Tidal Pool #1

Crab

A tiny crab, dried and broken.

Sea Things #2

Sea things, with a little more color and confidence.

Sea things #1

Reflection

Who was I going to be, before I became me? I remember sitting with my friend Sarah in a Mexican restaurant in Bar Harbor, a poster of Santa Fe above our heads. I was 24 and had rarely left the East Coast. She said she saw me there one day, she didn't know why. I said I thought so too. We sat quietly with our margaritas, not knowing, but knowing.

Sometimes you find yourself in a moment or a place where you're able to see exactly why you've made every decision you ever have. It's a lucky place to be and quells the "What ifs" and "Why did I's?" A map of "Oh, that's why" and, "YES...of course!"

Awakening

Time is moving so fast. Maybe it's because as old habits fall away, and little awakenings occur, you begin to see the beauty that is everywhere. With every shift and turn of that kaleidoscope, you get lost in the beauty that is everywhere, the moment frozen to awe. When there's only one or two beautiful things per day, time drags. That's why it seems time is flying, I think.

Illumination

He asked me how I felt when I saw that another artist had made something I happened to have an idea for. I was 23 at the time, he was 34. I told him I would be jealous, angry, insecure. Ideas are hard to come by, I thought. Something to be guarded and protected because you never know when another one will come again. There was your identity too, you know how everyone loves a person with a good idea, and you wanted to be the one who had it.

He told me that for him it was a relief. When he sees that another artist made something he had an idea for, he knows the idea has been taken care of, it will no longer haunt him, and he's free to attend to all the others that are waiting.

Twenty years later, I get it. Ideas fly and flutter and flow around me, taunting my lack of time. Like looking through a kaleidoscope, ideas are born, again and again, with every turn and shift of the glass.

Bird houses

I loved someone once that I shouldn't have, that I couldn't have. It was quiet in reality, but it was an explosion in my heart and mind. He was talented and married, wore work boots and colors that worked well together.

Last February I found myself at Shivratri, in Taos, holding rose petals in the palm of my left hand. In this part of the ritual you were asked to think of someone who had betrayed you, and give thanks. A heart that is broken may also become open, and blossom into a compassionate one. A strange notion, I thought, but one I fully understood.

Rock sketch, slight color

Painted with fingers and sea water.

Charcoal rocks

I went to the sea to paint, but forgot my brushes and a container for water. So I decided to draw, but forgot my eraser. I sat staring at the sea, unequipped to carry out any of my plans. I felt the rumbling of a tantrum coming on, the kind where you start to attack your age for being forgetful, or for not buying a fancy art box for organization.

Then the sea whispered, "I am here, you are here. I am here. You are here." And I remembered that no matter what I had, I had everything I needed.

Chasing light

Afternoon light falls on the chairs at Saint Mary's.

Sherrie McGraw teaches that in painting, you should first paint what you want the light to do, then make it into something. If you're painting light, it makes it different than if you're just painting flowers. The quality of looking "lighted" is more important than the quality of looking like a rose.

Window ledge

I'm so very thankful to have this window of time where things are unfolding due to weather and nature, and not due to deadlines and demands. To take longer in a place because there is a bird or a seal or waves to watch.

Globe glasses

Globe glasses, one of the everyday gems found on the kitchen shelf at Saint Mary's.

Balancing Heaven and Earth is an incredible book by Robert A. Johnson, written about his life. My friend Juliana suggested I read it, on the same night she suggested I write a book of my own. I love what he wrote here about the ego:

I feel that the ego is properly used as an organ for awareness, not the organ of decision. Almost everyone in our society tries to use the ego as an organ of decision. For example, we may say to ourselves, "I am going to Europe. I will buy the air tickets for this date, and will stay in this hotel when I arrive." The ego is useful for collecting information about ticket fares and accommodations and things to see and do when you arrive. But the ego does not determine the experience you will have on your trip. People get so preoccupied with trying to control things that are not in the ego's province that they neglect what is the ego's business -heightened awareness. The ego should be collecting data and watching. The ego serves as the eyes and ears of God. It gathers the facts but does not make the ultimate decisions.

I love this take on the role of the ego, because too often the message is that the ego should be obliterated. And because it's how I travel. The body and mind scrambling to do what it takes to book accommodations and purchase tickets, to make way for a call that will not be ignored.

Balancing Heaven And Earth

Almost everyone I know who has a daughter, has a daughter that wants to be an artist when she grows up. It does look like the perfect life, long days of color and shape, beauty and freedom...sign me up! Sometimes their parents ask me for advice, insight, words of encouragement. What would I say? What do I wish someone had said to me?

Girls, especially, tend to hear things like, "Follow your heart" and, "Dare to Dream". Things that are important and true. But they don't hear about practical things to make the dream real. They will certainly hear about choices, usually choices that translate as "Follow your heart, or make money", but they will rarely hear solid suggestions about balancing both. Following your heart does not just mean going forth blindly on hope.

