Wild Women

E and I returned home on Monday evening, full and tired. The Herbal Symposium was as renewing and transforming as I remembered from five years ago. It's really a unique experience to feel so safe, nourished, supported and mirrored. There were guesses that the weekend was attended by 400 women and 100 children. I don't know about that. I can't really guesstimate. All I know is there were a heck of a bunch of us, as various as water crystals. A full spectrum array of beauty and power. What potent creatures we all are! And I love taking classes about herbs and natural healing out under the trees and sky. It's what I pined for as a kid, stuck seemingly forever in stuffy crackerbox classrooms. I came away with new info pertinent to my family about sugar metabolism, adaptogens and energy medicine. We ate love food three times a day until our bodies were humming. Eden did really well with the food. She became so independent in the short time we were there. Off to the creek, packing a picnic, getting herself showered. Our dishes lived on a mat near the fire ring so she could grab her plate at meals, get her own food, wash up and tuck it all away without a word from me. A revolution. I did great at market, making back my fee and more. I usually find it surprising but always gratifying to get so much appreciation for my work. I'm such a recluse, I forget how what I make touches people. It felt really good and was completely validating. Being there with the Tumbleweed women was perfect for me who tends to go satellite when groups gather. They grounded me and made me feel part of something. Thanx, you gals. By the end, lazing by the slow river in the waning day, we all pretty much agreed it was great and we will be back.

Women In Art

Off North

I'm heading north this morning with a faction of the Tumbleweed women and girls to spend four days camping in the trees on Wavy Gravy's ranch in Laytonville. The event is the Northern California Women's Herbal Symposium. I've attended before but not for maybe five years and it was sans children. Eden's coming this time. It's a great place to hang out with inspiringly wise women and commune with plants. Good company all around. I painted this little piece along with a few others to bring to the marketplace, though I am not going for business. I want to reconnect with the green beings and dance around the fire with my girlfriends. I've been feeling a bit slumpy so I'm hoping to wax light and just enjoy.

Wink

I am gearing up for summer festivals and my open studio so I'm cranking on lots of work. Frustratingly, I have multiple works of all sizes in various stages of completion (a lot of initiative energy there with much less sustained follow-through). So it's nice to just go in and complete something in one go. I work best when I am "just playing around". This is painted on a piece of cheap canvas covered 12 x 12 board. No pressure filling it. It could end up garbage. From blank white to this took about 3 hours. I really get off on just messing around with a multicolored patina and then letting an image emerge from that with some white paint and a small brush. The strokes came out almost calligraphic- short and succinct. I just let it become how it wants to, an approach that's been exciting since it offers the chance for surprising odd bits to surface (like that eye fish and that splash-like shape around her breast). As I've said before, I am enamored of shapes that "flip", embodying more than one thing at a time so it seems to have something to say. I liked how her tail looks also like a fish, and her scales become moons in phase and those little star darts remind me of the movement of the silver sardines we saw in the ocean on Moorea (Tahiti). All connotations of the ocean, the feminine moon, waves and dissolution. The happenstance wink sort of made me think of the fickle movement of water and the changing tides.

I recently had a realization that I have worked hard these past 7 years expressing some (for me) pretty potent imagery about power, potential, emotion, essential truths... I used do deep intentional imagining and lucid dream capture toward masterminding some of my images. Now I want there to be less head and more hand and feeling movement in my work. I don't need to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, every single time I sit down to paint. I'm more into fooling around with different expressions on one narrative that holds a lot of juice. So, more like this to come.

Mother Hike

Nothing like celebrating Mother's Day by getting out in nature and enjoying the the biggest mama of them all. After a crazy delicious brunch in Duncans Mills, we spent the day Sunday hiking Pomo Canyon Trail with the Tumbleweeds (an inspiring bunch of moms, dads and kids who we're lucky enough to know and hang out with). Gorgeous weather, cools folks and unbelievably spectacular landscapes made for a primo day. It was somewhat strenuous and my kids whined a bit but were soon won over by wildflower meadows, shady grottos, troll bridges, fairy holes and other mysterious wonders.
I took a ton of pictures but culled them and posted the cream on my Flickr.I especially like this photo which kind of summed up the feeling for me. What a life! Zoie making flower rings, Dave beyond awash in green and the earth stretching out all around to the river and out to sea. We live in such a beautiful place.

