered some basic supplies and materials. I also found an ember of creative energy eager to be fanned.

Gratitude/simple pleasures:

• an unexpected few moments in which to move paint onto a book page with my fingers, in which to grab a cray-pas and a charcoal pencil and a marker to make a few scribbles;

• cubing beef; chopping onions, celery, and carrots; and gathering garlic, thyme, and parsley for an instant-pot stew; and

• a prolonged all-family belly laugh as we lingered at the dinner table last evening.

Whether I Can Unlock the Door Remains to Be Seen
playing with acrylic, marker, charcoal pencil, and cray-pas on a book page
abstract
2020

Winging, Wondering

What does it mean to have a painting style?

I don't know.

Accustomed to a Chorus of Meadowlarks Over the Blackjack Hills
4x6" postcard; acrylic, pastel, and collage
abstract
2019

In Decision

I was in decision—replete with indecision—almost constantly as I painted this postcard, surprised by many choices I made, puzzled more than once by what to do next, making one decision, and another, and yet one more, not knowing when I might feel the little ping of completion, wondering if I'd miss the little ping altogether and barrel along to a place of no return.

What evolved could not have been more unexpected.

Yet I was there every step of the way.

The Decisions Only You Can Make
4x6" postcard; acrylic, pastel, and collage on drawing paper,
mounted on card stock
abstract
2019

Triggers

• text messages that won't send
• stores that don't carry what I'm looking for
• stores that are listed online but which turn out to be permanently closed when I call
• insects landing in the paint I apply to the bulkhead doors which are decidedly awkward to paint
• bills from at&t that are confusing, difficult to decipher, and contain errors

Every Trigger Is a Healing Opportunity
4x6" postcard; acrylic, ink, pastel, and collage on drawing paper,
mounted on card stock
abstract
2019

detail

p.s. scanned (and therefore flat v. curled) image below

Maker

The maker in me is lively of late.

Yay!

An Anecdote Crafted Out of Nothing
4x6" postcard; acrylic, ink, pastel, and collage on drawing paper,
mounted on card stock
abstract
2019

Living True

Back to creating my series of Lake Champlain found-composition postcards again today.

Rock that Arrived on the Tide of a Glacier
4x6" postcard; acrylic, ink, pastel, and collage on drawing paper,
mounted on card stock
abstract landscape
2019

Portal

Another postcard—second one developed from a section of a larger start painted a year ago June in a cottage on Lake Champlain.

I am slack-jawed in wonder yet again by the mystery of creating a whole world in a plot of real estate that measures no more than four by six inches. I pick up brush, or pencil, or pastel, or collage, and find myself somewhere else entirely, in an expansive realm without boundaries.

Small Acts of Kindness Bond You Over a Lifetime
4x6" postcard; acrylic, ink, oil pastel, and collage on drawing paper, mounted on card stock
abstract landscape
2019

Hiding in Plain Sight

Pulled out an 18x24" start from my June 2018 Lake Champlain vacation—with brisk lakeshore breezes still embedded in it.

Headed for my paper trimmer.

Cut out a 4x6" patch.

Played around with the found composition.

Postcard!

Can you locate the unimproved 24 square inches of real estate in the original larger piece?

18x24" start
June 2018

Forgiveness Could Be Child's Play If You Knew the Ropes
4x6"; acrylic, ink, oil pastel, and collage on drawing paper
abstract postcard
2019

Walking Through Some of My Doors

I am always so grateful when I can take, and even welcome, life as it comes, when I can walk through some of my doors to see beyond what I have until then perceived as limitations.

The Ability to Respond Gratefully to Problems
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Blame and Battle No Longer Apply
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Others Have Gone Through the Door Before Us
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Each of Us Goes Through the Door for Others
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Whole New Way of Seeing

Early in my years of active parenting, a friend directed my attention to Whole Child, Whole Parent by Polly Berrien Berends.

I had no idea at the time that it was the gift of a turning point.

The Road That Leads to the Road
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

The Suspicion That I'm Not Seeing Straight
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Dying to Wake Up
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Please Tell Me What My Mistaken Idea Is
4.25 x 5.5" greeting card; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

What I Am Today

A frozen caliper grinding away in my rear brakes.

A fresh sparkly windy July day with dry air.

A handmade knockoff Cabbage Patch doll with Chapstick all over his face.

Two dried prunes.

An improbable storyline unspooling in a novel.

An eighth-grade watercolor painting of a black canvas shoe.

A bunch of scraps, glue, straightedges, oil pastel.

Spaciousness.

Inner stillness.

Raynaud Buckles Up and Walks the Train Trestle
4x5"; acrylic, latex, India ink, watercolor, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Rust and Trust

I felt rusty on Sunday, painting for the first time in nine or ten days. Bumped more than once into discouragement, frustration, and/or negative self-talk as I developed another postcard from my first Lake Champlain work-in-progress.

What grounded me and diminished my struggles was twofold: trusting my lived experience of process, and Simone Nijboer's reminder in her most recent podcast that painting offers us the possibility to experience again and again how [we] can come back every time to the simplicity of being.

A Place in Which Convenience and Cleanliness Were Not Required
4x5"; acrylic, latex, collage, ink, pencil, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

Started roughly here with this piece:

Soft Gray Morning

I love a bright warm sunny blue-skied summer morning.

I love a soft cool gray closed-in summer morning.

Soft gray's what I had as I painted this piece …

… along with painters in and out the front door, up and down the stairs, in the hall, in the bathroom.

I snagged a few supplies from my studio before the painters knocked on the front door. Then I set up a make-shift space on a desk in another part of the house and puttered.

