Creatively Thinking

  Featured image: Hummer VI The pine tree shoots are almost 8" A different color green Lilies in the garden blooming Lilacs are blooming All this color overwhelms. The peonies need pinning back. They are about to burst. Little chipmunks are stuffing whirligigs into their cheeks, which are exploding. In goes another one. Amazing. The things that you notice sitting still The only thing moving is your pen. A hummer buzzed me. So still.

  Featured image: Sculpture - Wings Have you ever just thought about the air? I know I haven’t. It’s just there. It’s invisible. Yet, if you really think about it, it is so important. Things like air just pop into my head sometimes—like this morning. Without air, birds couldn’t fly. Their wings would be useless. Birds could not take flight. So what’s the use of wanting to be able to fly if there were no air? You have to have faith to take that first step from the nest, spread your wings, and fly. It takes courage. There is nothing there—just air!!! After all, if I stepped off the top of a flight of stairs and spread my arms out, I certainly wouldn’t fly like a bird. Gosh darn.

  Featured image: The Real and The Imagined One of the things I really love about being an artist is that I can create a space that exists just beyond a fixed reality. I can experience life, see life differently. Some people cannot accept “differently,” but then there are those who do—those who move toward this different reality. I can feel them when they visit the studio—the minute they walk through the door and their eyes light up. And besides asking where the bathroom is, they ask questions right away. “How did you…?” And it doesn’t stop until they walk out the door. It’s the imagination that triggers that first question.

Featured image: Daffodils In A Vase with Yellow Stripes The waiting for that first drop of color to appear in the gardens this year has ended. Oh, not the ones I planted, like the marigolds and the impatiens, but the ones that sprout up from the earth. Once the color that rises from the earth appears, then I know that summer has arrived. Just like when I shed my socks, paint my toes red, and put on sandals, then I know summer has arrived. So it has happened. The daffodils have bloomed, the Russian irises are almost here, my mom’s irises are here, and my socks are gone for the season. Yea!!!!

  Featured image: Roller Coaster Ride Have We Become Nothing More Than Wind-Up Toys? I have been thinking about this idea for some time now, ever since I started doing 3-D work about this time last year. This idea has become something special, an idea that has been ruminating in my head for over a year, ever since I began gathering antique wind-up toys. I am naturally afraid to start it, though, because the idea is soooo big. I think I might have already painted it, and it has been in my head for over 15 years. The work I did a long time ago called Roller Coaster Ride was red and very, very big. Some of you have seen it, and some of you haven’t. I was saving it for so long—not knowing why—but I sold it last year to a very, very special couple, and we helped them hang it. When I saw where it was hung, I knew the minute we hung it that it belonged there, in their lovely home, with all their other wonderfully collected art. I knew I had made the right decision to sell it. But now—can...

  Featured image: Hawk III I’m honored and grateful to share that my painting Hawk III has been accepted into the San Diego Watercolor Society’s 46th International Exhibition. This year’s exhibition received 671 entries from 345 artists representing 20 countries and 35 states. From this remarkable field of work, juror Ana Laura Salazar selected just 105 paintings for inclusion. I’m deeply honored that Hawk III will be among them. For as long as I can remember, birds have found their way into my work. Nature has always been my greatest teacher, and the hawk’s soaring perspective reminds us to rise above the immediate and see with greater clarity. In Hawk III , I wanted to capture not only the beauty and power of this remarkable bird, but also the spirit it represents—the courage to rise above challenges and trust one's vision. Thank you to juror Ana Laura Salazar, the San Diego Watercolor Society, and everyone involved in organizing this exceptional international exhibition. I’m g...

Featured image: Thrush II I find that my connection to birds gives me the feeling I need to imagine and understand what the air is like that allows birds to fly, but doesn’t allow me to fly except in my imagination. The idea that they travel so far and can stir my imagination through something invisible called air—AIR. This air is magical, mystical, and symbolic for me when I think about it, because I can never really see it, but I know it is there. Birds can take flight in it at any time. Take flight into my mystical, magical space. Science can, at times, make it visible to me—but it is not the same. Not the same as a bird spreading its wings and taking off and flying. I can’t spread my arms and take off into the air. It just can’t happen. Dragons used to. Well, they tell me they used to be able to. We don’t see dragons anymore. Do they only happen in our imagination now? Gosh, I need to close my eyes and click my ruby slippers together twice and ask to go home.

Featured image: Sunrise in the Morning at the Lake For some reason, I woke up earlier than usual this morning and looked across the lake and saw the lovely, wonderful orange, pink, and yellow sunrise glowing just everywhere. I mean everywhere, just everywhere. I couldn’t stand it. I just had to get up, make coffee, and go to the other side of the house and watch the sun rise through the trees in the woods. What is it about starting the day with a cup of coffee and watching the sun rise? It just fills your heart and soul until it is about to burst. And you try to put some of these wonderful sensations in your treasure box to save them for a rainy day, and there just isn’t enough room. Gosh. Memories. Happy memories. Written down, I rarely get beyond them—little fragments from here and there. One that always comes to mind is the last day of a canoeing trip. We got up quickly and cleaned up the tent, rolled up our sleeping bags, made coffee, and, with mugs in hand, walked up the hill. We ...

  Featured image:  Daffodils In A Vase with Yellow Stripes I cut some daffodils from my garden yesterday and put them in a vase. This really is one of the first years I have been able to do that. Usually, the deer get them first. They look so cute on my kitchen windowsill in a tall vase with yellow stripes. It brings a smile to my face just writing about them. I think daffodils are supposed to do that, aren’t they? “She turned to the sunlight And shook her yellow head, And whispered to her neighbor: ‘Winter is dead.’” — A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young If one pleasure is worth a thousand daffodils, then one is too few. — Wordsworth

  Featured image: Straight from the Heart “I cannot expect even my own art to provide all the answers—only to hope it keeps asking the right questions.” — Wassily Kandinsky

Featured image: Intersections II We seem to be slowly moving into summer. This year I would describe summer's arrival as a slow, quiet slide. Even the blackbirds are quiet. And I am gently moving back into mark-making. I have a new way of creating, and it is triggering new thinking, which is always wonderful. It’s the weaving in my work that seems to be triggering ideas. Even though my weaving isn’t the kind of weaving that all blends, one color into another, as though each thread has a place, rather each thread clings to its neighbor and finds comfort, even though they are not the same. The weaving may appear chaotic and abstract, but it is not, for each thread has a purpose and a connection to whatever is next to it. The connection is the glue that holds the weaving together. For me, it is the invisible divine that connects. I have given up trying to see the divine and trying to describe what I cannot see. But I can feel it. Most of us can feel it and, like myself, can’t put the ...

  Featured image: Nature's Truth “…and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?” — Vincent van Gogh

  Featured image: Study of Rose Breasted Woodpecker The woodpecker keeps tap tap tapping. Listening to the rat-a-tat-tat in the distance and the gentle chirp close by, it’s nice to have my coffee outside once again and listen to the woods waking up in the morning. Green stubbles are sprouting in the gardens, bringing such joy. The deer didn’t get my daffodils this year, and specks of yellow are sprinkled about the garden borders. Everything will sprout up quickly, and soon those swelling buds will shed their soft shells, and the woods will be filled with luscious spring greens and their transparent colors will be everywhere. Every critter seems to be pairing up. The woodpecker keeps tap tap tapping.