The Party's Over

And a good time was had. Eden declared it "better than last year" which is a surprise since that shindig was a bigger affair. Even though we contemplated doing something big, our small digs and an amped up calender decided for us. We so adamantly want to throw a big bash with all our dear friends, far and wide, that we will make it happen next year for her 10th. We thought we could slide by with a more modest event for turning 9. She liked her cake (chocolate buttermilk with pink cream cheese honey frosting and lotsa berries), she liked her gifts (art stuff, clothes, gift certificate to make pottery, groovy girl doll and bed, a book, a CD and a promise of a poncho) and we had her fave foods, quiche and pizza which I was up late last night and early this morning making along with the cake (boy am I tired and my stomach hurts). Yow. I posted a few pix on flickr.

Tallest Tree

It's exalting to discover that the new tallest tree in the world has been found deep in one of my favorite places on the planet- Prairie Creek Redwoods. We often stop here on the way up or back the 500 mile journey to Oregon (a trip we've made countless times through the years) to gape in awe at the enormous ancient trees. If you ever want to get lost in the depths of a profoundly silent and alive virgin old growth redwood forest, well, this is a good place to do it. Stunning.

This clip was like a flashback to the days of Julia Butterfly's sit. India and I read her book together back when and then went to hear her speak at the Sebastopol Vets. She even stayed a night at our home once. Sadly, she had food poisoning and spent the hours getting intimate with our toilet bowl. (Boy, talk about being hyper aware of the kind of toilet paper we were using, yikes!) It felt good to nurture her with ginger tea and hot water bottles. We got to have an interesting conversation the day after. She was an amazing person, really clear and focused (and a veteran homeschooler to boot!)

Worm Poop Bugs Goliath

Goliath picks a fight with...worm poop?

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, a $2.2 billion assets giant which has at least a 59% share of the relevant market, has sued tiny TerraCycle, Inc., an inner-city company founded by college students to create an eco-friendly business. TerraCycle manufactures all-natural garden products by feeding organic waste to worms and bottling the resulting worm poop compost tea as ready-to use plant food in soda bottles collected by schools and other charities across North America. TerraCycle is located in the Urban Enterprise Zone of Trenton, New Jersey.

It's apparently an issue of copycat packaging (the yellow and green) and false advertising (how good can it be-it's garbage!). Hmmm. Is somebody feeling a little threatened?

Song to the Siren

Only in the incomparable Sixties could you tune in to a Monkees TV show and catch this soulful performance by the unearthly Tim Buckley (1947-1975) who died too young of, what else, a heroin overdose…the siren’s final embrace.

Open The Door

When I’m hanging out on our back deck in the mornings watching seedlings suck up radiation, pushing out of their small pots, intent on becoming a jungle, I like the heat. When I’m walking through the warm air in the evening, under Venus, drinking in honeysuckle smells, I really like the heat. But when I’m in my studio, so charming and rustically uninsulated, I definitely do not. I’ve been putting in some decent hours in studio since I got back, gearing up for the summer festivals but Monday was intense.

I got an early start and put in most of a day. I really sank into the work. Sometimes I get in that zone where I’m unaware of my immediate environs and get lost in what I’m doing. So I didn’t notice the swelter at first but when I finally called it a day and oozed home, I was in a poor state. I probably didn’t drink enough water so dehydration was added to my low blood sugar (I forget to eat when I’m in there). As I was flopped almost catatonic on a chair at home, mumbling, “ Shit, it was hot out there today. How hot was it ?” Oh yeah, 91 degrees ?!! Oh, boy. And that was outside. What about inside a hot box enclosure. There was not a drop of animation left in me. I was completely baked.

