Distances

Through close observation I sometimes feel as if I have traveled great distances, when in fact I have only covered fractions of inches. The cup formed by petals is experienced like a dell. Single leaves rise like giant sails, wind-tautened against the sky. The circumference of a stem has monumental girth in the world of a small composition. While it is not my intention to render the world -or any part of it- in microscopic detail, these efforts inform the spaces of my imagination, and also alter the way I see actual the world I wander through.

Pin Cherry, 2012. Graphite & Oil on Art Board

In Rose, 2014. Graphite & Oil on Art Board, 8x10".

Honeysuckle Study, 2013. Graphite & Oil on Art Board.

Nesting

"Energetic space begets energetic space."

Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery

As an artist who works at home, I have a distinct relationship to my environment. A certain degree of visual order is essential for concentration on the spaces I create in the flat, white blanks of pages and panels. A certain degree. 

Right now, after the Summer's beautiful renovations, I am still attuned to (if not distracted by) changes in this setting. And I keep wondering how, as the seasons turn and light shifts, those revisions will alter my vision. They are bound to, aren't they?

Passion & Pragmatism

Plow & Reap, 2012. Oil on canvases, each 16x12".

I often say that my life and work are powered by the dual forces of Passion and Pragmatism. These forces, however, are not always in stride. For months now, as I have renovated my home and studio, Pragmatism has held the lead. Now in a period of transition, I want Passion to pull ahead. It takes some discipline to enter and remain in the studio. The ordinary intrusions of the ringing telephone, a bill to pay, laundry to do, are now joined by all the "loose ends" of remodeling. So it is with great determination that I devote myself to the exploration and expression of imagination.

These two draft horses, adorned with "P" medallions, are emblems of those two forces joined, working together in the furtherance of my visions -here at home and in the vast fields of creative endeavor.

Knows One Thing Well

"The fox knows many things. The porcupine knows one thing well." -Russian Proverb

Knows Many Things, 2001. Oil on paper, 16x20".

Knows One Thing Well, 2001. Oil on paper, 16x20".

I like to think of myself as a porcupine, but I'm not so sure that is true.

At the beginning of Summer, this swiftly passing season of flowering and fruiting, I embarked on an extensive process to renovate my home and studio. During this labor-intensive period I have used virtually every tool in my tool box. I am glad to have them. As I celebrate the changes I have made (not entirely alone), I also feel gratitude for the ability to perform these varied tasks. I've sawn and sanded, primed and puttied, sewn and varnished.... I have been acting like the fox.

I long now, at Summer's, to get back into the studio. I yearn to be once again, the porcupine, knowing one thing well.

Flourishing

Flourishing, 2014. Mural, c. 6x32". Bitterroot Spur Trail at Third Street in Missoula, Montana. 

How quickly this mural became OURS.

Yes, it began as a collaborative effort with Nutritional Labs, the Riverfront Neighborhood Council, art students from Willard Alternative High School, Missoula's Office of Neighborhoods and Public Art. But because our work took place in the "public eye", we received questions and comments about the project from the very first stroke. It was encouraging to hear so many positive remarks from passersby on the pedestrian trail. I am also heartened by what that interest and support means to the community at large.

I know I have much more to learn about collaborating, and that ultimately each cooperative enterprise will be as unique as all the participants. I am hopeful that this native plant imagery will continue on that long wall beside the Bitterroot Spur Trail in further installments. What now brightens that wall has certainly been warmly received. I'm glad to be living in a community that supports the cultivation of beauty in so many forms.

Space

"Energetic space begets energetic space." Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects

I am in the midst of moving out of my home and studio for some substantial remodeling. Though I'm excited about these long-desired changes, the necessary upheaval takes a toll on me. I've received a good deal of sympathy, and even offers of housing during the worst of the demolition and construction. I'm not too worried about where I sleep, however.  But I'm completely rattled by dismantling the studio. Being separated from my tools and materials, all the possibilities that reside in them and the creative space itself seems unendurable. As Virginia Woolf asserted in A Room of One's Own, having a space dedicated to creative work -whatever that work may be- is essential to sustaining momentum as an artist.
I can't wait until these changes are made, and I can begin to reclaim my space, and once again gather momentum with my ideas, images, tools and the welcoming blanks of white canvases.

Self Portrait at the Easel, 1989.

Artifacts

I have often referred to this series of paintings as "artifacts of a ritual". Unlike my studio compositions, they are drawn from the conditions of a day and all that is intractable in the Autumn landscape. They are created with my evolving skills and sensibilities, but with more observational intensity and candor. 

I would not typically set out for a day of landscape painting with snow in the forecast, but that was the reality of this October 18th.

Wintry Little Summer (SLLS XIX), 2004. Oil/Paper, 13x20".

I am not drawn to slopes bleached by herbicide spray, but that is how I found the mountain on this holy day in 2002.

Mount Jumbo (SLLS XVII), 2002. Oil/Paper, 12x18".

And four years later I observed the lingering evidence of a 4th of July fire that burned up and over Mount Jumbo from the east side.

Mount Jumbo (SLLS XXI), 2006. Oil/Paper, 16x20".

Returning to the same site, this beloved mountain, on the same day each year has helped me to grasp what endures through the cycle of the seasons, along with all that changes. I have not waited for favorable conditions, or flinched at the evidence of human intervention -or folly- in the life of this wild space. These are immediate and honest reflections born of reflection.