The Light of Attention

I step from my study into my bedroom, thinking I've forgotten to turn out a light.

But, no! The light left on is early morning sunlight bursting through the eastern-facing skylight to splash onto wall, chair, carpet, and dresser with unabashed brilliance.

Something else that finds its way to my attention this morning: a line from the novel I am currently listening to.

Shake hands

with your decision

and move on.

Unabashed Conversation
4 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic, oil pastel, and collage
on card stock
abstract
2022

Noticings

I step into each day with … well, with steps! 

The ditty on Dave's phone gently nudges us from rest to wakefulness, we move out from under the covers and make up the bed, and I dress and head outdoors into the velvet of predawn for my daily prayer walk of 5,000-6,000 steps. 

With my feet in motion, I set intentions, open my heart to listen and notice.

From there the rest of the day unfolds, with all its colors and layers and surprises and mistakes and excavations and accomplishments and inadvertencies. 

I notice where my attention is as often as I'm able.

The following passage by Myla Kabat-Zinn in Everyday Blessings catches my attention a few days ago. It is exactly what I need to hear.

My ten-year-old daughter, in bed, lights out, says to me:

“Mommy, I feel so confused.”

I reply: “What are you confused about?”

She says: “I don’t know, I just feel confused.”

I struggle with my urge to make it better … “It’s okay to feel confused.”

She says: “It is?”

I say: “Yes, it is.”

Phone Conversation on a Snow Day
4 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic, collage, and oil pastel
on card stock
abstract
2022

 

He Sees a Bug

He sees a bug 

that is smaller than a period 

on a page. 

He sees the sky, 

bigger than all that's in his head. 

An overwhelm 

from two different directions, 

vast and tiny, 

together.

     —Lauren Groff, Arcadia

---

This pint-sized postcard is nothing I could have envisioned before walking into my studio—and yet it is exactly what I sought.

Aim the Flashlight of Awareness on Your Own Interior
3.5 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic, collage, and oil pastel 
on card stock
abstract
2022

Risks and Itches

Taking risks, scratching itches.

Willing to Risk Being Vulnerable
3.5 x 5.25" postcard; acrylic, ink
and collage on card stock
abstract landscape
2021

 

all paths lead where truth is here [e.e. cummings]

in winter after-

noon light I am a pilgrim

hark! revelation!

work in progress; 
lost myself in the pure joy
of mixing paint and applying it with palette knife
over roughly and irregularly textured surface

Oxidation

 I think I might need to up my antioxidants. I'm feeling rusty.

Huh. As I take in the opening sentence above it occurs to me that maybe the challenge facing me is conveyed in the first two words: I think. 

Thinking isn't working.

But, here I am. I went to my studio again today, fiddled around with cutting postcard-sized pieces from my evolving in-process painting, added a bit of collage.

Action.

OK.

rusty postcard!

Attunement

Emmy got me into my studio for a few minutes at a time on her recent visit. No small accomplishment. She painted; I took the leftover smidgens of any color we mixed to activate some blank postcard-size card stock.

Today, I went into my studio all by myself!

Sometimes the Answer Comes Before I'm Even Done
Asking the Question
4 x 5.25" postcard; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on card stock
abstract
2021

Postcard Quilt Squares

I took pleasure in riffling through accumulated exercises and paintings done on paper (yet again) to select a piece to which I could give new life as a postcard, a postcard that will, in fact, travel farther from the four walls of the drawer in which it has lived for several years than I will have traveled from the four walls in which I live in the past ten weeks!

Mind you, this is a piece that took somewhat of a wild ride in my studio before it ever paused to land softly in a drawer in the company of other such voyagers; see the backstory that runs from 8/12/16 to 8/21/16.

Grateful to give it wings, to release it into a larger world.

A Perfect Breeze of Innocent Confusion
4 x 5" postcard; graphite, acrylic, pencil, and pastels
on canvas paper mounted on magazine paper and card stock
abstract
2020

Postcard Piecework

I am endlessly fascinated by the way creative energy puzzles things out and pieces things together.

