This painting has been sitting here for months, waiting for its story to be revealed.  And it came to me on the first cold, rainy day in a good long while, sipping coffee in the studio and listening to the soft sound of water.   Thanks to Hosseini, I have the scaffolding to deconstruct it.

I became what I am today at the age of ten, on a rainy day in Alabama in 1972.  I remember the moment as if I were standing there now, my dad asking me out on the patio of our townhouse to have a talk, through the sliding door and onto the cement pad which had no furniture or adornment.  It was the day I was tasked with finding and confiscating my mother's many hidden bottles, and, in a sense, I am still looking today.

There is a lot of information about how art helps the viewer, allowing access to emotions through a visual catalyst which may help reveal questions or truths which are otherwise hard to reach.  But really, art heals the artist.

It heals by reaching in and pulling out the guts of things - letting the creator examine them  from safe perches.  It heals by being slow to reveal - teasing, tickling, suggesting, nudging before dropping the veil.  And it heals by allowing the artist to speak about the art as if it isn't their own innards in the paint.  A little distance from the subject allowing the act of vulnerability to feel less unclothed.

Thank you, dear reader, for listening.  Have you had a revealing art experience?  I'd love to hear your story.

I suppose I am at an age where I spend a bit of time thinking about, well, age.

Time seems to run faster the older I get.  And quite a few people who once were are no longer.  It isn't a morbid dwelling or preoccupation that I have, just a recognition of what time it is (in my life) along with a sense of ​preciousness.

When Paley's quote crossed my path, a part of me sighed and thought "THIS!"  Yes, holding my own heart in my two hands in the morning  - it sets me on a path of cherishing the day and myself within it.  Mostly.  But it is an excellent start to things.

Here we go a'wandering...but which way shall we go?  Manson gives us a clue - NOT the way everyone else says to go.  NOT the way others go.  NOT the way the books say, the articles advise, the neighbors nudge.  Which means, of course, go the other way.

​It is a massive trust fall to go the other way.  A risk! A dare!  A danger! But there lie the rewards. Things unexpected, something hitherto unseen. 

​Big congratulations to Kyle J and Liz W!  Wonder Mike and Lilly drew your names as winners of the August Reader Giveaway!  Huzzah!  

Email your address to the shipping team at [email protected] to claim your prize!  Thanks for participating - look for a new giveaway at the end of September!

"The Landscape of Our Perceptions" - oil on linen canvas, 26 x 32 x .75.  Ready to hang. Available here, at Artfinder and at Bluethumb.

“... art has an effect on our general cognitive state that goes beyond how much we enjoy it, to change the way we perceive events and make decisions.” - Daphna Shohamy

​There is a new study out which suggests that viewing abstract art can cause measurable mental changes in the viewer.  ​Wait - what?  A little abstract art immersion to nudge your perceptions and influence your decision making - view two paintings and call me in the morning, says the art doctor.

I know how much an abstract painting can influence my emotions.  Some cause me to feel extreme tension and unsettledness, others instigate an expansive sense of awe.  

What I did not know was that we tend to place psychological distance between ourselves and abstract art, associating it with things in the future or things far away.  I was unaware that art viewers tend to take in the entirety of an abstract painting in a search for meaning, while focusing on the details in more representational works.

I'd be curious to know how you experience abstract art.  Leave a comment below - one (or more) lucky commenters will be entered in this month's Reader Giveaway, and get a little something free in the mail from me.  Woot!

"A Point in Every Direction" - oil on canvas, 15 x 30 x .75.  Ready to hang.  Available here, at Artfinder and at Bluethumb.

 “A point in every direction is the same as no point at all.” - The Pointed Man, Harry Nilsson's The Point

We've emerged from Wonderland, dear reader.

But where do we go from here?  Is wandering in every direction the same thing as being directionless?  And is directionlessness even a bad thing?  Well.  Hmmm.

The modern world seems focused on goals, achievement, certainty, confidence and success.  And these are worthy things.  Yet I am drawn to pull in the other direction (which is, as it were, directionlessness - how confusing!). A good wander may end up in failure.  A wander is at its core without purpose.  Wandering requires a certain confidence, I suppose, but it is most certainly without certainty!  Aha! Methinks perhaps a bit of Wonderland has stuck onto our shoes and followed us back to the studio...

So, as I set out for a good creative wander this month, I find myself in a full-circle moment: in the fifth grade at Zellers Elementary School, I played the part of one of the Three Fat Sisters in the school production of Nilsson's "The Point".  In the role, I had pillows strapped all around me and basically performed a bumper-car dance across the stage.  Which is kind of sort of what I am doing right now in the paint. Wanna join me?