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

My Seed

dyed reed baskets - 1980's

Friends who have known me for years sometimes comment on how much my art has evolved over the last few decades.  They recall my early excursions into everything from handpainted dolls to baskets and painted gourd vessels.  

After Klee - painted gourd vessel

These efforts were a bridge to the realization that I wanted to be a "real painter."  I returned to college in the early 90's and after more than 4 years attending part time I achieved my Associate Degree in Visual Art.  This grand education (seriously wonderful professors at Berkshire Community College!) coupled with my first ever trip to Italy, awakened and exposed my hidden self, sending me on a whole new adventure.

Returning Home - oil on canvas

Window - oil on canvas

My love affair with Italy has never ended.  My travels inspire me to dig deep within as I soak my spirit in the magnificent art and architecture, the forms of trees and hills, the light-filled colors, and layer upon layer, the skies and earth.

I've learned to experiment continually, trusting my instincts and emotion.  Forms are intuitively abstracted, colors heightened and lines have become important to me.  

Sacred - oil on canvas

Full of Wonder - oil on canvas

My art has evolved a great distance from my first creative efforts.  Recently I had the great pleasure of being contacted through my web site by an artist in Milan.  We began an email conversation that has been rewarding for me.  In recent email with Franco we've discussed finding our true voices in paint.  

True Blue - oil on canvas

Excavation - oil and mixed media on board

I wrote that I strongly believe inside every artist who is serious about being true to themselves, is a seed that is solely theirs.  To improve and evolve, this seed needs our nurture and respect.  

In my studio I have many reminders of my twelve (so far) trips to Italy.  Can you spell a.d.d.i.c.t.i.o.n?  I have learned, through these visits, how to see with new eyes, whether I am in a museum in Venice, hiking in the woods here in the Carolinas or even noticing the way that sidewalk cracks form patterns that attract me.  

Mooncatcher - oil and mixed media on board

One Enormous Sky - oil and mixed media on board

Today's work doesn't resemble the work I did in the early years, but I have discovered my SELF, endlessly growing.  I am compelled to keep tending "my seed."

A Gentle Valor

Art speaks in different voices.  They can be soothing, questioning or even shouting.  Expressions are as varied as the humans that create the work.  My own voice has evolved as I've experimented with different media, explored numerous subjects and grown to trust my personal process.  While I still occasionally use recognizable forms in my paintings, I label my work abstract.  I've discovered that a lot of people are uncomfortable with abstract and prefer representational imagery.

Solace

Just as no one genre of music will appeal to everyone, or one kind of reading material, I would never expect everyone to respond to abstract art.  I think, though, that possibly some people resist non-representational paintings because they don't immediately see something they understand.  They may not know how to respond.  In part this is actually why I prefer to create abstract paintings.  Viewers can bring their own experiences to a non-representational work and react to it from an element in themselves that may be different than the side of them that admires landscape, a figure in a room or a vase bursting with blooms.

Repose

Up

Being sensitive to the world around me, I am deeply affected by colors, textures, lines and forms in my environment.  When I'm hiking I can be transported by bare branches cutting through a bright sky, acid green moss contrasting with the cedar red slice of a newly cut tree or sunlight filtered through the forest, joyously illuminating a stream of clear water.

I am similarly moved by faded, overlapping pigments on homes in Trastevere, ancient olive trees arm in arm in a Tuscan field, or the scabby accumulation of posters glued on a Sicilian wall.

In addition to the visual feast I attend, I am continually aware of the emotions evoked by memories, and feelings in words I read or hear.  Every part of my day can contribute to the metaphorical, almost magical, pot inside me that is the source of all that comes forward as I begin a new painting.  I don't have a plan except to begin by laying color over my white surface and initiating a dialogue with what happens.  Once this journey commences I am attentive to choices I make.  Perhaps the initial color I choose reminds me of a door I photographed in Ortigia, so I begin thinking about my experience there.  Instead of sketching in that door with paint, I open a door into my emotions to draw on my filled vessel of experiences...the colors, textures and lines I've absorbed and assimilated.  As the work progresses over days and weeks, communication continues.  I spend as much time "listening" to my painting as I do "putting in my own two cents."  I can say I know it is done when I greet it one morning and know its name.

One Enormous Sky

Traces

I am always, of course, delighted when someone looks at my work and perhaps recognizes some part of themselves contained within.  A person may not understand why they like an abstract painting beyond the colors or something in the composition that speaks to them, but I like to think they are learning to trust their own instincts and beginning their own dialogue with my work.

Art and Color

My favorite childhood book

Ever since I was a young child and was thrilled by repeated readings of Little Golden Book's The Color Kittens, I have been in love with the joy and meaning of color.  For me, color has always had an impact on my feelings and emotions, and I associate color with sensitivity.

Having been a creative person all my life, and a painter for more than 20 years, I feel as though I am beginning to understand the capability of art to nurture one's spirit.  As I developed my skills as an artist I instinctively knew that choosing and using color was, in fact, very supportive of my own well-being.

excavation, oil and mixed media

In recent years, as I've grown as an artist and developed my voice as an abstractionist, I've received many comments from people who felt moved by my work.  The most common thread has been that my art and my colors have a calming effect.

patience, oil and mixed media

repose, oil and mixed media

Because I do not paint recognizable subject matter, those that are drawn to my work often reflect on what they are sensing or feeling.  They may be unaware of what it is about a particular painting that draws them to it, and yet they spend time in reflecting on it, perhaps inducing a moment of contemplation in an otherwise busy life.  I think that the object of reflection begins with the viewer's reaction to the colors.

receptive, oil and mixed media

reverberation, oil and mixed media

I believe that not only does color convey emotion, but that combinations of colors, frequently complimentary colors, intensify the reaction.  My own intention is not set before I begin.  I don't paint a red painting to excite or a green painting to promote relaxation.  I do, however, explore the way colors dance together and create their own magic as they touch, combine, overlap and flow off the edges.  They are containers of sentiment, sparking conversations amongst themselves and they convey energy to me as I work with them.

cadence, oil

traces, oil and mixed media

The people who own my paintings have sometimes told me that they feel an expansion, or a new depth in their thoughts when contemplating my work.  My generous friend and fellow artist, Rosemary Starace, wrote that when someone bought a painting of mine that they owned much more than a beautiful decoration for their wall, but an eternal, gentle reminder of their own richness of being.