Went to my studio over a week ago with an intention and a time limit.

Intention: make a postcard for my dad.

Time limit: have it ready to take to the post office in less than an hour to allow for its arrival in Maine on time for our mutual birthday four days later.

Here's what I picked up and worked with:

• a greeting card printed by moo.com from a photo of a piece of art I made in the early days of grieving my mom's October 2015 death;
• my trusty decades-old paper trimmer;
• a Marvy LePen marker (has no rivals with its unique micro-fine point and sleek, elegant, lightweight barrel design) recommended, I think, by Sheila Delgado in a blog post some time back;
• my box of print matter, torn from magazines and culled from all manner of postal deliveries;
• blunt scissors from my kids' early days art supplies;
• matte medium;
• a spray can of Krylon Triple-Thick Clear Glaze; and
• my travel-size hair drier.

Cut the greeting card to become a postcard and rotated it from portrait to landscape orientation. Used LePen to 'tie strings' to the 'balloons.' Combed through my print matter for options that fit my color palette and featured words that might suit the occasion and recipient. Tore, glued, glazed, dried, wrote message, added address, affixed postage stamp.

Made it to the p.o. on time!

Energy Puzzles
4 x 6" postcard; collage and ink on printed image on cardstock
abstract
2020 upgrade of a 2015 piece

Postcard Play

Outdoor-gear magazine story.

Real-estate advertising.

Found wisdom.

Because This Old Planet Still Has a Few Tricks
4 x 6" postard; acrylic, ink, and collage on drawing paper,
mounted on card stock
abstract
2020 upgrade of a 2016 piece

The Other Half of Another Then and Now

Again, I play with an old piece from nearly four years ago, a piece whose other half recently became a birthday card while this half becomes a postcard to send to my dad. Alone in my studio, I get completely lost in the textured richness of creating a tiny world on a few square inches of paper. I confess I will feel a little tug of loss when I place it in my mailbox to begin its journey away from me to Maine. Away though it will go, I will cherish and hold onto the little gift of gain that comes from becoming aware of how much making I have done in the past four years—I am delighted by the ways in which the get-messy exploration of those years infuses itself into this revised piece.

A Sequestered Saturday Morning
4 x 6"; acrylic, oil pastel, and collage on drawing paper,
mounted on card stock
abstract
2020 upgrade of a 2016 piece

Learning Style

Although I did well as a student when in school, I had a metacognitive epiphany after I finished my formal education and could step back to think about learning: following my own nose and lived experience are far more engaging to me than following a pre-established curriculum set out by someone else ever was.

So it's no surprise that when I took up painting a few years ago, I just started mucking about, trusting that I'd learn by doing.

Every now and then, though, I wonder what I've retained of the countless in-the-moment lessons that have come from my studio time. What have I come to know about 'how to paint' that is so deeply internalized I don't know I know it even though I put it into practice intuitively?

In any given moment, it feels to me as though I don't know much of anything! I just paint.

And that is fine by me.

A few days ago, however, I had the fun of discovering that I have learned at least one solid lesson that I'm able to consciously put to use. If I don't clean a brush thoroughly, or forget it altogether and let it dry out with paint-loaded bristles, soaking it in Murphy's Oil Soap for 24-48 hours dissolves the paint and returns my brush to good as new …



… which was especially helpful knowledge to have at the ready when I painted An Unrolled Bolt of Raw Feeling and looked down to see that in the process of expressing my raw feelings I had dripped a bunch of white paint on the recently-purchased jeans I was wearing.

They Began to Sing Very Softly
3.5 x 5" postcard; acrylic, oil pastel, and canvas and paper collage on card stock
abstract floral
2019

Wellspring

… a wellspring of gratitude: a few minutes in my studio when I thought no such minutes might be available. I come away with a lift in my heart and spirit.

