Some of my art has gone to Australia.

And this one went to Texas:

I am at a crossroads. The time for a change is coming, and I need to keep my eyes open so I’m ready for the exit. 

Every exit is an entrance somewhere else.  The transition comes with loss and hope, like reading from one paragraph to the next. We carry the information we gleaned. Transformed, the new stretch of highway becomes our path, and our life story continues. 

The scary unknowns become familiar. We survive and wonder why we were so worried. 

All winter, I long for nights when I can sit outside by a fire. Tonight is pretty much a perfect night. Sweatshirt weather. 

26 years ago when I planted these trees, I never thought about how the squirrels and chipmunks would love them. Those guys are messy, and get into places where they shouldn’t be. I get to fulfill my childhood dream of catching the little animals, of seeing them up close before relocating them.

I’m kind of amazed that I am still here.  This is by far the longest I’ve ever lived in a house.  30 years so far!

I think about leaving. It’s one option on a long list of possibilities. 

See that tree behind me?  I used to park my car over the top of it. It was only a few inches tall. That was before the fence. Now it’s 35 or 40 feet tall. 

This doesn’t look like the same place. Do I look like the same person?  

I don’t take the creative impulse for granted. Distractions come along, and can steal that away from me for a while. 

I haven’t painted much over the last six months. An ongoing problem arose that has demanded far more of my time than I wanted to devote to it.

I’ve said that in order to start painting, all I have to do is pick up the brush and dip it into some paint. It really is true. The act of painting motivates me to paint. I have two canvases on side by side easels. One is an abstract, the other is a scene of a white pine. These are familiar paths for me.  They are friendly themes, and serve as a springboard to take a dive into discovery and play. 

I spent time painting with a very imaginative kid today. I wish I could read back the things he said while we painted. He is uninhibited, and he thinks things that I would never imagine on my own. By sharing his ideas and dreams, he lets me in.  Even if I don’t remember all of the words, they become part of me, and I end up wondering who is mentoring who. The truth is, we can all mentor each other. 

We talked about clouds, about positive and negative space.  Tapirs and more floating cities. Our minds are malleable like the paint, so the subjects change, both in our conversation and on the canvas.