Teasel Time in the Garden!

Teasel - quick sketch

When the teasel blooms, its quite a spectacle!

I love the spike patterns and the strange way it 

 blooms. Sometimes it starts from the center, 

other times from the top as this one... 

what a truly amazing plant to witness - from 

dangerous to downright over the top fancy in a few days!

Weed drawing from yesterday...

(motherwort)

Balance is a good thing.... I've been 

balancing my list of art-biz tasks with

blocks of time in the studio. Some of 

the urgency around deadlines is eased, so, 

finding balance is easier. At present 

I'm mostly exploring, playing and settling

in after bringing so much old work 

back from my parents' house that 

needed to find places to live in my 

small space. 

When work is happening.... piles of paper and bits 

of inspiration fill my work table.

Two older sketches exploring natural patterns. 

I cleaned out the studio loft 

that housed nothing but empty moving 

boxes... they seemed precious at the time, 

but since I don't plan on moving,  

better to have my old work 

stored nicely somewhere. I need to 

build some shelving to house the 

HUNDREDS of old sketchbooks from 

Greece and piles of drawings my 

my parents so carefully saved.  

I think I was probably 10 or 11 when I did this one below! 

click to enlarge and read the funny signs!

This is a self-portrait from sometime 

in the 1980's - I 

KNOW my mother must have 

said it was sooo unflattering!

Below is one of my first 

paintings from Samos, Greece. 

Goats in Agios Konstantinos where I

studied art in a small studio program and 

fell in love with the land and began  

eight years of living there part-time. 

"Goats" from Summer 1987.

Below is a small diptych from graduate school, 

sometime in 1993, I think. I was playing 

with using the grain of the wood panel

as part of the image. I used this technique 

a lot in later paintings if I could find interesting 

panels. I'm still interested in this idea and want 

to explore it again. Not the best shot of it, 

but you get the idea. 

I visited my parents twice in the past few weeks, 

to finally get to the overwhelming task of 

clearing out a huge wall of work I had 

stored there. They are moving, so, finally 

I had to go do it. It was actually kind of 

entertaining to re-visit all my old images. 

My father and I laughed at some really bad stuff,

and I had a kind of semi-private retrospective 

exhibition in the basement. 

I purged quite a bit, but couldn't let go of 

sketchbooks. Some of the ones from Greece

are wonderful to look back at. I'll share some 

images from there sometime. 

My father took two trailer loads of old paintings, 

drawings, and sculpture to the dump - some awful work and

some damaged. I took carloads of large paintings, sketchbooks

and portfolios back home with me each time. 

Thank goodness for the studio loft!

someone's stone stack in the river

On the weather situation, we still have had very 

little rain. Thunderstorms seem to skirt around 

here many afternoons, but very few have 

come to the forest. Its been hot, which means

I've been swimming at the river. 

I can't quite make it home without a stone or two. 

Feeling an abundance of gratitude today while strolling 

through the garden. There is something so profoundly 

healing in sharing space with an exuberance 

of flowers and the strangely blooming teasel. 

Buzzes and flights of pollinators 

doing their thing all day is a healing thing.