Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.

Claude Monet

Last week was a little crazier than usual. I have been getting ready for a show in Charlotte, and was planning on driving all of the paintings down over the weekend. As usual, I can't see the forest for the trees, and it dawned on me that I could just ship them and save a LOT of time. I sent 3 big boxes -- 20 paintings! I didn't want to spend a

fortune on postage so my max was going to be $35 per box to send. The first box was $12!! I think I used my brain wisely this time.

The opening is on April 13, and I can't wait to see all of these animal collages together on one wall. Here are some never before seen -- you heard it first -- that were made specifically for this show.

Spiritual Journey :Part 8, Final

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

Louis 'Amour

My two dreams have always been to have a family, and to Make Things. Having 2 busy busy boys left me exhausted but I realized the only way I could process my world and feel completely full was to paint and create every day. I still got sick once in a while but by now I knew what caused my flareups (stress/excitement and exhaustion) and worked hard to avoid getting sick. As my boys went off to preschool I treasured the time that I had to paint while they were gone. But I craved more. And I realized how important to my well-being this time was (is). Five years ago we moved to a bigger house with a huge yard (to run these boys every day) and at last I had a real and separate studio apart from the rest of the house where I could make a mess and leave a mess and have enough room to put it all. We have a walkup attic that is a perfect workspace for me. It was insulated with the new "green" white foam before we moved in that covers the ceiling -- it looks, fittingly, like creamy icing or whipped cream. We put some air conditioning ducts in and I moved in. I feel very very lucky to have the space and to be able to stay home with my children, and at this point help support the house a great deal financially. When I'm not up there I feel a very strong pull to be there. Luckily I am very disciplined and remind myself to live in the moment, try hard to ignore the pull. Ironically, ZouZou's Basement is in the attic.

Happiness

Spiritual Journey: Part 7

I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told.

Mark Twain

After giving birth to Raine, my disease had gone into relative remission and my doctor(s) advised me to get pregnant again pretty quickly; if I got sick again it might be a few years until I got my system straight again enough to carry another baby. So when Raine was 6 months old, we got pregnant again (we didn't think it would happen THAT quickly). Before we knew it, Rye was born and I was now a Mother Of Boys. Months later, after we talked about losing 2 and then having 2 healthy boys, added to my age and medical issues, we thought it best that we declared our family done. I had always wanted at least 4-5 children, but that was in my 20s and before I hadRye. HA. This realization came with more changes in my artwork.

Unconsciously, I began embracing my feminity fully, and began a series of Dress paintings called Dress Me Up. The first of these I sent to a magazine, and relatively easily, was published.

I had always surrounded myself with strong women -- I always appreciated having a lot of girlfriends --

and began to express these prized qualities in another Dress series, called You Wear It Well.

LOVING YOUNG HOUSE LOVE

Life is a condition alternating between excitation, destruction, and unbalance, and reorganization, equilibrium, and rest. In the course of life colors play their role. Each color has a special importance and all colors together help to guarantee normal life.

Kurt Goldstein

How can people keep current on their websites/Facebook/twitter/online shops/blogs? I'm a little embarrassed that last entry was a long time ago, but it's not like I've been sitting around "twiddling my thumbs". I know a few people who are able to keep up with all of their social media, but when do they have time to Make Things? I guess I choose to express myself more with the work.

In late December, my work appeared on an awesome blog that is written in Richmond (YoungHouseLove), and my etsy shop went crazy for a few weeks -- I had over 10,000 visitors in about 10 days!! Not quite that many sales, but I'm not complaining. At all.

In the fall, I had been making a bunch of whimsical animal collage/paintings that had been really popular. In a terrific rush of brain power I decided to make prints a few of them that had sold, and in turn, the prints have become extremely popular. One of the smartest things I've done -- I thought and I thought and I thought and I finally made the right decision...

Here are a few of them

Spiritual Journey: Part 6

(this is a continuation of a speech I was asked to give on my personal "spiritual journey" in 2010.)

Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beutiful life is in every way and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever

Isak Dinesen

Life moved on. The physical pain from the chronic illness continued, in different and lesser forms. The grief was slowly slowly mixed with hope as I continued to read and study the wisdom of Rabbi Kushner. Eventually, fairly quickly in the scheme of things, I was pregnant again. Thrilled, nervous, wary, excited -- it was a roller coaster of emotions. Finally, finally, my Raine was born, a wee bit early, on May 16 (if he had gone full term he would have been born on the day I lost the twins). Perfect in every way, except for the colic that made him cry for 16 hours a day. No time to paint. Lots of time to heal, and think. Eventually I began to find an hour here or thirty minutes there to paint. This time, my mind began to dwell on more domestic issues, and that's when the dessert paintings started. I have heard advice to writers, to write what they know about, and I suppose with painting it's no different. I was practically weaned on sugar! I had been baking fun desserts for friends and family for years, (I really really loved cupcakes way before they were cool), and had been taking and gathering photos for a while. Clearly in a happier place, I have had a lot of fun including the many dessert references on the paintings that are such a common part of our dialogue. Some of the paintings' names are: Sugar Rush, Save Room For Dessert;Cupcake Nation;

Eat Cake; Eat Me (a reference to Alice in Wonderland); Just Desserts; Hello, Cupcake; and Happy Ending, among others. I've done about 50 now, and I still love to paint a cake or pie. Here are a few of them:

Spiritual Journey: Part 5

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there is a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room, I shall be able to see.

--Helen Keller

(This is a continuation of a "spiritual journey" story I began earlier.)

This was a dark dark time. I felt like I had a black cloud over me and was being punished for something -- divorce, sickness, now death. When my husband and I had met, we shared a fascination with cemeteries (mine I think was inherited, as I remember a birthday of my grandmother and all she wanted to do was go to the cemetery and look for relatives). We both were photographers and loved the statuary, especially, visiting famous ones in Paris, London, and elsewhere, Vermont and lots of country roads we drove down. One of the most beautiful cemeteries I've ever seen is Richmond's own Hollywood Cemetery, where our first two boys are now buried. Ironically, on our wedding day we were a few minutes early to our wedding feast at a favorite restaurant. To pass the time until it opened, we, along with a lot of our wedding party, drove through nearby Hollywood.

Foreshadowing?

Eventually our cemetery fascinati

on passed somewhat, we ended up spending a lot of tearful time in Hollywood through the next few months and years, but I had kept a bunch of the photos I took there. I found them recently and they still evoke a mood of both sadness and peac

e for me. I manipulated them some with paper and paint in the way I am working today. Here are a few:

The singlemost important thing that happened during this time was that I stopped believing God had control of things. This changed the outlook that I had carried for 35 years or so, and in essence, involved giving up my security blanket, which rocked my world. But simultaneously, I was able to give up the guilt and

the feeling that I was being "punished" all this time. The book that changed my thinking, my "Bible", which I have read about seven times no

w, given to countlesspeople, and raved about for years, is When Bad Things Happen To Good People by Rabbi Harold Kushner. This was written way back in the 1960s or 1970s but still speaks so loudly to me. I have read some of his other books and this one is by far the best. I am currently reading Overcoming Life's Disappointments which gives great lessons on how to act and think when the chips are down.

So with this epiphany, I began a brighter outlook and to recover from the many losses. We had gotten so many beautiful flowers at the deaths of our twins, and I had taken photos of some of them. Thus began my flower series, which continues today. By comparing the pieces above with the pieces below, you can see that my outlook truly changed.

Spiritual Journey: Part 4

Don't go through life, grow through life.

Eric Butterworth

This is a continuation of the "spiritual journey" story I began several entries back.

Spiritual Journey: Part 4

As my illness got fairly under control, my clock was ticking. Since I was a little girl, I've known that I'm meant to be here to make things and to have a family. Although it seemed like we tried forever, it really wasn't so long: 8 months after starting, we were pregnant. We were delighted, ecstatic, worried, nervous...even more so when we found out it was twins. I wasn't surprised at all: my grandfather, who was born in 1902, was one of 9 children -- with 3 sets of twins! My mother and I had discussed at various times how it wouldn't be surprising for me to have twins. Carefully, very carefully, we progressed, until one day 5 months along, my water broke. With in the next 24 hours, we had lost them both. As I write this, it has been 8 years and 7 days. They were 2 boys, the last one we got to hold for a few minutes, perfectly formed, except on the inside. Needless to say, we, I was devastated. (On a side note, the night before I delivered, my father had had a disturbing dream in which he was walking down to the water holding the hand of each little boy. They began to run ahead and he told them to wait. They said to him, "you have to let us go", which began my fascination with the afterlife/spirituality/our proximity with another state of consciousness. Several other experiences occurred during my father's sickness, and preceded his death.)

Back to where this relates to this particular writing, soon my recovery

showed up in my artwork. Here are several examples of what I

painted during this time.