I’m funny about stuff. I read into things. That heat was like a little voice, a gentle nag, saying: open the door. Well, I did have the doors in the back of the studio open that day but it was urging me to go all the way. See, I had an epiphany recently about opening my space to the public. I work in this neat space (old redwood walls, skylights, old windows and French doors) in a great neighborhood (the old JC) and the only thing that separates the two is a big sliding door. I’ve been entertaining the idea of opening it up once a week on a regular basis to offer a place to peek in, have a seat, sip some tea, look at art, browse through cards and prints, talk awhile or whatever. So, “opening the door” is symbolic as well as literal for me. I'm getting ready to be seen.

Ironically, I had spent some time a few days earlier moving things around with just that in mind. I’ve already got a sitting area, a tea table, some canvases on the walls and my altar set up on the north wall. Boxes of junk still clog the “gallery” area but I’m making progress. Already hatching a plan to make the portal inviting with plants, paintings and a shingle. Who will cross my threshold when it opens ? I'm curious.

Photo: Painting currently on the altar-Truth, the Seed of Intimacy or maybe just The Kiss.

Santa Fe

Mom and I touched down in San Francisco last night after our five days in the city of “holy faith”, tired and full. Tired because we walked ourselves to exhaustion nearly every day through the web of little streets that make up the heart of town. Full from the sheer generosity of color, art, texture, architecture, culture and history our eyes absorbed in the singular high atmospheric light (not to mention all the food we ate). So we arrived sated on brown adobe walls, hot chilies, blue corn, chocolate, sopapillas, pinon smoke, turquoise, silver jewelry, clay vessels, woven rugs and art, art, art.

We lucked out on the weather since the winter there has been long and cold, ending with bitter winds on, well…Tuesday. We arrived Wednesday to find crabapples and gorse in full bloom, cottonwoods budding in a chartreuse haze and the sun high and warm. It couldn’t have been more conducive to browsing shops, gallery hopping and café idling.

We went to relax and explore and shop. We’d each brought a small bundle of cash in anticipation. It began to loom a little inadequate the more we saw. Awesome silver and stone jewelry, hand tooled boots, Navajo rugs, pueblo pottery. All of it tempted until we tipped the tag. Such a small white snip, such a big number! $500 seemed the to be the average low, quickly rising into the thousands (even tens of thousands). Oh, well. We soon fell back on simple pining and just enjoyed the beauty. I did “splurge” on a few modest pieces of hand built Black Chamba burnished earthen cookware from Columbia since I know I will get years of pleasure out of them and they didn’t cost so much (under $50). So much for buying local. I am pleased, actually, that the Native American arts of the Southwest can fetch such high prices. I like to see artists well compensated and traditions encouraged.

The galleries of Santa Fe were a primary draw for me. There are over 250 of them tucked here and there though most line the two-mile stretch of Canyon Road. This little town (pop. 65,000) supposedly ranks as the third largest art market in the US, trailing only NYC and LA and has attracted international recognition as an art center so I was curious. Besides, Rob had breezed through with the girls a few years back and was persistent I should see it. So we spent a day winding up the road, popping in and out of space after space.

There sure is a full spectrum of art represented. There are at least two foundries in the area so there is a substantial sculpture population-bronzes aplenty. Of course, paintings rule supreme and there is a multitude. Everything from skillful color saturated landscapes to naïf scribbles, Native American and Wild West scenes to whimsical, even weird, visionary styles, precise still life realism to dynamic abstract expressionism. It was all there.

One thing I felt pretty keenly was the general receptivity for art that expresses a spiritual feeling. Chalk it up to the deep Native American connection to the earth or maybe the strong thread of Mexican Catholicism that stitches through from the past but there is a palpable sense of appreciation for work expressing deep sentiment, ritual and the sacred that sat well with me. I resonated with the symbols and patterns decorating the Native American art as well as the Old Mexico influenced silver repousse, milagros and retablos altarpieces. I just had a sense that the images I make would be immediately embraced there, unlike wine-obsessed Sonoma County or urban edgy San Fran. It was a good feeling and a change.

