Love In The Park

 

Weather foul or fair, seven days a week, I take our two Cavaliers to a natural oasis, Katherine Legge Memorial Park (KLM). This multi-use park is one square mile of ancient trees, open spaces, and a cornucopia of smells that my dogs revel in. 

From the first time my two legs and their four set feet on the grass, we felt the magic of this place. Early morning and dusk, the park is open for dogs to explore off leash. It is surrounded by a fence so no fear of running off or into traffic. 

I meet a lot of dogs and their owners, and as we pause to greet one another, invariably we comment about this natural paradise, how fortunate we are to have it and how it is an elixir of youth for our dogs and for us. 

With every deep inhale, I feel the endorphins being blessed upon me by these majestic skyscrapers made of root, wood and leaves. I silently marvel at the invisible world beneath my feet, the intertwined underground fungus of mycelium wrapped around every root braiding together threads to create a miraculous mycorrhizal network. 

 As my dogs scamper around with abandon, I imagine them feeling the same exquisite sense of connectedness and wellbeing. 

Walking along this morning, looking around with grateful amazement, I realized the magic of this park, pure Love. 

KLM is a reservoir of love. Love from people who see their dogs as a part of their family and are devoted to making their lives happy and fulfilled. And the joyous, unconditional love of these dogs, roaming with their packs in total bliss, chasing squirrels they will never catch except in their dreams.

I can't wait to go again, and neither can my four-legged friends. 

Nigel                               Mollie        

 

Tender is the Night

48x36

acrylic & pastel

 on vintage linen museum wrap canvas

A Brief Description of the First Ab Ex Artists

Outlaws of the art world / beatniks of color / renegades of content / shape shifters of consciousness with oil and turpentine.

An alchemy born in smoke filled studios, composing a brave, nascent language even they, at times, did not understand / questioning value and substance / ultimately liberating the future from the order of realism and dunking us into the lyrical chaos of the unknown.

We would not be able to paint like we do without these early warriors, slashing a path through a foreign territory known as our interiority / giving us permission to seek the arcane in the subconscious / shushing  our selves  and allowing our daemons to speak.

 Piece of Mind

a closet 

full of contradictions

a wardrobe of non-conformity

her piece of mind

When my beloved 80+ year old Aunt confessed she didn't understand my art, I took no offense, nor was I surprised.  Born in the 1930s, she was taught ART was realism. A barn was a barn, not the illusion of the artist's interpretation. 

I explained to my Tante Eva that she didn't need to "understand it" to enjoy the colors, shapes, and composition. She was grateful for that because now she could just allow her eyes to see the poetry and bathe in the emotions it inspired in her. 

It's not the first time someone said they don’t understand abstract art. What they do understand are the colors and composition intrigue them and draw them in. I have a theory this emotional pull comes from our infancy.

When my son and his wife were expecting my now 5-year-old grandson, I bought a book on infant development. Within the first few pages I learned we have rods and cones in our eyes; we see black & white through our rods and color through our cones. When we are born, only the rods are fully developed until we reach the age of six months. 

Can you imagine seeing everything in black & white and one your 6-month birthday, you wake up and Holy Cow it's a kaleidoscope of magic! Consider the impact all those dancing colors have on your newly percolating mind. 

Whether it happens gradually or all at once, I think on a deeply subliminal level, we are trying to get back to that miraculous moment when we opened our eyes and saw the first rainbow spectrums of color. 

Such a momentous experience would lay deeply in the core of our development, which is why I imagine, so many people tell me, whether they understand the art or not, one of the first things that draws them in is the COLOR.

Secrets

Secrets are powerful aphrodisiacs; mysterious, alluring and potentially dangerous depending on the secret and with whom you share it. 

When someone shares a secret, they give you a potent power, trusting you are the trustworthy friend they believe you are. 

Sharing a secret is relinquishing a burden, a bidding of sorts, asking someone to share the weight of whatever it is that is haunting you. 

Growing up in a Catholic home, I witnessed another kind of secret. A mass said in an arcane language and an advocation of confession. 

As you enter the confessional you are transported to a dimly lit closet size room where you kneel on a cantilevered piece of wood that has been wrapped in velvet and once settled in piety, a small, screened window quietly slides open to reveal your absolver, a stand-in god. 

You whisper your sins into the profile of a man earnestly leaning in towards the breath of your words with the sacred knowledge that what you confess will be held like executive privilege, never to be pried from his mind nor lips. He passes down his judgement through a series of penances and you rise with your soul once again bleached clean - if your conscious stays mute. 

Our secrets are witnesses to the unwritten pages between our lives.

 

Some are frivolous / some are hurtful / some are damning / some should be revealed / some will be bound in our ashes, forever silent.