When you create something, the first test is to engage and interest yourself. Creativity is a gift, an instant of self-nourishment, of being generous to yourself. You can write, draw, paint, play music, whatever keeps your attention; but you have to be willing to do it for yourself. Feeding your interest and attention engages your […]
The artist who painted this works exclusively in images. In her fifty-year career, representative images make up a tiny portion of her work. She is an abstract artist. This is one of the few works where she uses words. The others were in a series of religious works that she did mainly in the 1970’s, […]
Sometimes the dogs in this neighborhood start an alarm chain. Little CharlieDog is the fulcrum. The dogs back across the pond begin to bark, the dogs across the street bark, and Charlie runs from one side of the upper yard to the other, transferring the barks with his peculiar strident yelp. His muscles get taut […]
My reason for laying beside you and smelling like beer When you finish reading this I want you to be able to paint The sky I saw when I walked out To the garbage bin at dusk. Look up past the spring buds Blurring the kinky ends of the ginko To the ribbon of sky, upended by […]
When I was 14 or so, my father reclaimed a sailboat that had been left untended for years on a trailer under the trees near our house. The open deck had been closed in by a waxed, mildewed canvas cover. Under the moss and grit that covered the hull, the wood was still sturdy and sound. […]