Serve Somebody

Look for Them...

This little ice sculpture in a window box on Front Street stopped me in my tracks yesterday afternoon. I was taking a break from working in my studio, feeling traumatized and tired from the night before. I saw the hummingbird first...and took my camera out of my bag and snapped a few pictures. When downloading these images this morning, I saw the centaur...

I thought of last week's Promise...

I thought of the woman who checked us in at the ER Tuesday night...

She was wearing an enamel horse pin, and she told me about her business, Healing Horses, and invited me to bring Lisbeth out for a visit sometime soon. She said, "She doesn't have to get on a horse right away or even at all, if she doesn't want to. She can just enjoy being there with the horses - maybe help to feed and brush them. It does folks good just to be around the horses, out in the fresh air." I asked her if she has an all white horse, thinking that Lisbeth would love to see a horse that matches her kitty, Milkweed. She said, "Yes, in fact we do. He's an old Arabian that we rescued. His name is Trooper," and she gave me her card.

Yesterday morning I told Lisbeth's house manager that I would like to start taking Lisbeth to this horse farm.

Thoughts of guardians and angels...

When I open my eyes, when I pay attention, I see that they are all around me...

Guardians

In a sad stroke of synchronicity yesterday, my phone rang while I was working on these pieces in my studio. It was Lisbeth's one-on-one helper calling to tell me that Lisbeth had just had another bad fall during a seizure. I quickly yanked off my painting apron and told them I'd meet them at the emergency room. Evidently Lis had one of her "no warning" grand mal seizures where she goes down like a felled tree. These are the worst - no bending at the knees, no initial crying out, just BOOM. Straight down. She and her helper were in the kitchen about to make some banana bread, when Lis crashed into the refrigerator door, face first.

She's banged up but OK. Breaks my heart what she endures.

After getting Lisbeth back home and comfortable, I headed back to my studio and worked on these paintings even more prayerfully.

Primer Prime Pics

My daughter-in-law Tracey Miller took these stellar shots of my triptych, A Girl's Primer, on the last day of the exhibit at Aucocisco Gallery. Tracey has an excellent eye and a superb camera - you can really see the details and the surface texture in these images! I'm so grateful to her for travelling to Portland to document my triptych while it was still installed at Aucocisco, which is such a beautiful space.

This group show never did get a formal review, but I received many wonderful and insightful notes, comments and e-mails about A Girl's Primer. One of my favorite remark's came from independent curator and writer Britta Konau:

Saw the Aucocisco show and was really taken by your big drawings. The following names came to my mind while looking: Dix, Klimt, and Chagall. Not bad associations, right?

(Right!)

Light from Darkness

Goya

Maya Bloch

Kathe Kollwitz

Guardians and angels are on my mind of late, and what it means to be a guardian. I'm one of my daughter Lisbeth's legal guardians, and she has many other sorts of guardians, celestial and terrestial. So do I. How do they show up? What do they look like? These are the thoughts I'm taking with me to the studio today...

A Lisbeth Series

This is the start of a new series of drawings of and about my daughter Lisbeth. I've wanted to do this series for a very long time, and I finally feel emotionally ready. Ever since I took this photo of Lisbeth in the ER last fall I have felt compelled to draw it. I've also been wanting to try working with acrylics and pastels on primed canvas instead of paper, so this week I bought some raw canvas and tacked it to the new homosote panels lining one wall of my studio, and gessoed it. I drew the image in first with charcoal, then worked into the drawing with acrylics and pastels, back and forth, back and forth. It's a new surface, with new challenges: I'm just getting used to it, and I'm enjoying it so far. I plan to work the hummingbirds into the piece this afternoon, either on this drawing of Lisbeth, or on smaller separate canvases that will circle this piece, like little angels...

A Promising Sign

I walked into my kitchen to warm my coffee this morning and looked out back to see this!

Hello! Where did you come from??

An apple treat...

A runaway horse showed up at my back porch this morning! I grabbed my camera, threw on my boots and coat, and brought her out an apple. While she chewed, I asked her, Where did you come from, Beautiful? She polished off the apple, so I fetched another and was leading her to my neighbors' house (thinking they might know where she came from) when a flustered young woman came thrashing out of the woods into my yard, exclaiming, There you are! She phoned her husband who had been driving up and down the Middle Road for the past hour or so searching for their horse. Turns out they all live directly behind my son, who is right next door to us, but the horse had done a big circle through the woods to land to our yard!

Also turns out the horses' name is Promise, and when I told this story to a friend of mine, she said, Maybe it's a sign, a promise of a good year for you guys!

I like that...