When I heard Gabrielle Roth say, "It takes discipline to be a free spirit", it changed everything for me. In order to allow your spirit to truly be free, you must pay attention to the bottom line, have the discipline to create work, and figure out what will support and create space for your creativity, as well as your everyday life.

A kite soars because of the combination of the wind and the weight that holds it down on the other end of the string. Without that grounding, flight is free for a bit, but ultimately too loose and destined for a crash. I think this is what young artists are rarely taught, and where true artistry applies.

Three different rainbows seen during one drive toward Haystack, balancing Heaven and Earth.

Two Boats

Boat

Island Flowers

The earth laughs in flowers -Emerson

Morning Pages

I approached drawing and writing shyly, unsure. The way you might approach a friend you haven't had time for, afraid that maybe they'd given up on you for good this time. It was doing morning pages that saved me, and reading "The Voice of the Muse" that motivated me.

I've observed in the past that there can be a dangerous gap between ideas and output, when the hand is left idle for too long. The ideas swell, become full of themselves, inflating and drifting away like a hot air balloon that the hands can't possibly pull down to earth. The hands attempt to marry the idea, shakily. Failing the ideal, and in shock of the limitations of one's own hand, the artist falls into despair.

It is only movement that closes the gap. Ugly, awkward, but sometimes lovely movement. It is through this movement that the hand can even approach the idea, and out of respect the idea begins to bow to meet the ability of the hand. Draw anything, write anything, any word, allow the hand to move.

These were some of the places where I faced the morning pages. On the deck of the Inn on the Harbor, with a cup of Earl Grey tea. A pomegranate juice on the shell filled tables at Lily's cafe, and my favorite spot by the sea on the drive toward Haystack. The drawing was one of the first I tried, in my effort to close the gap.

Sophie's Cup

Sophie's Cup was one of my favorite places to write. Especially on a foggy day, with a cup of hot chocolate or Earl Grey tea. I knew I wanted to come to Maine to write, I was hounded by it. I never thought of myself as a writer, because I could never think to use fancy words like cogently, cajole, or cadence. But I felt that I had something to say.

Yet, I didn't think of myself as a writer. Doing the dishes one evening with racing thoughts I went suddenly still when I heard, "That voice in your head that just won't stop? That is a writer, looking for a page."

Farmer's Market

Sometimes it may seem that your life is falling apart. Sometimes things are being reconstructed in a way you hadn't thought to think of. Maybe what you thought could only be sand, is sand shifting and changing to build a castle, even though it feels like an earthquake at the time.

Maine was a place I loved twenty years ago, when I worked as a waitress during summer breaks while in college. It was the place that called to me when it felt that everything in my life was changing at once. Sometimes it's only when things fall apart that we begin to truly listen. On sleepless nights in the desert the sea whispered, "Come to me, be near my glittery body, watch my birds and seals and shells, my pine trees and tides. We are here still. Be near me again, come to me."

So I did. The farmer's market was on Friday mornings and I climbed the long hill for fresh bread and strawberries and cheese and chocolate. With these small rituals and delights I began to feel whole again.

Library

Internet access could be found at the local library, but it was only open a few days a week, a few hours at a time. On the right side of this photo you can see a guy on his laptop, sitting in the flower bed, using the library's wireless. My cell phone didn't work either, unless I stood right in front of the fire station, and even there it would lose calls during fog.

I'd forgotten what it was like to not be so constantly and immediately connected. I remembered things like writing letters, found myself holding onto thoughts longer, until they started turning pages, instead of peppering them away with a press of the "send" button.

Opera house

Stonington has just a few restaurants, galleries, small inns, and a wonderful Opera House. It is over one hundred years old and was restored in 2000, after being left for ruin.

I had the great fortune to see a documentary about the painter John Marin while I was there. Maine, especially Stonington, was one of John Marin's favorite places. I was surprised to see that he went to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (where I was heading before losing everything I owned, and nearly my life, in a fire), spent time in Taos, New Mexico, and went out of his way to travel through Vermont, on his way from Maine to New York, at the end of the summer. All places I've lived and loved.

Stonington

I didn't want to tell you about this place. I thought I could just write "Greetings from a magical town, I love it here, but please don't come. Miss you!" You are, after all, the world wide web. What if you all decide to show up at once?

But I'm in awe of the generosity of so many bloggers, how they put their secrets right out there. They tell you exactly what type of pencil they used, how they cleaned their brushes, and what they were thinking while they created a work of art that looks like it fell from the sky intact. It was their generosity that inspired me to push through the resistance to make work of my own.

So, if you can, come to Stonington, Maine. It is a magical place.