Stray Seeds Dropped by Larks and Linnets in Flight
4x6"; acrylic, ink, collage, oil pastel
abstract
2018
[gift]

Immigration Outcome

My favorite painting moment today comes when I've decided this postcard is complete. I use my paper trimmer to take care of a few rough spots on the edges, after which I pick up the resulting scraps.

Done.


Or not …

I notice a particular snippet in my hand—my eyes widen with delight.

Back to the glue pot!

Love the intrepid migrant that leaves everything it knows from where it used to live on the lower left border and contributes an unexpected pop of pattern in its new adopted home.

Flanked by Largely Friable Cliffs of Sandstone
4x5.5"; acrylic, latex, India ink, collage, and oil pastel
abstract
2018

detail 

Summer Dance

I do like me a low-humidity, blue-skied, sun-and-light-breezes summer day—bare feet, a simple sundress, no fuss, no muss.

I snip a second 4x6" piece from my first Lake Champlain work-in-progress. Lose myself in the adventure of following the lead of one mark and then the next, while summer dances on my skin, and vacation memories play background music.

It's Best to Tell the Truth Full Stop
4x6"; collage, acrylic, latex, oil pastel, and ink
abstract
2018
[gift]

A Gift of Daily Painting

I didn't have much heart to bring to painting today, but my feet made their way to my studio anyway.

I took my first 18x24" Lake Champlain work-in-progress and snipped a 4x6" piece from it to explore.

One thing led to another and, even though I didn't bring much heart to painting, painting brought me to my heart.

Pitted with Rust on the Outside
4x6"; collage, acrylic, latex, oil pastel, and ink
abstract
2018

Lake Champlain, Day 3

[entry drafted at Lake Champlain 6/10/18]

We visit Fisk Quarry and Goodsell Ridge on Isle la Motte, a few miles from our vacation cottage, where we see 480 million-year-old fossils. I still can't quite wrap my mind around the following information from a Lake Champlain Committee article (boldface mine):

Imagine sitting in a lounge chair with your feet in the water looking out over a tropical sea. The sun blazes away and the reefs around you teem with life. There was a time, nearly half a billion years ago, when the area we now call Lake Champlain hosted such an environment. This was before life existed on land, before the bedrock of the region had even formed.

At the time, the continental plate upon which Lake Champlain sits today was located in the lower latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. Carbon dioxide levels exceeded today’s levels by 14 to 16 percent, and the earth was so warm that practically no ice existed.  As a result, sea levels were much higher and the continental shelf was covered by a shallow arm of the Iapetus Ocean. In this arm, some of the world’s earliest reefs developed.  

Today, most biotic reefs are formed by coral, but at the time of the original reefs, corals had not yet evolved. The first reef builders were instead small branching organisms called bryozoans. Later in time, large cabbage-like stromatoporoids (related to present-day sea sponges) dominated. Over time, other organisms came to occupy the reefs along with the stromatoporoids including the first corals, though corals never dominated these early reefs.  “These structures represent a pivotal moment in the evolution of life on earth, because they are the oldest known, multi-organism constructions on the planet.”

For three days I have been playing with collage, paint markers, acrylics, stencils, pencils, and more, enjoying what I think of as mark-making—until now when I realize I have been layering small branching bryozoans and large cabbage-like stromatoporoids, building an older-than-time reef right here on a piece of drawing paper on a picnic table in front of a cottage in Vermont near the border of Canada.

work in progress
18x24"; mixed media on drawing paper

detail

detail

detail

Lake Champlain, Day 2

[entry drafted at Lake Champlain 6/9/18]

Improv.

I notice the surface pattern on a duvet in our vacation cottage, play with elements of it on my big piece of drawing paper.

Lines seen in stained glass window art at a local gallery travel through a paint marker onto my drawing paper.

A wildflower leaf pattern transplants itself into the lush tangle of mark-making growing in front of me.

As the day unfolds, I ad lib in short little snippets of three minutes here, ten minutes there, creating without preparation from whatever I have available: I press a few pieces of collage into place, spread some paint with my finger and spritz it with a spray bottle to trigger drips, draw angular lines with a China marker against a metal straight-edge tool, use a brayer to veil.

work in progress
18x24"; mixed media on drawing paper

detail

Lake Champlain, Day 1

[entry drafted at Lake Champlain 6/8/18]

I paint today in a sweet little vacation cottage, with windows and screened porches in abundance, all of them wide open to magically warm June daytime air and the perfection of cool deep-sleep nights. A bit of the huge expanse of Lake Champlain laps the edge of our front lawn, and Vermont mountains trace the horizon.

I grab the pad of Canson classic cream 18x24" 90 pound drawing paper I have with me and begin playing.

Blacks, whites, China marker, print collage, latex paint, architect tracing paper, matte medium.

Messing about.

work in progress
18x24"; mixed media on drawing paper

Furnishing

I recently read an exquisitely written memoir by David Giffels entitled Furnishing Eternity.

When I paint, I think I furnish not eternity but right-now. At least sometimes. Often enough, in any case, to bring me back to my studio day after day.

Giffels, telling the story of using a router outfitted with a tongue-in-groove bit to shape the edge of a long pine board, gives words to what I think of as the now of painting: An hour passed, then another. Eventually, I became one with the process, a transformation I've always savored. First one enters the work, then the work enters oneself.

First I enter the work, then the work enters me. I am grateful each and every time the work enters me.

There has already been much back and forth with my patch in progress below. I enter the work, the work enters me, I enter the work, the work enters me.

Gonna let it "chill" overnight and see what I think tomorrow.

 

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History thus far: