Marking all that’s been this year and keeping a good thought for all to come. I’m offering 15% off all paintings through December 31.
Use promo code: YEAREND22 at checkout.
The sun through the trees
If you can, stop by this Saturday at 3:00pm for a reception at University Commons for an exhibit of my paintings.
There are 22 paintings in the group—gathered together and named for this showing for one in particular: All the beloved things.
The reception will include some light treats, and of course I'll be there to say hello. Hope to see you there.
It will be up through January 9, 2023. If you can't make it Saturday, please send me a message or contact Carolyn Morris to set up an appointment.
University Commons
817 Asa Gray Drive
Woodbridge North Building
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48105
To celebrate the start of summer, I’m offering 10% off all paintings. If you haven't visited my site lately, you'll see a batch of new paintings. Use the promo code SUMMERSALE at checkout.
I'll sleep on this hill,
my long neck tucked on my back—
the pond, all I need.
View up close in gallery.
This painting was inspired by a pair of trumpeter swans who migrated in April near where I live and settled down for a multi-day rest, unfazed by anything going on around them. April, May, and June were generous months: the forest leafing out, the lake coming alive, wild and garden irises unfurling for their moment.
Today would have been my dad's birthday. He died when he was just a year older than I am right now. A reminder to do the things you want to do.
I have a charcoal drawing that he made of a freighter on the horizon at night under a half moon, low in the sky, with a weeping willow in the foreground. It’s no surprise that the subject matter is so sad and lonely.
Self-taught, he attempted many creative pursuits—drawing, oil painting, writing poetry—he even had one of those wooden boxes made for artists to keep his paints and palette in. When I was a kid he’d let me look at it occasionally and I would with wonder and amazement, taking in the nutty aroma of the bottle of linseed oil, which was slippery to the touch, rusted at the cap and leaky, causing faint stains in the box where it had a special slot. Where he got it, I don’t know.
I can’t remember him ever making a painting using the hardened tubes of color in that box but he must have at some point in his life, most of the tubes were half-squeezed or nearly empty. That box represented the promise of something about to be created, or the memory of an idea for something to be created.
He also had some sketchbooks that were filled with drawings from when he was a young man: the objects on top of his dresser; a somewhat clumsily composed horse in a stall (where would he have encountered a horse, growing up in Detroit?); my mother’s head; a bottle; a knife and cutting block with bottle cap; a leafless tree; a barn; a coffee pot; a Thunderbird. I was intrigued with the idea of the sketchbooks and felt that the drawings they contained were perfect in some way, in part, I’m sure, because it was my father who drew them.
Looking back all of these years later, I realize they were perfect because they were an attempt to reach for something bigger, something beyond, something in that void at the threshold of creation where meaning and truth exist. My father was trying to feel life at a richer level, to interpret his contained world, to keep a visual log of the things and people (and horses)—real and imagined—that were in his life.
It’s this promise of a thing yet undone, a thing yet to be created, that can keep a dreamer dreaming all her life. And, the “thing” can remain perfect in her head. All the fine details don’t have to be worked out, the problems in the design can remain unsolved. The beautiful thing can also become a burden, something sad, like a box of unused paints in the corner of the basement, hardening each year to the point of uselessness.
One of the last times I saw him we went to the Detroit Institute of Arts. I was enrolled in an art history class at a local community college and we were assigned pieces to write about that were housed at the DIA; mine was The Wedding Dance by Peter Brueghel.
Walking into the wide-open, marble-floored entrance hall lined with suits of armor, my father smiled, breathed in deeply, and put his hands in his pockets. I asked him what he was smiling about and he told me, “It’s a nice feeling here, isn’t it? You get a nice feeling being here. I feel good here.” I knew what he meant. Being in proximity to things made by men and women—just for the sake of making them, because that was the way they chose to speak in the world—was transformative. It made way for thinking of things not yet visible in ourselves.
I’m at the same Art Hop stop this year! June 11 & 12 on the porch of a beautiful house here in Ann Arbor at the corner of Second and Jefferson.
June 11 & 12 | 10am-5pm / 12-5pm
It's a cross between an art fair and and art walk—and it’s lots of fun. This year, there are more than 80 artists hosted outside homes all throughout the neighborhood’s historic West side. I framed a big batch of new paintings to bring with me—come out, enjoy the day, and say hello if you can.
I’m Stop #33 (454 2nd Street)—you can find a map and more details at Westside Art Hop.
A new exhibit at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens celebrating the University of Michigan peony garden centennial opens tomorrow, May 21. I'm pleased to have a painting in it.
The exhibit shows work from 30 artists in the community—all considering the perception of time, especially in the context of nature.
In 2019, I showed my work for the first time ever with a solo exhibition of 40 paintings at Matthaei. It was one of the best experiences of my life for many reasons. The Gardens are a beautiful spot that I'm thankful to have right here in my town.
