Hearts

some of my heart rocks

I can't really say when I first started seeing hearts.  Maybe it began years ago when I found my first heart shaped stone on a beach in Massachusetts.  I pocketed it with great pleasure, never expecting that decades later my heart rock collection would stud many surfaces in my home.

street heart

moth heart

cutting board heart

heart leaf

In recent years I began seeing hearts "in the wild." These ephemeral sightings are not something to be picked up and collected, but captured with my camera.  Apparently it is now part of my nature to see heart shapes nearly everywhere.

tempera on paper 50 x 42" 1989

What you think about expands...hearts have nearly always had a place in my art work.  In the 1970's I designed a soft doll, silkscreening the face and a heart on the front.  In the 1980's I designed and crafted baskets, calling my business "Heartvine."  Moving on to painting classes (pre-return to college) I made very large tempera paintings of hearts.

heart clouds

heart vine in the forest

Beyond graduation in 1996, eyes opened wide by my art education, I looked back on my heart creations as being simplistic and childish.  Yet well into the second decade after the millennium, hearts are very much a part of my life.  I still photograph extemporaneous hearts I find wherever I go, from trips to Italy to hikes in these mountains of the Carolinas.  

I heart you 24/7, oil, mixed media on board 2014

Look Inside, oil, mixed media on board, 2010

And I've returned to painting hearts, sometimes deliberately, yet often unexpectedly.  They show up, causing surprise and delight, a part of my existence.  I am grateful.

Spring Moon Rising oil, mixed media on board 2013

Unexpected Angel, oil on board 2015