​"A Lazy Day is Really Hard Work" and "Doing Nothing is Something",  mixed media on cradled wood, each 8 x 11 x .75.   Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.


Try to spend a day doing nothing; we call that a lazy day.  Although for many of us who are used to running around from this to that, a lazy day is actually very hard work!  It's not so easy to  just be.  If you can be happy, relaxed and smiling when you're not doing something, you're quite strong.  Doing nothing brings about quality of being, which is very important.  So doing nothing is actually something. Please write that down and display it in your home: Doing nothing is something.

- THICH NHAT HANH, Your True Home

​
That crafty universe dropped this passage in  my lap just as I finished having a very lazy day.  Or, I thought​ it was lazy.  But doing nothing is doing something, so maybe I was not lazy after all?  

​Doing nothing is necessary, productive work.  It can even be hard work, if you're used to being very busy, or if you feel guilty when you're enjoying a box of bonbons and pajamas and Netflix.

​​I wonder what would happen if we felt guilty for NOT being lazy?  Hmmmmm.  That's going to require a bit of thinking while doing nothing else.  But wait!  Thinking is doing something so....oh my.  Now I've twisted my thoughts into a knot.  

Let's face it - I've become quite fond of the slow pace of a pandemic. Sleeping in. Pajamas all day.  Nowhere to be except in the park with the dog.  Reading on the porch.  Watching crows (clouds, squirrels, cats, flowers in the breeze).  Staying up too late and not worrying about it.  Letting things go at whatever pace they wish.  No hurry EVER.

But now and again a person has to attend to the things that need attending to.  Which might cause a week to get very, very busy.  And regular clothes to be worn, cars to be driven, errands to be run.  As if things were back to "normal."   Which felt amazing for a minute...until I thought HEY NOW, WHERE ARE MY PAJAMAS AND WHY AREN'T THEY ON MY BODY?  

Let negative thoughts come into your head but don’t serve them tea  - comedian Joe List

​I've been getting my "aha" moments in odd places lately.  Likely you have, too, as our lives become weirdly wired to streaming and reading things we might never have known about in ordinary times.  A new friend recommended several comedy videos recently, and I actually found myself jotting things down as I listened.    I suppose comedy, like art, finds its best fodder in hard places - the things we might think, do or say that we probably wouldn't generally share with the world.

Well that was a long quote!  But if you were able to get through the entirety of it, there is some incredible wisdom in there, from a scientist and writer I adore.

Wilson, a myrmecology expert, has me thinking about the brilliant emergent animals we are as humans in our Old World state.  And also how very out of touch with that we become as we advance technologically.  Here I sit, contemplating these words that I read on a computer and then copied, pasted and saved with technology.  To communicate with you, dear reader, via, ahem, technology.  Oy!

Wilson's words are tinder for the fire that is our need to get out into it - away from these buzzing, beeping, flashing things and into the wild.  Into the swamp, the forest, the fields, the ocean, that lake, that park over there or even your own back yard.  Connected with the primordial feel of wind and sun and rain on skin.  Connected with being...disconnected.  And so avoid becoming nothing.

Get out there today....I'll meet you.  Let's get gloriously disconnected.

"Out-of-the-way Places of the Heart" - acrylic on repurposed plywood panel, 10" x 10" x .5".  Ready to hang (back has been pre-wired for hanging).   Available here and at Artfinder.

In out-of-the-way places of the heart, 
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
 - JOHN O'DONOHUE, To Bless the Space Between Us

​I wonder where my thoughts never think to wander?

As soon as I think that, they have wandered there!  Yet there is a comfort in O'Donohue's words, where out-of-the-way places of my  heart are forming new beginnings.  They will be ready when I am.  Like a stealth system within my daily operation, there are things happening within that I am unaware of for now.  Whoa.  

 I was late to the Midnight Gospel party, and so would love to know what you thought of it, dear reader!  Leave a comment below - one cosmically favored commenter will receive a sweet treat in the mail from Wonder Mike, who tells me it has been too long since we had a giveaway. :)

"I Believe In Miracles" - oil on gallery wrapped canvas, 10" x 10" x 1.5".  Ready to hang.  Available here.

I am in love with Oregon.  

Head-over-heels giddy with joyful dreaminess.  Nearly, nearly as much as my wild love for Ireland.  Here in Portland, the mountains are in view....I can see them if I walk two blocks away.  The trees are tall, vast, speaking rushing sounds in the wind as the tops blow like giants in an ecstatic sky dance.  And just outside the city lies the gorge - winding, mountainous vistas with deep, cold rivers and a sense of timeless wonder.

In a recent drive up the gorge at dusk chasing a higher vantage point to see sunset, I was awed by the beauty of the forest as it disappeared into the growing darkness.  Murky darks merging together as the ever shrinking light was withdrawing.  The shapes became indistinguishable - silent sentinels of jagged rock and pine.

And so life informs art again.  Thank you, muse.

​We're heading into a hot weekend here in the PNW.  So let's get it started with your weekend jam...you sexy thing. :)

"Longing for Visible Form" - oil on deep cradled wood, 14" x 11" x 1.5".  Ready to hang (back has been pre-wired for hanging).  Available here and at Artfinder.

Everything in the world of soul has a deep desire and longing for visible form; this is exactly where the power of the imagination lives.

- JOHN O'DONOHUE, Anam Cara

This week I've been contemplating the physical body and its function as a bridge between inner and outer worlds.  I find myself in the company of a small (but growing) community of people whose bodies are highly sensitive to things - often chemicals, mold,  and allergens but also energy and emotion.   I am surprised by how often we (and by "we" I mean myself, especially) try to override our body's messages.

"Strangely In-Between" - acrylic on cradled wood panel, 24 x 18 x 1.5.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.

After a couple of weeks with this watery goddess, I am nearly saddened to find her complete.  Her presence in the studio is strong and emotive.  She reminds me of all the words of Mark Nepo, who compares our trials and traumas to the wearing away of stone by water - softening, melting, smoothing until all that's left is what really matters.  

Here is a little peek at her journey:

"Withdrawal" - oil  on cradled wood panel, 11 x 14 x .75.  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.

We stick to the wrong thing quite often, not because it will come to fruition by further effort, but because we cannot let go of the way we have decided to tell the story and we become further enmeshed even by trying to make sense of what entraps us, when what is needed is a simple, clean breaking away. 
- DAVID WHYTE, Consolations

 Whyte has me contemplating inner storytelling and the freedom of changing the story, if only we dare tell it a different way.  Withdrawal, it seems, can open the door to a new story which just might include the right thing. :)

"Strangely In-Between" (a work in process)
​acrylic on cradled wood panel

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

from "For the Interim Time" by John O'Donohue

This is a painting between stages, inspired by the in-between space so many of us are in with the world being a bit topsy-turvy.  This one is slowly coming to life, whispering what she wants to be, forming and re-forming under many layers of paint.  She's  not in any hurry, and so I won't rush her.

The full moon returned this weekend, reminding us of the constancy of certain things.  A little comfort - a celestial anchor.  And also a lovely, heavenly and glowing birthday balloon in the sky!  All the Leos out there might be dancing beneath it.   As I should be, exercising after a week of cake and cake and more cake and adventure and excess and little sleep. 

​One of the little guilty pleasures I had this week was spending an entire evening ogling this book , The Vanities by Terence Lawlor.  Can you say COLLAGE SMORGASBORD?  My eyes are still popping out of my head.  You're going to want one.  And then you will never throw away another piece of paper again. You're welcome.