This is truly the power in color and how it can affect one's sense of aliveness.  If one reads the new research on the power of thoughts and emotions on cells, there is no doubt in my mind that viewing art that moves you to a peaceful internal space could only have a positive effect.

hot chocolate



My whole life I have been seduced by how one thought leads to another.  It doesn't take much to set my mind racing off on a journey as I'm guided to a new awareness.

This morning I fixed myself a cup of hot chocolate with almond milk.  I measured the milk into my mug before pouring it into the pan to heat.  I added several tablespoons of organic "drinking chocolate" mix, wondering if the dissolved chocolate would add any volume to the liquid when I poured it back into my mug.  I discovered that it didn't but this simple thought led me to uncover a connection outside the kitchen.

It occurred to me that mixing a dry ingredient into a fluid one resembles the addition of information into a supple mind.  Our minds and hearts don't expand by volume with increasing knowledge or emotion but I believe they evolve by becoming deeper and richer like the chocolate transformed my plain milk.



As an artist I continually search for ways to enrich my own art by traveling, visiting museums and art galleries, and reading an ever increasing number of books.  In fact, my collection of art related books is a veritable pantry of delicious subjects that often inspire a new inquiry in my own work.

From the time I was a child, books have been a great treasure to me.  My first remembered favorite was Golden Books The Color Kittens.  My newest additions to full shelves are Mary Ann Caws' Robert Motherwell, with Pen and Brush and Artists on Art edited by Dore Ashton.  To read about why other artists do what they do continues to invigorate my own investigations.  I find common threads even beyond books.  Magazine photos, a lovely piece of music and the myriad sights on my hikes in the Carolina Mountains offer composition, emotion, texture, form and line to what flows onto my canvas and board.

When people ask me how I decide what to paint, I tell them that "everything goes into the pot."  As an abstract painter, I uncover clues in my universe that find their way through me, like chocolate dissolved in milk, and arrive in layers of paint.  I am "stirred" by the world around me, the books I read, and even sometimes by a tiny thought like the one I had this morning.



Winter Solstice

For several days there was a very large fly in our house, and it was always buzzing strongly, whizzing by me day after day, in every room that I was in.  I got out the fly swatter and wanted to smash it, it was so annoying, but it always eluded my crazed swing.  On the morning of Winter Solstice, the light was just breaking the horizon when I got out of bed and rather than turning on lights in my kitchen I went to the window to see if Venus was visible.  This is one of my morning gifts to myself, looking at the sky through my kitchen window.  Venus was indeed twinkling at me but that big fly was a silhouette as well... Ah!  An opportunity!  But instead of the swatter, I chose my little bug catcher and was able to box him up and release him into the cold morning.  What a good feeling that was.

I'm now seeing that fly as a missionary.  It gave me the opportunity to pay attention to my rising anger, but it also gave me the opportunity to be aware of how a small "thing" can bring a message.  That fly made me happy because I could let it go instead of smashing it.  Maybe the "ills" that we have, the ones that bug us and bother us beyond what one would expect are the very ones we need to pay attention to and then "release."  Now when something begins to irritate me I can't help asking myself, "another fly?"

The Winter Solstice is said to be a time for regeneration and renewal.  I am renewing my determination to be aware, to be kind and to be grateful.

earth energy

Groggy with remembered dreams I opened my front door this morning and let the silvery trill of a mockingbird invite me into my mossy yard under the old oak tree.  This behemoth shelters uncountable squirrels, blue jays and numerous unidentified visitors, so I've been learning to stand under its protective arms and just "be" in my little corner of the world.

Bird songs smoothed my bed rumpled mind as the earth filled me with patient stillness.  All the creatures accepted my presence without quibbling.  Even mama cat, the feral I've tried to woo with friendship to no avail, didn't budge from her comfortable resting position near the ivied fence.

I returned inside feeling nurtured by nature and sat down to read a daily dose of words that awaken my desire to make the most of each day.  I've carved out a little space in my studio where I've collected objects that carry a sense of my history inside them.  There are stones from Italy and other places I've visited that affected me deeply.  I've included totemic objects from my daughters' childhoods, little gifts from old friends and family, and inspirational quotes.  On the periphery of this shelf are small books I love, colorful ribbons I've earned at art shows, and the solid metal disks retrieved at the conclusion of my radiation treatments, all reminding me of who I've been and how I've become the me I am today.

And what is today for me?  What will I save?  A concrete "thing?"  Or will it be a word or two, written with morning hopefulness?  Perhaps it will be the result I see when I move the paint on a work in progress.  It might tell me "I am enough, just the way I am.  Keep me."

I do know that what I wish for most today is that I remember to breathe.  To breathe in my gratitude and the earth energy that rose like sap through my cells as I stood still in my mossy place, drinking in squirrel chatter and bird music washed by moist morning air.