Day 15. Darkness
“Becoming” 8 in diameter, framed All of my days this month have begun before the sun comes up. I sit in my dark studio each morning, reading, reflecting, breathing, and preparing for the day’s work. It seems to me now, almost halfway in, that this ritual is like planting my creativity in rich soil and […]
Day 14. Gratitude
“Gratitude” 8×8, oil on canvas, framed Towards the end of last year, I started a gratitude practice: a morning stream-of-consciousness ritual of writing down and giving thanks for every thing that comes to mind without censure or editing. I am often amazed at what comes up– descriptions of the leaves dancing on the trees outside […]
Day 13. Memory
“Memory” 6×6, oil on canvas, framed I wasn’t sure how to finish my painting today, and when I started adding little swipes of paint in rows, it felt like I was counting, like a person lost in the wild marking the days by carving lines into the trunk of a tree Today I am invoking […]
Day 12. Contrast
“Asking to be Seen” 6×6, oil on canvas, framed I think about color a lot– when I’m cooking, getting dressed, taking a walk, even when I’m trying to solve a problem. When I teach painting, I always start with the color wheel because it holds simple truths most of us never really learn. The colors […]
Day 11. Patience
“Patience” 10×10, oil on canvas, framed 31 in 31 is always an exercise in patience. I want so much to jump ahead, to sing the song without having to go through all the verses. Patience is visiting today in the form of a little bird landing on a relaxed, reclining figure not so much playing […]
Day 10. Witness
“Witness” 6×6, oil on canvas, framed. Kelly Cherry wrote a poem called “Advice to a Friend who Paints” that I read quite some time ago. This morning that title kept simmering to the surface of my mind, and, since I am wary of unsolicited advice and since I am in fact a person who paints, […]
Day 9. Change
“Spinning my Wheels” 8×8, oil on canvas, framed. I had planned for today’s piece to be about gratitude but what kept coming up was gratitude for this tension between change and constancy. So I went with that. Change The potter’s wheel spins 240 revolutions per minute, constant from a lump of clay you form an […]
Day 8. Hope
“Hope” 6×6, oil on panel, framed. I have forever loved Emily Dickinson’s poem “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” and returned to it time and time again especially in my decade + of painting birds. What I notice most is how my birds have changed over the years, and with them, perhaps, my notion of […]
Day 7. Inspiration
“Waiting for Inspiration” 8×8, oil on canvas, framed. There is a nervousness to every 31 in 31. Certainly the inspiration will dry up eventually? Surely the words won’t always come. And then what? I wonder if sometimes the business of my life– routine doctor checkups and soccer games and chopping onions and tending to an […]