Desert Shadow Box

This piece has an interesting feel to it, deserty, dry, warm, lonely. It's made from a cigar box. I found some interesting shaped boxes up at the smoke shop on 12th. This is a racoon skull. I've found more than one on my beachwalks. I've found other skulls too, and am facinated by the cranial bones, the sutures, the eye sockets. What's beneath the surface facinates me.

Ruby Bird

The colors on this piece are a little brighter than this photograph shows, but there is glass on the painting and I didn't want to take the frame off. My advice to any artist, which of course includes myself, is to photograph your work as you go along. It is so much easier to photograph work now. I used to take all my pieces someplace to have them made into slides. Most places accept pieces downloaded onto CDs. How easy is that? Well, just get a digital camera if you don't have one, and be sure to do it before you frame. I tell you, if you can be organized, it's the best thing for an artist.

When The Night Changes

From a photo I took at Manito Park. This isn't a spontaneous painting. I took the image from one of my photos. Many artists paint from photos, some paint photorealizm, others tweat the composition and lighting. I like to use a photo for a jumping off place. The spontaeous paintings seem more powerful and alive to me. They seem to be sending me information and energy. That sounds a little wooey, but this painting seems a little. I've included it because I'm working on being non-critical to my creations. I think this opens the door for more. If I criticise what I do and it is leading to something stupendous, I've slammed the door in my own face. Like in writing practice, just get down the first thought or image or impulse from the bottom of your mind. That's all there is too it.

Tunnel To Inner Realms

Another spiral that leads into space. Once I saw actual pictures of space: nebula, pulsars, planets, and was astounded by how they looked like my paintings. I think that means I'm from Neptune. Well, honestly, we're all from somewhere right? Why not Neptune?

Keywords: Acrylic paint, Thalo Blue, Light Purple, Cadmium Yellow

Emergence

This painting has a ground of hot pressed paper. The paper changes the surface of the paint because of its shininess, allowing it to stand on top of the paper, rather than soaking in. More texture occurs this way, and the colors remain sharp and vibrant. Abstraction means different things to different people. This painting looks like something is coming forward from inside.

Universe

This little painting has metalic paint as the background. The orange is a cadium based paint, which gives a nice saturation to the yellow hues. This remindes me of pictures of the solar system, how space seems to spiral. We're affected by what goes on out there beyond our solar system whether we know it or not. Ha, what does that have to do with painting? Well, everything has to do with everything. That's what is true.

Birch

When I haven't been painting in awhile, I have to just start, usually without anything in mind as to what to paint. This is a where I worked from a photograph. The color is different from most of my paintings, but I like the soft reflective nature. In writing, I try to always start with beginner's mind--the same goes for painting, too.

Winter Birch

This is a tiny painting, only 3x3 and again is acrylic paint on paper. I painted it from a photo that a friend of mine took while we were hiking in the woods. I call it Winter, although I believe it was actually fall. He took the photo and passed it on to me. Sometimes he'd say, here paint this. He's very acomplished and sells his work, making art and fishing his living.

River Valley

There have been places I've lived in my life where I've investigated rivers. Priest River, Spokane River, Little Spokane River, the Naches River, and others not coming to mind right now. Rivers are always moving along, unlike the tides that come back, go away, come back. Then there are the flood plains, like where I lived in Yakima, where water crept in the night toward the house, and that's what it sounded like, this stalk, sluicing closer and closer. Here this painting, with iridescent paint, looks like an aerial view of meandering water. I like the colors and the shimmer the mica in the paint brings to the finish.

Chinese Dragon

This painting was done on a hot press paper. Hot press is shinier and those takes paint and ink different than cold press paper, which is dull and obsorbant. The quality of the paint on the paper gives this picture a watery feel, more so, I think than paint on cold press. The water just moves on top of the surface. Very soothing but alive.

Painting a Day

This painting and the one after it, are very small, perhaps 3 x 3 inches. They are small because I wanted to try following the painting a day movement to see if that would work for me to inspire new work. Writing practice generates new work and draws out of me different memories and scenes that I don't seem to consciously draw up, and I think this is because it is a continual practice. A Painting A Day is a movement to generate 365 paintings a year--there is a poetry movement that follows the same momentum. If you like, Google Painting A Day and see what comes up.

Branches

This is a painting of branches, brush, twigs, in the woods. It's painted acrylic on paper. It's more realistic than my usual paintings of late. I like the red color, looks sort of mysterious.

Being Present

This shadow boxed is filled with jaw bones of small animals, and stones and tube worm casings and marbles found on the beach. The beach is a lovely place to find objects. I often come across bits of ceramic bowls and cups and even old dinner ware. I've found flow blue and roseville. I've found tiny bottles and glass stoppers. On the beach there are agates--you have to look hard at first, but then after awhile, they seem to appear without trying. I think this is like life--if you look too hard, you don't see. It's that soft focus that lets everything in--sort of a Buddhist meditation practice of sorts. Letting life in without resisting. Recently I read in a meditation book that nothing can stick--it just keeps going through--because we are energy. Interesting to think about. As an artist, it is the resistance that blocks the work. So letting go is the best--letting things come in--be like a window.

Number 23

This was the first shadow box I made. It includes a jaw bone from a small animal, a small bird's egg shell, buttons, ceramic bits from Italy, a birds wind, a key, a marble, and beads. This shadow box has significance for me, being that 23 adds up to 5--which is my birth number--if you've ever ventured into numerology, you'll see that numbers have meaning. This means that I'm to be a teacher--oddly enough--I am a teacher. The goddess is a symbol of my need for self expression as a female. I've been wounded around my femininity, as have so many other women. Supporting myself with loving kindness is the answer to rebuilding inner strength and a belief in oneself. Also doing art is a healing process, so I always allow myself the freedom to create.

Turning Knot

This painting was made into a book cover in 2005. My friend and poet, Kelli Russell Agodon chose this painting for her book cover, "Small Knots." To see the cover and read more about her, check out www.agodon.com/