A language I know and speak

What is it about a hot cup of coffee that stimulates profound conversations? Perhaps it's that alluring, smoky aroma that livens up our imaginations. 

Over a cup of coffee, a friend recently asked why circles appear in much of my work? And what do they mean?

Trying to fit that inner dialogue into a suit of common conversation was difficult until a brew of sorts bubbled up as a language I know and speak.

That mystical brew poured the following words into the corrugated maze of my brain: circles represent connectedness; connectedness to each other, connectedness to the land and connectedness to the Universe. 

What is holiness but a reverence for the sacred, and we are the sacred; the manifestation of all that is in an ever "widening circle".

I read that the American Indians were puzzled and amused when settlers wanted to "buy their" land. They knew the land was not theirs to sell, it didn't belong to them, they belonged to the land. Unfortunately, that was not the story the settlers were taught. 

Over the decades as felled trees were replaced by sky scrapers, stripped forests became housing developments and fields became asphalt covered roads, we no longer hear the land speak to us. That connection has gone sadly silent. 

But I believe there are many of us who want to sing our song of being, our desire to connect to each other and all the space around us, and I believe we share a reverence for nature and try to tread lightly on her body. 

Book of Hours 12

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world. 

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God,

around the primordial tower.

I've been circling for thousands of years

and I still don't know:

am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?

                                                                          Rainer Maria Rilke

Power of Change in Art

Complications #1

24x24

Acrylic and Ink

I am in the midst of a powerful history book, Ninth Street Women, Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Five Painters And The Movement That Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel.  

The artists of that time were blazing pioneers running from the flames of two horrific World Wars and running into the flames of an art form never seen and little understood.  These then unknown artists, were driven to find a new way of expression, not found in the visual world around them, but in their down-the-rabbit-hole imaginations. 

At first, the public majority jeered and dismissed their art, imagine the courage it took to continue. 

Musician Morty Feldman captured the mood with scalpel like precision:

Art is a crucial, dangerous operation 
we perform on ourselves. 

Unless we take a chance, we die in art.

My change in direction is not nearly as daunting.  I see in this new work the underpinnings of my previous paintings, but now I no longer feel like I'm fighting against the canvas. I feel the work is  freer, flowing from my internal landscape. It's as if I have come to a point, where I feel a sense of belonging with the art. I'm creating in concert, not opposition. My ego is muted and my being has space to speak. 

After months of frustrating experimentation, I painted Complications #1, the first successful work in the new series.  And it sold within 24 hours of posting it on social media. A kiss from the Universe,  I am on the right path...for now. Because just as Feldman said decades ago, if we stagnate in our art, we die in art. 

My curiosity and excitement are bound twins in the quest of where this will lead.