Floating Stones

​"Floating Stones" - mixed media on paper, 22" x 15".  Available here and at Artfinder.

It was soup weekend here at malarkey central.  Thanks to a recommendation by my sister (who has been dubbed by our family "Queen of Soups"), I have in my hands a copy of Clean Soup  and many quarts of magic mineral broth.  A few cloudy days and a sprinkle or two after many months of unrelenting sun provided the kind of dreary atmosphere that drives me into the kitchen to make soup.  

The dry season is coming to an end in Florida.  Rains are whispering of hurricane forecasting and humidity and hot summer.  Spring break tourists have left our beaches and the snow birds are heading north.  As the rest of the country looks toward warming temperatures and summer outdoor activities, those of us living six inches from the sun begin our seasonal hibernation.  It is a backwards world down here.

I continue communing with Diebenkorn, finishing this piece with great glee!  Those small spots of color - a tiny line hither and yon.  Yum.  This was another start from 

the Pat Dews workshop, and I couldn't be happier with the result. :)  I've got my sights on two more of the starts this week.  Also in my viewfinder - Mark Rothko and Willem deKooning.  Giants of abstraction and people I long to understand.

Even as the number of pieces in progress in the studio grows, I hear Mark Nepo's words tumbling about behind the scenes of my creations. "What we accomplish and create matters.  But we're not defined by what we create.  We're defined by how the engagement of our being shapes and creates us."  Oooooooh he's a smart one.  What defines me is how engagement shapes and creates me, even as I am shaping and creating other things.  It isn't what but how.  And in its circular and confounding sense of humor, with this thought the universe has just abstracted the concept of creating even as I create abstracts.  Oy vey.  I am gonna need more coffee.