March in coastal Maine. Even in the lengthening light, the landscape, so many of these days,

is quiet, shades of muted grey. Heaved, muddy roads, and patches of ice still hold in the forest.
Then other days the blanket of clouds pass and our big sun creates rivulets down sides of roads, new songs in the brooks and shadows become form, substance.

"How do I coalesce these creative urgings that are nebulous at best? The articulation seems to be through poetry or not at all.  Otherwise I am sidestepping and analyzing as a critic would. For my expression, creating life, I need a freedom from definition, the whole thrust of my work is discovery. The marriage of feeling, a clear mind, movement and attunement to the combined forces at work that evolve through love, experience."

Now on the backside of winter, my studio time dances between painting and writing. Painting has moved downstairs where I have more room to work...large canvases and paper, with continued exploration into the series "The Calling". I've been grateful these last few months for visitors, and patrons, at the studio and online, with subsequent framing, curatorial assistance, and placement. In addition to daily journaling, a short story is finished and submitted, while I continue editing work on my novel.

And I wouldn't be able to continue my own work if not for all the creatives out there who are undeterred in these challenging times.

I gain courage, heart and lift from so many of you. Recently I've been influenced by Maine poet, Elizabeth Tibbetts'  beautiful book

"Say What You Mean" 

Remarkable, astounding language. Preview here

Also been listening/painting to a 2014 release by musician Ross Gallagher,

"Utopian Dreams, Dystopian Visions"

Take a listen here

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Join me for an opening at Artemis Gallery, this Thursday July 11th, 4-7pm, or browse their website online if you are at a distance. The show runs until July 24th. Thank you for your interest, and I hope to meet with you there! Let me know if you have questions! All the best to you in this midsummer season! 

Artemis Gallery 1 Old Firehouse Lane Northeast Harbor, ME 04662 

207-276-3001 info@artemisgalleryme.com 

Journal notes, 3/29/2019

"Catkin and the green moss emerges in lawns, tufts in the forest, what was beneath the snow.  Down to Peter's Cove, and the constancy of the streaming water, Peter's Brook a rush, like a faucet full blast as the water falls, tumbles seemingly without end over pebbly rocks to finally splay into the calm of the cove. Gulls and mallards feed at low tide while crows and other birds I can't name are calling. Silver tipped pussy willow catches the light like a lucky shiny coin, harbinger of spring. Ice sheets in the inner harbor are fewer now, broken up and patches of open water mix with shrinking bits of slush, a slurry at low tide. Painting today feels good; a small square piece I've painted over and went at with hands applying the paint and an openness to what would evolve. These last two series (The Calling and Sylvan) have been this way- a flux between an intuitive and emergent type of process, left rough with traces and stories of application, the vigor and thrust of how the paint is applied and perhaps even how an image presents itself, contrasted with "smoother" works which call to be blended with a brush and stroked in a more subtle way, gentler, tamer. The dance is between these two techniques and the conversations with the paint, the resulting image finding its way."

LUKE  

by Mary Oliver
 

I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,

yet paused
for the honeysuckle
or the rose,
her dark head

and her wet nose
touching
the face
of every one

with its petals
of silk,
with its fragrance
rising

into the air
where the bees,
their bodies
heavy with pollen,

hovered—
and easily
she adored
every blossom,

not in the serious,
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom—

the way we praise or don’t praise—
the way we love
or don’t love—
but the way

we long to be—
that happy
in the heaven of earth—
that wild, that loving.

This pic shows the quiet of set up before the flurry of the 2018 10 x 8 show in Blue Hill, ME. 

Thank you to all who came out to our one day show/sale in Blue Hill.

Lovely to see you and grateful for your support. For more small works available at the studio

and for shipping, go here

WORD.ART  

Opening October 18th 4-7

Cynthia Winings Gallery, Blue Hill, ME

with readings by 

Heidi Daub and 

Stu Kestenbaum

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Hope to see you for one or more events 

in conjunction with the 

WORD festival in 

Blue Hill, Maine 

October 18-22. 

(see more info here- 

https://www.wordfestival.org)

Please be in touch with any questions!

This Friday July 27th from 4-6 the Alcyon Center in Seal Cove, Maine is having an Open House, 

http://alcyoncenter.org/19-full-progra…/…/61-alcyon-festival 

celebrating their first ten years and looking forward to the next.

As the inaugural Artist in Residence this past February, I'll be there to mingle, answer questions and will have on hand a notebook with journal entries/poems/sketches/photos from that snowy week last winter.  
Would love to meet with you there.

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These Cd's arrived in the mail yesterday.  A collaborative effort between three old time musicians, reinventing  fiddle tunes on slack key guitar, and asking me if I would take a listen, see what might come forth visually.  My painting in 2017 predominately revolved around this listen.  Listening , listening...paintings coming, listening more.  Now that the Cd is here, and listening again, I am wondering..Is there more to come?  Thank you to Roy, Corbin and most especially Jeff, who inquired, trusted, and ultimately felt happy with the visual, musical marriage.

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Honored to have been selected as the inaugural Artist In Residence 2018 at the Alcyon Center. http://alcyoncenter.org/…/about-the-al…/artists-in-residence  Back now from a week of intensive steady work in silence; writing, painting, deep listening, seeing and not seeing. Walking in the light and learning to walk in the dark. Not to question the why of the story, the poems, the paintings. Just Do. and Be. (Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind
when it only wants to see why...Rumi)
Grateful to the cove and surroundings, and the generous caretakers who made this opportunity possible.