Needless to say, I returned encouraged and inspired. Oh, and happy Beltane.

Beautiful Green World

I've been letting the days slip away, enjoying the rain and the green, gearing up for the trip to Santa Fe. We leave tomorrow for 5 days. I'm looking forward to relaxing and exploring. The past week has had some nice peaks: India has recovered quickly from her surgery and has her smile back, Rob and the girls have nurtured a lovely mess of seedlings out on the back deck and we are continually charmed by a sinuous gray squirrel building a nest in the trees near our kitchen window (this morning s/he actually jumped onto the sill and peered curiously in at us buttering toast). I've been able to put in some good time at the studio, had a few epiphanies about future work and began a Jitterbug class. Rosemary Gladstar (the original she of Rosemary's Garden fame-our local center of herbal wisdom and purveyance-who now lives back east) contacted me again wanting to use Green Man (as well as Mother Tree and Full Moon Flower) for this year's International Herbal Symposium, since the latter was so well-received at the last conference. That feels really good. I've also gotten a few beautiful letters of appreciation which always gives me a boost. (They usually pop in "out of the blue" when I'm at a low ebb). I've been in gratitude mode for our lovely neighborhood, with it's endless array of tangled yards loaded with flowers (the roses especially are in full glory) and the first signs of "hay bales in the hood" as conceived by folks inspired by City Repair. (The idea is, wherever you spy a bale you know it is offered as public space and is an invitation to sit a spell, so...yesterday we rested on one set up quite nicely in a corner garden under an immense redwood). Most recently, we spent Earth Day hiking about Sugarloaf, enjoying the fat moss, swollen streams and thick grassy contours of a rain-saturated landscape. I'm more used to being out there when it is cicada-buzzing hot and sucked dry so that was a treat. All in all, pretty tame days but good. More news when I return from the Southwest!

Lucky Thirteen

Paraskavedekatriaphobia has no hold on me. That is, fear of Friday the 13th. If I was burdened by that superstition, would I have let my daughter go in for major oral surgery today? I guess I'm a somewhat superstitious in reverse. I consider it a good omen when a black cat crosses my path. The fact that today was not only a Friday (Venus' day) and the 13th (sacred to some, 12 around 1), the moon is waning to dark. Witches know that's the best phase for banishing. Gardeners know that's a good time for dealing with roots below ground, the time to pull weeds, thin seedlings and prune. Well then, the perfect time to have metal screws removed from your palette. A bright day, skimming through commuter traffic, competent medical staff, a blessed nap on the drive home, custard, ice cream, movies, stories read aloud, pain meds and deep sleep. Puffy cheeks but wonderfully free of metal implants. A lucky day.

Art and Eostar

I've been offline for days since my laptop started dying, snapping off at odd moments with increasing frequency. Thankfully I was able to retrieve all my writing and photos before it went completely comatose. Now it's in the shop for a month! Rather than endure four weeks sans machine...well, the decision to pop for a new one was easy. It's the decadent choice but not so much so considering we're an online sort of family. A family of four with only three portals to cyberspace AND we got this one for a really good deal. I guess we all have our indulgences.

So, meanwhile, I've been enjoying this lush Spring and a casual family and friend-oriented pagan Eostar with a focus on damn good food and the burgeoning green. Lots of seedling nurturing going on here with trays of fragile stems continually carried in and out of the sunshine and cold wind. Baby veggies! I managed to raise a small crop of wheatgrass in one of my nicer baskets to compete with the kids' jellybeans and paper grass.

Last Thursday my folks treated me to a day in the City, museum-hopping. I didn't do anything to deserve such a fab day but I enjoyed myself unabashedly. All three of us like soaking up art so we went for full saturation. Three museums in one day. I liked it so much, I will describe it in detail. So beware.