Blank canvas becomes canvas with marks and colors, a starting place, a wellspring for whatever the next marks and colors might be.

detail from a start

Simple Pleasures

• spying a bright pop of winterberry (Ilex verticillata) color against monochromatic wetlands on my way home from the gym
• laughing out loud when the last of eleven November poster calendars I'd affixed to the family room walls as seasonal decoration fell to the floor because the masking tape had no sticking power
• feeling my just-sharpened chef's knife chop through bok choy at lunch time
• spreading black gesso onto card stock with a brush

Out of the Early Morning Darkness
3.5 x 5" postcard; acrylic and collage on card stock
abstract
2019

November 12

November 12

     4:30 a.m.


     On mornings like this, as hours before dawn
     I walk the dark hall of the road
     with my life creaking under my feet, I sometimes
     take hold of the cold porcelain knob
     of the moon, and turn it, and step into a room
     warm and yellow, and take my seat
     at a small wooden table with a border of painted pansies,
     and wait for my mother to bring me my bowl.

                             —Ted Kooser, Winter Morning Walks

Save Room for Dancing
3.5 x 5" postcard; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel on card stock*
abstract
2019

* card stock = table number placard from Scott & Alisa's wedding reception

Movement

Start.

Stop.

Turn upside down.

Done.

Stay in motion—on to another.

Groundless Theory
3.5 x 5" postcard; acrylic, pastel, and collage on card stock
abstract
2019

Absolutely from Scratch

Every year a given tree

creates absolutely from scratch

ninety-nine percent of its living parts.
A big elm

in a single season

might make as many as 

six million leaves,

wholly intricate,

without budging an inch;

I couldn't make one.

                                     Annie Dillard

                     Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Without budging from my studio, scratching my head in wonder and bemusement, unlike Annie Dillard I do create—absolutely from scratch—a handful of wholly intricate leaves! Woo hoo!

Firebursts
4 x 6"; acrylic, ink, and collage on card stock
abstract
2019

An improbable history:

Firebursts

Better Later than Never

Look what I picked up from my studio table today—a paint quilt exercise I did in 2016!

monostripes paint quilt; exercise for online Jane Davies course
October 2016

I'd uncovered it two weeks ago—in a folder in a stack of folders in a drawer—and set it on the table. When I received a postcard from my granddaughter Emmy two days ago, the exercise jumped off the table and begged to be prepped for her.

Here's what I wrote when I created this start three years ago:

In traditional pieced quilts, fabric is used from cast-off clothing that is still good enough to be repurposed. The quilts are a means of making something useful and often beautiful from leftovers. They are improvisational in the sense that the quilt maker does not buy new fabrics for the quilt.

A 'Paint Quilt' such as the one featured above is a piece made from leftover paint from another painting. No planning ahead, no squeezing out fresh paint. I was directed to use only paint leftover from the monochrome-stripes lesson I'd worked on.

As I noted at the time, I didn't 'finish' this piece in any way, and it read as unfinished when I looked at it.  My intention was to play with it further, possibly cheating by squeezing out new paint, and for sure using ink or pastels before later sending it as a postcard.

Well, sure enough, today I 'played with it further,' and made it into a postcard—three years 'later.' No new paint per se. Just paint markers, pastels, and collage. Off it goes to Emmy!

Life's Simple Pleasures
4 x 5" postcard, acrylic, pastel, and collage on card stock
abstract
2019

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

Parentheses

I know, I know, you thought I was on a roll with a series of postcards from that 18x24" start done last summer at Lake Champlain.

So did I.

But.

While cleaning my studio, I bumped into an October 2016 mono-stripes exercise I did for a Jane Davies online course while on vacation in West Virginia, and you know how one thing

mono-stripes exercise 2016

leads to another.

I Was Putting Papers Away When the Telephone Rang
4x5" postcard; acrylic, pastels, and collage on card stock
abstract
2019