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.

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.

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.

May in Michigan just might be the most beautiful time of year. To celebrate the yellow willow tree buds busting, the tiny (yet mighty) hepatica and bloodroot poking through last year’s leaves, and the newly hatched goslings at the pond this morning, I’m offering 20% all orders on my website for the month…just use the promo code: MAY20.

Even though in-person exhibits have come to a halt for now, I’m still painting every day. Watch for new paintings to be added to the site throughout the month. I’m also walking daily, writing, and re-reading favorite poets and learning the work of new ones. One poet who I came to learn about just last year is Wendell Berry. I’m not sure how I lived so long before reading his poems but I’m so glad I finally did. His poems express a fervent observation and reverence for nature—and how we as humans, can take comfort and rest in our place within it. This is the second half of his poem, The Finches, wishing them, and us, well as we emerge from the cold of April:

May the year warm them
soon. May they soon go

north with their singing
and the season follow.
May the bare sticks soon

live, and our minds go free
of the ground
into the shining of trees.

View the full gallery.

Next Wednesday, January 22, 6-8pm, I’ll be leading a workshop on poetry and painting. There are a few spots still available. It will take place in the gallery space at the Village Theater in Canton, where my solo exhibit, Transmutations, is currently hanging through the 29th.

The practice of combining words and painting is an endless puzzle. It requires observation and articulation and is something that I will never grow tired of: the moon in all of its phases, the tiniest mushroom on the forest floor, the city’s light on the river, the face of a friend, the memory of a hard time, the hope of a new idea. The poet Mary Oliver said, “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”