We saw the Masterpieces of French Jewelry at the Legion of Honor in the morning. Mom works in fine jewelry so it was a must see for her. The collection included Art Nouveau pieces from the early 20th century through to contemporary works. Sinuous filigreed exquisiteness (Lalique and Fouquet) to dripping with diamonds (Cartier), whimsical fruit and bugs fashioned from sapphires or emeralds (Van Cleef & Arpels) all the way to glittering marvels encrusted with tiny gems and a plumed zebra head brooch of variegated agate with a diamond bridle (by the exclusive reclusive JAR). There were a few chunkified horrors in the Art Deco style and rare bits, like the gold pin by Picasso. Everything from the usual pins, earrings and necklaces to evening bags, fans, vanity cases and an umbrella handle. Even a little cage fashioned for a tree frog. All of it stunning.

Then we hit the De Young which apparently I've never visited before, at least not in recent memory. Which was fortunate because I was blessedly unencumbered by fond recollections of the old museum structure before it was recently and completely razed and revamped. Now it is quite impressive and supposedly controversial, clad in a textural brown copper siding all embossed and nubbly, sporting a kind of skewed top-heavy tower at one corner (from which there is a panoramic view). Everything about it exudes a feeling both prehistoric and warmly futuristic. Elemental and essential. An Andy Goldsworthy installation marks the entrance with stone slabs split by an artificial fault line (a nod to the forces that damaged the previous building). Close-trimmed palm trees lines the front and slag piles of slate erupt with large fern trees beyond the glass windows of the interior. I liked it. Primitive, spare and textural.

There was a lot to see and much of it we didn't. Some was captivating, some not. Besides an amazing collection of photography, there were a lot of modern pieces including Cornelia Parker's "Anti-Mass" installation of suspended charcoal and wire, revealed to be the remains of a Southern Baptist church destroyed by arson. Also, some recent prints of Deborah Oropallo's computer manipulations of 18th century military men morphing into modern sexy women, including one rendered as a tapestry. Many American pieces of the Hudson River School style with the star being Frederic Edwin Church's Rainy Season in the Tropics. (Wow, there were visionary artists in 1866! The only thing missing is the dolphins!) Aesthetically, my favorite was Ruth Asawa's woven wire forms hanging in the foyer to the tower with small lights angled to cast big shadows of the bulbous and branchy organic shapes. It accentuated the overall feel of the museum beautifully. I was also smitten with the huge collection of New Guinea carved wooden ritual implements: masks, bowls, shields, drums, spirit boards (these last looked like far out surf boards- for riding the cosmic waves, perhaps?) I could've taken in a lot more but we were starving so we headed to the SoMa district.

We ate at Annabelle's Bar and Bistro on 4th near Mission. We three had discovered it when we took in the Chagall exhibit a few years back. It's classic old San Francisco with high ceilings, chicken wire floor tiles, heavy glass fixtures and a great wooden bar stretching back to an open kitchen. Dark wood wainscoting, soft citron walls, big vases of lanky calla lilies and heavy white moldings made it all very atmospheric. A good place to rest, sipping pinot, which we did. Past 3 o' clock, after a perfect lunch, a shared gelato banana split and some good strong java we were ready to plow onward. To SFMOMA!

The whole point of coming to the City was to catch the Picasso and American Art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Everyone takes it for granted that Picasso is considered great. That's easy. It's written in every comprehensive art book in the world. Maybe not everyone is clear on why. A majority, if pressed, would most likely admit they don't actually like his work. It can be challenging. I happen to think he was great, in the deepest sense of that word. He broke so much new ground that modern art became this burgeoning jungle, a new creature, another planet. This show was about just that.


So, I found myself in front of multiple great works by, among others, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichenstein, Jasper Johns. Each piece was juxtaposed with a relevant work by Picasso. It was striking, the degree of influence. Like the the Picasso piece was a seed that these other works sprung directly from. Ironically, Picasso is quoted as saying," A good artist borrows, a great artist steals." I don't know what that means exactly but he obviously encouraged some folks.

