Breathe Deep

Breathe Deep oil on canvas 30" x 40"

I was thinking of New England this holiday weekend and how the promise of a blizzard, especially when there was no school, was the best thing we could hope for. The bramble amidst the trees was easy to see against a backdrop of white and we tromped through it all in search of the adventures that awaited us in the distant, unknown land of the back woods!

Through the Eyes of a Child

I recently loaned my camera to a 12 year old friend and budding artist. Her shot of tree tops instantly takes me back to the days of creative daydreaming - of those summer days of when I, accompanied by a possy of wild explorers, created a universe in the woods where the giant hemlock was my palace and the third branch from the bottom was my private room with a view.

Finding My Place

The terrains of our childhood never leave us. In fact, they provide us with secret places, compelling places where playful imaginations can run wild, where discovery can take place and where dreams form. Beneath the cloak of youthful creativit, childhood places assumed a magic that we carry into adulthood.

The paintings in my new series, "Finding My Place," are gardens of the mind, emotional landscapes reminiscent of the special places of my life. The are the places I find in my travels that, reminiscent of my daydreaming places, hold strong physical, psychological, and spiritual meaning for me as an adult.

Save the date:
"Finding My Place," a solo exhibition
January 5-28, 2011

Arts Visalia
214 East Oak Avenue
Visalia, CA 93291-5049
(559) 739-0905

Main Gallery: Grand Opening

Main Gallery: Grand Opening: "MAIN GALLERY is a cooperative of local artists presenting a remarkable variety of professional fine art work in an accessible downtown Visal..."

Considering Cubism

As I'm sitting here reading and journaling -- revisiting cubism for a project I'm working on -- I am reminded of the influence of science and particularly of the mathematical sciences on art. In Arthur Millers recent book he remarks that "Mathematicians, philosophers and physicists at the beginning of the 20th century were recognising that many absolute truths were convenient caricatures of a universe that might be far stranger, far further from common sense than anyone thought ." It was from such notions of relativism offered by their mathematician contemporaries that Pablo Picasso and George Braque (the leaders of the cubist movement) developed their artistic creativity.

I think Jonathan Jones of the Tate Gallery in London sumed it up nicely when he said, "Cubism is like a maths exam at the gateway to modern art. The paintings are uniquely unyielding... Paradoxically, cubism is difficult not because it is abstract but because it is descriptive." While trying to edit my own creative output, I'm finding in this statement great food for thought!!!!