EVERGREEN

I was passing time one day after work sitting on the porch at Zax in downtown Austin, with an empty page in front of me.  I remember what I was wearing, and strangely enough, I was wearing the same dress that I am wearing today.  It's a dress that has waves crashing all over it.  That coincidence would be like saying you know what you didn't know you knew, in that I didn't know I was drawing what I was knew I was wearing.  Follow me??  Back to the subject at hand.  EVERGREEN!!  The color and some lines were certainly inspired by a Marc Chagall stained glass I sat and stared at for a while in Zurich, Switzerland a couple of months ago.  There were sections of a certain wall where each panel window featured a color.  Green.  Blue.  Golden.  Red.  Sucked me right in and gave me a direction.  I was listening to some bumpin' and relaxing tunes by classical artist with a flare - Black Violin.  I'm set now - the music, the color, and an idea which leads way to GO time.  Someone came in and claimed this one pretty early on.  An old, dear friend of mine from childhood.  We used to walk to school together, walk to Wendy's and spend our allowance on the $0.99 menu, sing in choir together, and so on.  It's a blessing to be able to reconnect with someone from my childhood in such a way.  I can't wait to deliver this to her in The Woodlands.  As I was thinking about what to name this, I couldn't help but work my history with Ree Ann into the naming.  We grew up in Huntsville in the Avenues that are filled with huge looming trees that canopied over the blocks creating shelter and wonder for a curious kids eating their Wendy's on the curb or throwing pine cones at their siblings.  The trees were beautiful and EVERGREEN in my mind.  Much like our friendship that is evidently EVERGREEN, time and environment don't cause much change after all.  Our roots bring us back to this moment with an art exchange. Life ebs, flows, swells, with bursts of life and pockets of time that change who we are and where we go.  Collectively, a giving force to those around us.  I hope this is a giving source for Ree's home and her family.  Always there and EVERGREEN.

14"x17"
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BREEZEWAY

Leaving a little space for a big breeze.  Perhaps summer prompted me to leave a this space here.  Or perhaps it was the need for some air; to let the wind in to power a new possibility.  We are always in a space to grow, to learn, and to feel a little breeze.  Who likes to be all cooped up feeling no breeze - no nothing for that matter.  As much as I may have felt like I needed to fill the space, I decided it time to leave a little breezeway beautifully open and crisp.  The word breezeway makes me think of 1.) Rocking chairs and 2.) Old plantation homes that often had open walk ways left open in the middle of the home - for a purpose, not a pleasure.  For safety and function in order to help the home survive a crisis.  Yes - I just worded the purpose of architecture in a rather silly manner - but I'm really just trying to add a humanistic feature in order to better imagine something here.  So, YES - the obvious option is  southern home architecture.  Hey - I grew up two blocks from Sam Houston's home with this breezeway I speak of.
Back to the matter at hand.  Breeze.  Strong spine, gentle soul, taking in a little breeze time.  Allow yourself some space in your mind to be quiet, to observe and soak in, some things that are lingering in those empty spaces left neglected by the busy-ness we can often put upon ourselves.
Enjoy the moment(s)(s)(s)(s)(s).

11"x7"  Original

RESOLUTION

"Turn around, put it down and see that this is really the place to be."  Resolution - Matt Corby (song below).
Let's keep this simple.  I made some resolutions this year - I have checked all off and it feels great!  Some chaos (perceived) was involved, but those things are merely internal and part of a process that simply gets easier in time.

Song below, by Matt Corby.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj4q4rfDcNw&feature=player_detailpage

RISE

I had NO idea where this was going when I started it.  I was sitting outside of a dear friend, Rita's, studio on a breezy cool day, in the shade wondering where my pen would take me.  I drew the skeleton of the curve and the interior 'flares' and at first saw a person with a shawl of sorts.  I loved it.  And then I took it completely somewhere else.  And...I still love it!  I will admit I did not like this piece much while I was working on it, but I didn't want to set it aside.  I had a goal to finish a new piece before my show coming up in June, so this had to be it.

RISE.  

With about two square inches of empty paper left, it suddenly ALL made sense.  I knew the name, I saw what it was, and what I was trying to say with these lines.  What a relief after hours of working on something I didn't understand.  I think I even whimpered a little, with a small tear at being able to see what it was.

RISE.

Leading up to the completion were some fun conversations with friends about oh...the evolution of us as people - how we connect, how we grow, how we learn, how we become better, how we shed our skins of the past making shiny new skin while the inevitable wrinkles of time happen to us.  This involved the relevance of certain animals in our lives.  (Not your favorite pet that we're talking about).  But that animal of strength inside you that keeps popping up with significance when you need it most.  I recently have tried to attune myself to 'my animal'...I haven't gotten further than a Phoenix (which is fantasy) and dead squirrels.  Ha!  Then I was sitting down with my friend Greg and he picked up his mandolin and played a song that sounded much like Eddie Vedder's "Rise."  He played around with the song for a bit and we moved on in conversation.  Nothing significant really.  I finished the piece the next day, and when I told Greg the name, he sent me the lyrics of the song and it was an uncanny parallel to the drawing.  I love it when life just happens like that.  It's moments like that, that make being an active part of your life so amazing.  To be conscious, to be present, to be open, and to RISE up and see all the things around you that make everything happen right in front of you.  YOU play a part in that!!  Putting faith in something that at first glance is amazing, and then it looses it luster - but you stick with it and voila!