Coincidentally, I began a large painting last month that I built around a shape I was enamored of from his Guernica painting. It's a light shaped like an eye and it features prominently in my composition. Now I don't feel so sheepish having done so. I see it a little like the "borrowing" that happens in folk songwriting. A phrase or bit of melody from an old song will be the central thread of a completely new creation. It's just a jumping off point.

I always seem to be struck by just particular pieces (or even just certain elements within a work) by an artist rather than the body of work as a whole. I always thought that was strange. Now, I feel a renewed alertness to catching onto those threads because that's the "me" of it. That's where my fire, my juice is revealed to me. So, I stand in awe of de Kooning's Event In A Barn when I usually find much of his work a bit misogynistic (his women almost viciously drawn). I am left completely unmoved by Pollock's expanses of dribbles, visual white noise. But #18, 1951 had me riveted. A pure magic spell unfolding visually. His woefully inadequately titled #5 (pictured above), completely floors me. I want to call it She of Grass.

So, yeah, I came away from San Francisco all fired up, inspired and strangely consoled about the track I'm on. I think I'm doing fine.

The Lazy Hu Man's Guide

“No Resistance.” “Love it the way it is.” And my fave: “Go beyond reason to love: it is safe. It is the only safety.” Just a few of the choice nuggets of wisdom in The Lazy Man’s Guide To Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas. (I added the Hu).

Published in 1972, this slim little volume has been hanging around our house for over 25 years serving as “a handy trip guide”, offering suggestions for simple attitudes to help stay grounded during ”the most extreme freak-out or space-out, even when your mind is completely blown” or when you’ve had some ”bad dope”.

Lately, it has emerged from quiet obscurity. It just went out of print and now there are hardback editions showing up on eBay for as much as $75 a pop. Hmmm. Is it because this succinct little book is just so deliciously pithy?

Even though it seems like there were a lot more folks pursuing “enlightenment” in the early Seventies than these days, who couldn’t benefit from lightening up in the face of the daily bombardment of grim and heavy news. By that definition, this stuff translates and aptly.

On Love:

”Love is the highest and holiest action because it always contains that which is not love within itself, it always and ever moves to include the unloving.”

”Each of us is the same kind of being, capable of outflowing attention and awareness or withdrawing it. And that is all we need to do: Give full, permissive, loving attention to absolutely anything we see in our minds, in our bodies, in our environment, in other people.”

”Love is the only dimension that needs to be changed. If you are not sure how it feels to be loving, love yourself for not being sure how it feels. There is nothing on earth more important than the love which conscious beings feel towards each other, whether or not it is ever expressed.”

Is that radical or what? Love, not as mush or vague emotional swirlings, but as courageous bigness. Love as acceptance. Letting it all be.

On Vibes:

”The more you love the faster you vibrate, then the less need you feel to control anything, and you are not fearful of change and variety. When you raise your vibration level, you can neatly sidestep collisions, both psychic and physical, and quite literally change the world for the better.”

”A completely expanded being is space. Since expansion is permeative, we can be in the 'same space' with one or more other expanded beings. In fact, it is possible for all the entities in the universe to be in one space.”

On Fear and Attachment:

”Anything that really frightens you may contain a clue to enlightenment. It may indicate how deeply you are attached to structure, whether mental, physical or social. Attachment and resistance are appearances with the same root: when you resist by pulling away your awareness, the emotion is one of fear, and the contraction is experienced like magnetism or gravity; that is, attachment.”

This conjures an image for me of the universe as this great woven strangeness that we all wear like a vast stretchy sweater (Chief Seattle’s web). As each of us is an intrinsic fiber of this intricate intertwining, it is ridiculous to think we can pull away from any part of it without in fact pulling that very part directly to us.

Anyway, a lot of good sanity saving stuff pressed into 80 slender pages. Greatly recommended.

