The Mind

 Featured image: Your Mind Sings: Listen

The mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension.  Oliver Wendell Holmes

 Featured image: Winter River

The air is very thin in winter. Moisture frozen to

pines and maples. Cool ice colors cover, white greens and brown. Where not so long ago trees were covered with warm color.

A single coppery brown oak leaf shivers in the breeze.

Winter has a different kind of stillness. Sitting quietly in winter.

Your Place

 Featured image: Heading Home

Do I miss you when you are gone?

Do I rejoice when you return?

Your place, your special place

Your place on this earth

Your place on this earth.

When He Looks At Me

 Featured image: Just Saying I Love You

When he looks at me

his gaze holds such wonder

he tells me I am beautiful

as he holds my face

cupped in his hands.

I say …. I love you so.

Sunlight

 Featured image: Transparent Wings and Sunshine - Dragonfly

Sunlight plays with the trees

Stillness of the

Snow

Pines transformed

wild places

reimagined.

Light's Magic

 Featured image: Kaleidoscope Of Raw Reality: We Are So Small – Northern Lights

The magic of light,

frequently gives us a

glimpse into

the mysterious-ness

that dwells within us.

Earth

 Featured image: Sacred Earth

The earth offers a

Stillness calming trusting

Hope

Magnificent earth.

Morning Light

 Featured image: Gram's Farm

Morning light
lowly takes away
darkness.
The first
blush of
dawn.
Time unfolds
yet again.

Light Abandons Day

 Featured image: Sunset At The Lake

Light abandons day.
Twilight.
Orange sky
low
hanging clouds.
This will only happen
once
only once.
Glorious.

If

 Featured image: If It Looks Like A Bird

If
the beautiful is lost,
then the soul is lost.
Surface is all that
is left.
Your soul's beauty
is far beyond
appearance. And
surface

So we must discover
the
aesthetics,
the beautiful,
we must
experience our
complexity
we must dance with our
opposition.

We must, from
abstraction
create, and create
and create, beauty.

Beautiful Experience

 Featured image: At Peace

When we experience
the beautiful;
we not only discover
tranquility
but also the greatest
wildness within
and without.
The beautiful allows
us to live on the edge.

Sovereign Sanctuary

 Featured image: Arches of Triumph

The sovereign sanctuary of nature
its peace and its holiness

reality is both the positive and
negative
heaven and hell here on
earth.
God is all things natural, wilderness,
the mysterious, wind, rain, lakes, rivers
streams, oceans, sunlight
and shadow
within these things you
can find
freedom.

Nature's Rhythm

 Featured image: Nature's Beauty

The rhythm of nature with its
sublime winds and serene pulse
for me is a love affair that triggers
and restores my mind
restores true spirit
true aliveness the yes
Yes yes of all things natural.

Morning Coffee in the Boreal Forest

 Featured image: Boreal Forest Shoreline

Old picnic table
Gentle breeze
Early morning sun
Cedar trees
Surround me
Turins swooping diving
Silence, silence

Birds and Flight

 Featured image: Evening Grosbeak

Birds perch on the feeders edge. Their wings are flapping trying to settle.

I have always loved my imaginings of flying, not only in my dreams, but in reality and in the things I create. It is no wonder that I would gravitate to painting birds, both realistically and imagined. I imagine their feathers being cooled by the wind as they fly. I imagine the wind drift lifting them higher and higher like a soaring eagle. I can see them settle on a branch and the sun drying their feathers after a rain. Such a natural thing for them. Yes, it is so unnatural for humans as they proclaim, “But it’s raining outside. Let’s not go” or “It’s too cold.” I frequently wonder at the little finches, sparrows, chickadee, and blue jays and how they stay warm in the winter with just those feathers. Feathers, like flying, have always been magical for me. It is no wonder I would gravitate to painting birds, realistically and imagined.

I painted three little imaginary birds recently and named them fun imaginary names. They all have spirit, are unique, one-of-a-kind, and authentic, the possibility that I imagine for all folks.

Just Shine

 Featured image: All Rise

Have you ever noticed, perhaps when you meet a person for the very first time that they just shine?  There seems to be a light that is within them that is absolutely beautiful.  They radiate a light that has a very distinctive dignity.  Their light shines beyond their reality.  It is a brilliant light.  

This is not a light that one can control.  You can’t turn this light on and off like a light switch on the wall. I personally think of this light as a hug from God.  The person may or may not believe in God, but for sure, He believes in them and hugs them often.  God’s grace, His light is in all of us.  Let us all let our lights shine.

The Way We See it

 Featured image: First Ice

You are what you see. How you see is part of your spirit. Is the way you see creative? 

How I see is not a static, flat view like a photo gives us,  But,  rather, I see as a dynamic ever changing, ever creative view of life happening. It is the dynamic dance of life and sight.

I was standing under a canopy of entwined branches covered with snow.  The sun was shining through the light snow giving the canopy a stained glass feel – a very magical moment of light, life and sight.