BTW:  check out Rita and Greg's work - they played a part in this and have an amazing collection of soul expression themselves!!
www.ritamarieross.com
www.gregdavisphotography.com

RISE!!

14"x 17"

BREATH IN, BREATH OUT

BREATH IN, BREATH OUT.  What is rather amazing about this simple action, is that sometimes you see something on this earth through the eyes that God gave you, and you suddenly feel nothing but that breath on every square inch of your body.  This is that moment, in a dissected visual flash of my mind.  Oxygen (blue) and the blood (purple/red) that oxygen feeds moving in and out of the body.  I was at the Prague Castle earlier this year looking at the stained glass in this ancient vessel of soul and prayer.  Its power seemed magnified in every chip of glass thoughtfully put into place and with out intention magnifying the light into this blessed space flooding into each breath of mine.  With a mass of people streaming around me, I barely noticed their bustle of movements.  All I could feel was the breath in my body being fueled by each refraction of light that my eyes were fortunate enough to see.  Later that night, while thawing out in a warm corner of a pub with a good beer, I sat and sketched a small idea of these lines out.  That was a pretty good day.  Just breathing.  

11"x14"

A MATTER OF THE HEART

This is a matter of the heart.  Or at least that is where its motivation comes from.  In the literal and figurative sense.  A friend of mine called upon me to see if I cold do something for a friend of her preparing to have their fourth child.  Something the Dr's told her would never happen, because of the Mother's heart condition.  But alas and God Bless, her heart had healed and therefore, they were able to bear this fourth child.  My friend shared something with me that she had read, that helped her sum up this said matter of the heart.

BE HUMBLE FOR YOU ARE MADE OF EARTH.
BE NOBLE FOR YOU ARE MADE OF STARS.

Humility and nobility are fully loaded words that, when tapped, have an awesome power in bringing peace and power to your life.  As I've aged, certain songs from my childhood come to have new meaning to them.  As I wrote the first sentence of this paragraph, the song by Jon Michael Montgomery, Life's a Dance, began to play in my mental radio.  The chorus mainly..."Life's a dance you learn as you go, sometimes you lead sometime you follow."  To feel the ultimate blessings in life, to understand the other (or darker) side of that blessing is needed.  They come hand in had.  Sometimes we lead, and others we follow.  Sometimes we feel esteemed by nobel, sometimes we feel brought down and humbled.  I totally see where my friend drew these two things together in regard to her friends 'matter of the heart.'

It took me a bit of time to settle on what I wanted to do with this.  I started this tree on an International flight recently with lots of time and fortunately smooth air, and at one point I had a swing hanging from the tree - which obviously didn't make the final cut.  I couldn't settle on what I wanted to do here...I was thinking about stars but was drawing a tree???  So I sat on it, drew some other things, that in the end felt too forced or intentional.  I came back to the tree.  The tree is like the heart in here.  Its lines somewhat resemble the lines you see in an image of a heart. The straight lines (humility)...FOCUS, SETLLE DOWN, THINK STRAIGHT is what I kept feeling.  But I didn't want it to be so stale.  I had to balance it out, so I threw some 'stars' (nobility) in the middle. Flowing through them both, are the matters of the heart that give life...to FOUR BLESSED CHILDREN and have lived the life that they have as a family.  Their family tree has just grown.  

7"x11"
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FRAGILE STRENGTHS

Day by day.  The H E A R T swells with joy, or it can swell with ache.  You never know.  I tell you, give this girl a little heart ache and I'll get productive with this part of my world.  Each drawing comes from something inside of me, based off an experience and/or feeling. The past few weeks have an interesting ride, getting to discover and face some fears I had not had to before.  Trying to be strong when it hurts, but also letting the tears go.  Being ok with the idea of pain.  Or really, the feeling of pain/fear and believing I'll be ok.  My Dad had an out of the blue health hiccup that frightened me (and him) to the core.  The incident was minor, but the implications felt major!  Like I said, hearts swell with joys and aches.  All will be fine in Father land and like he said, he's not knockin' off yet.  :) 

I really just started drawing some lines here, listening to my REPEAT playlist.  I got about three lines into filling the blue in, and it hit me what I wanted this to be.  I didn't have a plan for this when I started it.  Felt more like just some line drawing.  I got about three sections of blue done, and I knew what I was working on and where this was going.  A few sections of blue later, I saw a feather, which to me was not there before.  Feather, tiny weightless little things, but they help one to fly.  Fragile and strong, hence the name.  Blue?  Lots of reasons for blue - which have nothing with blue being related to sadness.  This has nothing to do with sadness.  It comes from the blue in my world that built the ideas behind this.  I could feel the experiences of the past few weeks coming out in the bends and color. A fun moment.  These straight lines are coming into play a lot in my thoughts lately.  Not sure exactly why yet...but I'll roll with it.  Here, I for a moment, saw the body of a string instrument.  A song can strike a lot of chords in your mind and make you feel a lot of things.  It was just something I saw to help create the body for this feather maintain it's strength.   

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7" X 11"   

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