The peony garden at Nichols Arboretum is home to nearly 800 peonies with more than 10,000 flowers open when at peak bloom—it's definitely worth taking the time to see if you can make it to Ann Arbor in the next month.
The exhibit runs May 21 - June 26 and admission is free.
This new growth suits me,
this green light behind my eyes,
these leaves in my hair.
This painting is one of ten that I’ve just added to my site. Plus, right now I’m offering 10% off all paintings. Use the promo code: SPRINGSALE at checkout through the end of March.
Woven into breath—
the strands of me from before,
made of sky and earth.
This set of paintings and poems reflect the reading and woods walking I’ve done so far this year. Thinking about the connection with nature, other people, and ourselves. The writers in the photo of my stack of books below show that living is losing and regaining that connection over and over again. Pain comes from it, but beauty, too.
I came into being at this moment.
Happy for a year of watching all kinds of things be and come into being. And thankful to all who showed support for my painting practice. I’m offering 10% off all paintings for the next couple of weeks. Use the promo code: YEAREND21 at checkout.
Hope everyone has a healthy and happy new year.
The change of season brought out a lot of new work for me. Observation, exploration, introspection, plus, a weekly activity that has grown increasingly important to me, which I haven't shared with anyone before...
I read poetry to my dog on Sunday mornings.
We've made it through an impressive stack of books over the past few months. Mack nods in and out of sleep but if I stop reading for any reason he opens his eyes to see why. Poetry is meant to be read out loud and shared. I'm so thankful to have his ears to fill with poetry, the morning sun warming his fur.
At the moment, we are reading The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, a Michigan poet born in Saginaw. In this particular section of the poem, A Field of Light, he uses the words, "The lovely diminutives," which is a good way to describe the the things that usually interest me the most and help me create anything.
I invite you to read this passage out loud:
Listen, love.
The fat lark sang in the field;
I touched the ground, the ground warmed by the killdeer,
The salt laughed and the stones;
The ferns had their ways, and the pulsing lizards,
And the new plants, but still awkward in their soil,
The lovely diminutives.
I could watch! I could watch!
I saw the separateness of all things!
My heart lifted up with the great grasses;
The weeds believed me, and the nesting birds.
There were clouds making a rout of shapes
crossing a windbreak of cedars,
And a bee shaking drops from a rain-soaked honeysuckle.
The worms were delighted as wrens.
And I walked, I walked through the light air;
I moved with the morning.
***
Go to Gallery.
I'll be participating with more than 60 other artists in the Westside Art Hop here in Ann Arbor.
October 16-17 | 10am-5pm / 12-5pm
It's a cross between an art fair and and art walk throughout the neighborhoods of the old westside—a fun, outdoor, weekend activity. Artists are graciously hosted on porches, in garages, and on lawns of homeowners.
You can find a map and more details at the Westside Art Hop website.
I'm Stop #33 at the corner of Second and Jefferson on the porches of a beautiful house along with an Art Quilt artist.
It is a thrill to be featured in the latest issue of House & Garden magazine. The November issue focuses on art and artists and they curated a showcase of artists called The Art Edit. My painting, The Mind Bloom, is featured on the bottom right of the grid on page 271 (#82) along with a little bio.
Check out the print version at your local bookstore…it's a beautiful magazine.
This summer, a friend took a portrait of me at my desk. It's adjacent to the painting table and large tackboard that make up my home studio. The portrait reminded me of something that at first I couldn't place...
Then the image popped into my head: a painting by Matisse called Interior with Etruscan Vase. It's been a favorite of mine for years. I like that the woman is gazing back at the viewer, completely at ease and confident. Her plants, book, and objects in vivid color and shape surrounding her. Discovering this image in my late teenage years was a revelation.
Interior with Etruscan Vase, Henri Matisse, 1940 | The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
Since then, photographs and paintings of artists and writers in their studios or at their desks always interest me. Seeing all of the little details of the everyday space where creativity takes place. An art teacher I once had referred to Paul Klee as a 'kitchen table artist.' The small scale of his paintings was in direct relation to the space that he had to make them. But it doesn't matter. Seeing a Paul Klee painting in person is just as enthralling as any monumentally-scaled painting or sculpture. The imprint made by a human hand is still a portal that can transport.
There are a handful of images that come to my mind all the time of artists and writers at work: Frida Kahlo, often confined to her bed, painting; Anne Sexton at her typewriter (in a pose similar to Matisse's woman with the Etruscan vase); Sylvia Plath, with her books lined up behind her on shelves or her typewriter precariously perched wherever she was; Wendell Berry in his work overalls with his legs up on his desk looking outside through a wall of windows; Toni Morrison smiling at her desk at Random House; E.B. White on a wooden bench in his simple shack with a window opened to water; Jay DeFeo, who made a painting in her apartment that ended up blocking out most of the light and had to be hoisted out through the window when she completed it.
