i was distracted when d brought the camera back to me. working on something, i glanced up and thanked him. a few moments later, i asked him how the painting he was working on was going. “i scrubbed it,” he said. “what?!” i replied. “i started something else,” he said. when he left the room, i looked at the camera. this is what i found. an extraordinary look at earth, removed from earth, from a distance away. fragmented mother planet through the haze, i found it to be a striking – and yet abstract – image, with rich, almost-metallic hues. how does he do that?
this is EARTH INTERRUPTED V: FROM A DISTANCE. we need this perspective every now and then. we lose sight. we fall prey to overwhelm in our own stuff. we are but a speck of a fragment on this earth. we are both tiny and vast. and we are capable of doing both tiny and vast things to help our earth and each other.
it’s a great space – d’s studio. i’ve talked about how i spend time down there…in a rocking chair, drinking coffee or wine, watching or talking or gazing at paintings: canvas he painted long before i knew him, finished canvas that have images i watched evolve, gesso-ed canvas on an easel, canvas pinned to the wall in-the-middle-of-its-story. i love these paintings and feel fortunate to love the work of the man i love.
we both have chosen an independent route in our respective artistry. that’s not the easy choice. (think: how many people try out for american idol across this country, how many people choose to do their painting ‘on the side’ as they also day-job.) our “galleries” of work are not mediated or machinated or led or thrust forward by the work of anyone but ourselves and our generous friends, family and people who believe in us.
as i mentioned in a post yesterday, we are coming up on five years together and are offering heart opportunities. this one is to help match paintings with people who hold them in their heart, who wish to have them. sometimes, as we all know, it is hard to justify what we wish for. with this 50% sale on all of david’s gallery of paintings, we hope to make these more accessible to the people who want them. that way, you, too, can sit in a rocking chair, drink coffee or wine (or cocoa or tea) and gaze at one of these beautiful paintings.
life below zero has captured our attention. sheesh. we are not ‘those people’ who have to follow shows, but we find ourselves searching the channel-changer for the national geographic show or… wait-for-it-this-is-no-surprise … this is us. (so i guess, in essence, we are ‘those people’.) anyway, that’s not my point.
when david drew this, i laughed aloud. it is truly funny to think about what animals dream (like our dogdog who runs in his sleep and babycat who snores up a storm) and if their dreams distort reality, just as ours do. in the morning, over steaming mugs of coffee, we often tell each other what we remember from our dreams. talk about distorted reality! i crack up thinking about what jessie holmes (the most avid -and very-sweet-to-his-dogs sled dog guy on the show) would do if he saw this cartoon.
the last little vestige of winter is in the air here (well, maybe.) as i write, there is snow in the forecast. even though we had this amazing hike-gift the other day in sunny 65 degree temperatures, truthfully, i don’t really mind that winter hasn’t ended; it is a time of fallow and that brings great anticipation for spring and newness.
David asked me what I would do with a tax refund, were we to be getting one. I answered that I would want to do something special. Go somewhere or purchase something I have wanted for our home for a long time. It’s always a piece of art or something that evokes emotion in me that pulls at my heart and my purse strings. So often I have said, “I wish…”
Individually and together we have heard those same words “I wish…” from people who have connected to one of these paintings, a piece they would cherish in their home or a space important to them. We are grateful when David’s paintings find such homes.
We are celebrating five years together soon and think this is a perfect time to pass along heart opportunities: connecting paintings to the hearts who love them. So we are offering an opportunity to you at a time that is so important to us.
We want these paintings to be with the people who wish to have them AND we need more studio space to welcome new work. In a society of sales-minded shoppers, we asked ourselves, “Why should a gallery be any different than any other business?”
So we are having a sale. A big sale. 50% off any painting on the gallery site. (through april 22. naturally, plus tax and shipping, if we are shipping the painting to you.)
Go browse. If you are already connected to a painting or your heart connects anew, email us through the contact page on his site (or call us or text us.) We will get in touch as soon as possible and work out the details with you.
Know that we appreciate you, your enthusiam, your sharing and support of the work we do. We know that we don’t do this work alone. Thank you. From our hearts.
leonard pitts jr. wrote an opinion column, a gorgeous essay on the moon that we read the other morning. only it wasn’t really about the moon. he references a short film (which we watched) by filmmakers wylie overstreet and alex gorosh called “a new view of the moon” where the two men “wandered around los angeles with a telescope…asking a cross section of passersby in a cross section of places…to put their eyes to the viewfinder and gaze upon what they’ve looked at a million times yet never seen.” the two men found that people responded in the same way, awestruck, profoundly moved by the vision. the short doesn’t feature the moon; it features the reactions of people as they gaze into the telescope. leonard calls it “a hymn to our common humanity.” a reminder that in all our differences we are the same…”we spend too much time looking down and across.” we are, yes, tiny in the vastness – something i felt myself in writing about david’s painting FROM A DISTANCE that we chose for thursday’s melange. “so each other is all we have. but then, it should be all we need,” leonard writes.
when i drew this simple graphic, i wanted to portray a uncomplicated thought. an image unadorned with fancy-ness, but, hopefully, clear…or, at the very least, thought-provoking. “your” earth with arrows upward, “your” earth with arrows that circle around, “our” earth with arrows that circle around, “earth” with arrows that circle around.
