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Winter Wonderings

/ Picking My Battles

Winter Wondering, 9×12, Watercolor – SOLD

Prints can be purchased on Etsy here.

Tomorrow, Sunday March 5 between 4pm and 6pm I will be having an opening reception a new show – Seasonally Affected – at the Roundhouse Bakery & Cafe in Cambridge, NY.

There is never a wrong time to go to the cafe, but tomorrow will be something more than a reception for me.   Tomorrow I will officially kick off fundraising for a project to get art supplies into the hands of children going through difficult transitions that’s been germinating beneath the snow this winter.

The project, DrawPaintCreate, came about after reading Jon Katz’s blog, BedlamFarm, and his efforts to help newly-arrived refugees.

The agency he works with does an excellent job of meeting the physical needs of the new arrivals, but as I looked at the photos of the new apartments’ bare walls, I felt a nagging, silent question about the children in these families who have just emerged from incredible trauma.  It’s the same question I have had for years when reading about children living in foster care or who recovering from harrowing events .

How do they get back to being kids? How do they get past these events and get back to the incredibly important business of growing up?

Years ago while trying to move past a childhood trauma and manage a lifelong relationship with bipolar disorder, I discovered art as a powerful tool for processing difficult memories and re-engaging with the world in a positive way.

If art saved my life, my kids have given it direction by centering every decision around their physical and emotional needs as well as their futures.  That includes caring about the physical and emotional needs of the other people in their generation, and giving children the tools to express themselves and create their futures.

Unsure if there was a want or need for this sort of thing, I put together 5 kits consisting of watercolor paints, colored pencils, sketch and coloring books, and a drawing guide packed in a small drawstring.

I then reached out to the US Committee for Refugees in Albany to see if they thought their younger arrivals would benefit from access to art supplies. They came back with a request for 50 kits.  I have since reached out to other groups who serve at-risk children and have been met with enthusiastic responses and offers of help.

To that end, I will be kicking in 50% of my share of sales from the show at Roundhouse.  Tomorrow morning, I will also be having a fire starter sale on this website, putting up a number of paintings to  raise money for kits for newly arrived refugees in Albany, NY. Fifty percent of all sales from the website will also go to DrawPaintCreate.

If you would like to help, you can purchase a painting or visit http://www.DrawPaintCreate.org to donate directly and/or purchase an item to go into an art kit.  Every donation is greatly appreciated as it helps to fuel a new creative spark.

Under the Influence

/ Picking My Battles

 

Day is Done, 9×12 – SOLD

I paint at night because it’s the best way to get a block of uninterrupted time, but it’s a double edge sword.

If you’re under the influence of the art bug, walking into your studio was a bit like an alcoholic walking into a bar.  You think, ” i’ll just take a look at last nights stuff quickly.” Then you pick up a brush to fiddle with a spot just didn’t look right and before you know it, the paint is still flowing  at 2am on a work night.

And even though I’ve learned to hate 7 AM and I don’t have any illusion that I could quit anytime I want, it’s not a problem.

Prints can be purchased on Etsy here.

Upstate of Mind

/ Picking My Battles

 

The other night T1 was driving the two of us towards Saratoga Springs to get him a haircut and a pair of pants without holes to wear to his college interview.

The area is pretty densely settled with farms and homes, and there aren’t many uninterrupted vistas. As we neared the top of a hill, the sun sank behind the clouds, casting a glow and silhouetting scrawny trees that bordered an abandoned farm that was not yet ready to surrender to the earth – a perfect interruption.

I’m a pretty confirmed agnostic – the only thing I know for sure is that I know nothing – but as I thought about all the treasures humans unmake, that they think they can remake better or even live without,  I caught myself whispering “only God can make a sunset.”

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Prints can be purchased on Etsy here.

Between Worlds

/ Picking My Battles

 

Land of Imagination, 12 x 16, Watercolor, $75

I’m getting paintings together for an exhibition at the Spiral Press Cafe in Manchester, Vermont, and, I’ll be honest, I was having trouble getting into the mood to paint landscapes.  The glow of Iceland has receded — a symptom of having read too many political posts in the intervening months, and the Vermont landscape isn’t turning me on the same way it normally does at this time of year. 

Wrapped up in finishing and publishing my first illustrated book, I was much more hungry to get to work on the illustrations for the next one. That’s when my favorite Élly — Élly’s the star of my next book, The Truth about Trolls, tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me that she needs at least one place to live in during the course of her story, and would I mind getting inspired so she can have some place magical to look at? 

So I looked at my car window and found some magic yesterday. Then I remembered some magic we’d seen in Iceland and in Michigan.  Now it seems I’m seeing magic everywhere.

Trolls are surprisingly logical.

Prints can be purchased on Etsy here.

Wild

/ Picking My Battles

 

I think what struck me so much about Iceland is not that it is untouched wilderness. It is a place where people have cut down trees and built their roads.  The Earth, however, will not always stay tamed.  She spits out ash to bury buildings and conspires with the wind to make some parts of herself too harsh to ever truly conquer. Continue reading →