Redbuds

This is the street I grew up on. It's about five blocks from where I live now. Aja and Eden stand under the spectacular branches of three Western Redbuds (Cercis Occidentalis) that marked the years when I lived with them. Buds beneath the buds. Folks used to come from all over to gawk at those trees. I bet they still do. It is strange indeed to be living in this neighborhood some 30 years later. So little has changed. All the trees are taller, thicker. Yard shrubs have become imposing in places. The houses mostly look the same. Paint faded some, flaking at the edges. A bit shabbier but just a bit. Eerie, too, to see my own kid standing on ground where I once roller skated, hopscotched and stretched out in a wet swimsuit on hot summer days eating graham crackers. I can even see my own ghost sitting on that lawn curb just beyond, scratching out doodles in chalk on my front sidewalk. My kids and me-as-a-kid in the same place, just at different times. Weird. I tell my girls stories from my growing up so this place is peopled for them. Mr. Wood with his goo-goo goggles, Joe and Trudy and the jar of candy bars, the Man With No Face, Ernie "Monsta" with his spastic foot, Shaleen and the Chateau Mousseau. They know about the Swing Low Sweet Chariot Lady and how we extracted fudgcicles from Opal and Earl by skating incessantly and noisily in front of their house. The past is alive for them but did I have any inkling back then that a future me was walking by with my family? Maybe I was too distracted with water balloon battles or playing "The Fifty's" with Tammy's portable phonograph and collection of 45s. But there were quieter moments I seem to recall, sleeping out on Jenny's front porch, sunbathing smeared with stinky baby oil or just counting stars when those kind of thoughts may have crossed my mind. Some think all time happens simultaneously so maybe I can still catch my attention when I'm passing through.
Photo by Robbi

Seed Bed

I've started laying color into some of these small canvases that have been scattered around the studio. They have been haunting me, sitting around all ghostly and colorless. I've been playing with keeping my palette restrained to pull together "busy" area so they work more as a larger shape, congealed into one thing. So here the golden flower is juxtaposed with the blue dream state. The smooth yellow contrasts with the textured blue.

Under the Foot of Chaos

I'm in studio sporadically and crazyily working on multiple canvases. I have been so outwardly fallow and in stew mode for so long that it is challenging to get the pump primed again. It's going slow but it is going. Here's a detail of a big piece (30 x 40) I'm working on tentatively titled Lady Chaos. Sort of appropriate considering my general state of neither here nor there. Falling in all directions. My problem has been that I am just burgeoning with so many ideas that it's hard to focus. I get impatient with the nitty gritty of the actual slow process of painting. Like I'm so antsy that I can't settle down and just do it. And when I finish a piece it doesn't seem to represent all deep steeping I've been through. I'm comforted by the idea of chaos being a state at the cutting edge of creation. Where manifest is forging out into the unmanifest is not what I would call comfortable territory. So I just have sink into it. Embrace the uneasiness.

My creative process is diverse. I now recognize all my journal writing, songwriting, poetry writing, guitar playing, dancing, nature walking, reading history and biographies and physics and philosophy and energy psychology as a big interconnected matrix that launches my creativity. It's a kind of metabolic tranformation of what I absorb into some form of expression unique to me. It feeds my creative body so I can exteriorize my interior.

I wish I had the physical energy to match all the stirring inside. Strange disconnect. I also struggle between wanting to constantly break new ground or just work with what I know and do well already. I recently realized that I have at least 3 distinct bodies of work wanting to come through. That is, three separate styles, narratives and media. At least three...sigh. Can I do it? Life dares me.

The Universe is Listening

I love this Vison For Humanity envisioned and created by Malcom Cohan who is looking for other Audacious Visionaries to join him and "think it so". Very moving.

Eden In Eden

Even with the lure of a picnic and stream dabbling, it was like extracting teeth getting the kids out into this
paradisial landscape but they rallied soon enough. It was just too beautiful out there to sustain a grump. We spied butterflies, snakes, hawks, deer, squirrels, conks, wildflowers, sunchokes, skippers, nests and faerie caves so there wasn't much to complain about. I wonder if the kids realize how dang lucky we are to live in this incredible place.