it is all a circle. what we do counts. how we help counts. how we help our earth. how we help each other.
what’s that saying?…’one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’? a walk through our house shows we drew this chicken nugget from our own lives. i’ve written before, ok many times before, about the stones in our home, the sticks and feathers, the old doors and windows, re-purposed old aluminum coffee pots as canisters, old stoves still working, my dad’s workbench wooden boxes, pieces of old desks or old wooden crates as end tables. everyone has their own definition of “treasure”; for us it’s just not always the shiny new stuff.
this weekend marks another earth day, a celebration of support for our beloved home planet. more than 193 countries now mark this day as a day of awareness and honoring. as we move about our days, we make seemingly miniscule decisions about how to handle our little piece of the globe. but each one of these has an impact and the ever-widening ripples will either be adding to the protection of mother earth or contributing to the harm that will adversely effect our earth in the long-term. yes, those blue recycling bags cost a bundle, but it helps. yes, those kitchen cabinets might look old for you, but they’d look better in someone else’s home (who maybe doesn’t have cabinets) than in the dump.
maybe a few sticks or rocks placed here or there in our home reminds us of all that. they are treasures for me. they always have been. we can’t fit all our treasures into our literal ‘special box’ of memories so they sit out. i can’t tell you specifically where each of them came from anymore, but i can tell that each one is meaningful and each one comes from our good planet earth.
on our work table in our sunroom we have three wedding invitations. each one is beautiful, sent to us by the children of friends or relatives. it is that time, when the next generation is marrying. we are excited for each couple and celebrate with them, whether or not we can be at the event with them.
when we were choosing a piece of music for this ks friday, we decided to honor these celebrations of love-found with the song AS SURE AS THE SUN. (scroll down to listen) it is our hope that in each of these couples they are, “in for the long run, forever…safe to be who (they) are” and that, in that universe mystery of ultimately finding each other, they are loved “as sure as the sun.”
david’s painting SHARED FATHERHOOD makes me weep. it is a powerful painting of two fathers tenderly and humbly holding their baby. it is love in a pure form. it makes me think of my son, The Boy. i can see him in this painting and the possibility of him choosing one day to share fatherhood.
SHARED FATHERHOOD, mixed media 39.5″ x 51″
in the very corner of this painting is the morsel i chose for today. a doorway. or is it a window? either way, it struck me as a morsel image, especially in the context of this painting.
so many figurative doorways/windows, so little time…. is it a doorway into acceptance? into inclusion? into openness? into home?
we sat this morning, over early coffee, and talked about our perception of ourselves. how we can’t see that we exhibit the very things we tout we aren’t. or, conversely, how we aren’t (in whole) the things that we tout we are. how scary is that? it’s human. we ponder and perseverate over the things we believe. and we realize in moments of self-judgement that, yet again, we have a view of ourselves that is perhaps somewhat inconsistent with who we are. that goes both ways, however. the times we believe we are not enough, we are incomplete, we don’t measure up – those times are also inconsistent with who we are.
the doorway in – to acceptance of where we are, what we have been through, where we are going – to learning more – to growing – to knowing we are held in grace – to forgiveness of others and ourselves – to trying again tomorrow – to home, a place of as much gratitude and peace we can muster and then even more – this is a doorway/window in to shared fatherhood (read: parenthood) of the world, where each of us is responsible to do our best, bring our best, try our best.
when he was a kitten, i wanted to name our cat ‘jack’ but The Girl and The Boy objected. to me, he looked like a ‘jack’ in the way animals look like names, plus every ‘jack’ i could remember meeting had been a really nice guy.
and, in line with my nice-guy-jacks, this jack – the one with the ‘save the beanstalk’ picket sign – is a nice guy.
another case of little-guy-vs-big-guy, jack just wants to face his giant, save what is good, fight for that which he worked hard, keep what is his safe, preserve what is organic and part of the earth. i immediately think of the many marches across our country.
beach towels
speaking their minds, good people are making an effort to face their giants, save what is good, fight for that which they work hard, keep what is theirs safe, preserve what is organic and part of the earth.
i believe that good prevails over giants, in the long run. sometimes, the long run is waaaay long. but good prevails. and beanstalks grow and flourish.
“don’t let that stop you,” she’d say. “remember the little engine,” he’d say. i grew up with parents who encouraged me to not doubt myself or what i could do. i hope that i made them (and are still making them – even on a different plane of existence) proud.
i watch my own children, The Girl and The Boy, and think they have figured this obstacles-thing out.
The Girl texted me photographs. she was in silverton, a vast expanse of ridiculously rugged mountains. she had (i’m glad i knew about this AFTERwards) snowboarded down these giants. she, literally, dropped off cliffs and boarded down the fresh powder, exhilarated and stoked. her girlfriend said, “we can do it” and they did. omg. amazing stuff! i am filled with awe. and more than a little jealous, in an i-wish-i-could-do-that kind of way. just the sheer chutzpah of it all is at the very heart of don’t-let-that-stop-you-little-engine-ness.
life is interesting. always. and obstacles are always there. they make life more interesting. yup. get stoked. rise to the challenges.
fragmented mother planet through the haze, i found it to be a striking – and yet abstract – image, with rich, almost-metallic hues. how does he do that?
reverse threading 