It might be that the spaces shown in these images are usually so ordinary. Not much is needed to think and start to make something. To get lost in the portal that your own space allows you.
I've just updated my web gallery with a dozen new paintings made over the past few months. Plus, through September 30th I’m offering 20% off all paintings on my site. Use the promo code: SEPTEMBER at checkout.
New paintings in my gallery! For me, new groups of paintings don't always necessarily feel like a series, but these seven do. They all share an 'automatic' black brushstroke with accompanying haiku about the seemingly automatic things that happen in the natural world, especially in spring.
I've been reading a lot of poems by Jane Kenyon in the past month or so. She was born in Ann Arbor (where I live now), went to school here, and lived here until she met the poet Donald Hall and moved to his family’s ancestral home in New Hampshire to work and write poems.
She dealt with depression throughout her short life and was forthcoming about it in her poems. In the final words of her long poem, Having it Out With Melancholy, she describes the reprieve that nature can provide from the darkest depths, if even for a moment:
What hurt me so terribly
all my life until this moment?
How I love the small, swiftly
beating heart of the bird
singing in the great maples;
its bright, unequivocal eye.
To me, the word 'unequivocal' gets at the essence of the matter here. For humans, it can be harder to access that feeling—seeing things clearly, without hesitation, fear, or doubt.
It does feel like flight.
This new painting is one of 15 that I’ve just added to my site’s gallery page. For the next month, I’m offering 20% off all paintings. Use the promo code: SPRING21 at checkout.
See them all in the gallery.
The haiku and image for this painting were inspired by the Mourning Cloak butterfly, which is just out now in the Michigan woods. Before the trees even have leaves, they come out of hibernation from the tops of tree holes and crevices to sunbathe and feed on early flowing sap.
My life, just begun,
I come down from the treetops,
lighter than the air.
View up close in gallery.
There are plenty of things changing in the Michigan forests this time of year—encoded with beauty and meaning.
View up close in the gallery.
I’m having an end of year sale! All of the paintings on my website are 20% off. Use promo code at checkout: WINTER20. The offer is valid through December 28, 2020.
Even in these dark months, there is still beauty—and mystery— to find every day.
Dreaming of journeys,
a deep wood filled with noises,
a deep lake, quiet.
Imaginary and meditative travels can ease the mind. As the late poet John O’Donohue said, “Beauty ennobles the heart and reminds us of the infinity that is within us.”
I’ve been painting as much as I can and am pleased to have four paintings in the 2020 Michigan Made | Holiday Art Exhibition at the Lansing Art Gallery & Education Center. It takes place November 5-December 23, 2020.
There will be a strong online presence with socially distanced-opportunities to see all of the work in person as well. I’ll post details on my site when they are available.
Stars heaped like mountains
in the night sky.
Worries on the ground,
undetected.
My sale continues through the end of the month: 20% off all paintings. Use promo code: AUGUST20. This new painting is one of 20 that I’ve just added to my site. Please take a look at all of the new paintings in my web gallery.
This new painting is one of 20 that I’ve just added to my site. For the month of August, I’m offering 20% off all paintings. Use the promo code: AUGUST20 at checkout. See them all in the gallery.
On this summer day,
when people are laid to rest,
when there is no rest,
those left behind
have broken hearts.
But this love,
like a rumble of thunder,
passes through us
and around the world.
View up close in the gallery.
For the month of May I’m offering 20% off paintings on my website…just use the promo code: MAY20. This painting, Sun over the forest, has just been added. The forest is a bounty, especially in May.
View up close in the gallery.
Sun over the forest does different things to it depending on the time of year. In summer, it can hardly penetrate the green ceiling of leaves—sending down funnels of dramatic light. In fall, it creates an otherworldly sense of change. In winter, it casts long blue shadows on snow. In spring, it pulls up the wildflowers out of the wet earth. They come in waves: Bloodroot, Trout Lily, Jack-in-the-pulpit, Wild Geranium, Marsh Marigold, Trillium, Lily of the Valley, St. James Wort…all of these and more appeared just this month.
Sun over the forest also does different things to you while you are in it.
I just added a batch of new paintings to my website, including this one, Inner workings. I’m offering 20% off all orders for the month…just use the promo code: MAY20.
View up close in the gallery.
This painting reflects the daily walks I’ve taken over these past couple of months as things change quickly here in Michigan. I have tried to become privy to the inner workings of as much as I can along the paths that I take. The pond comes to life as the patience of geese gives way to successfully hatched goslings. Larger fish appear from deeper waters and young painted turtles learn about a sunbath. Lichen and moss bloom like badges in the rain and suddenly the trees leaf out and bloom, too. The spring sky seems an indestructible blue.
I’ve got a box of artifacts collected during walks: rocks, pieces of fallen bark, feathers. It is the imprint of these magical things that give strength. It is the same as the horses that Dylan Thomas describes in his poem Fern Hill, dazed at the sheer beauty of it all:
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.