From inspiration to completion my process celebrates a quote by Camille Pissarro, one of the first Impressionists painters.

Blessed are those who see beauty in humble places.

I discovered this quote to be very true after our daughter died at twenty-four years from a lifelong fight with cystic fibrosis. Grief, after loss is a very humble place. So is the grief we experience when we know loss is coming to what or who we love. I see the seasons re-enacting the story of beauty in the grief journey. What or who we love thrives in summer. Where rain and sun kiss, everything is green. All is well. Then, ever so slightly the earth tilts away from the sun. What we love is not as it should be or as we hoped it would be. Green fades. , Reds, yellows, blues meld into a plethora of color, fade to brown. Etched against the cool white of winter, brown waits. When what we love is gone, promise slumbers. Spring will come.

I collect natural and manmade ephemera that are textured by disuse, brokenness or aging. Their character contributes to the composition either as subject, markings, or texture in paint and other medium. Broken bits of tree bark or a broken key add pattern on art pages or underpainting. The splendor of a sunset or the vastness of a mountain view may be the next painting. A singular humble place catches my eye. Perhaps it is a gnarled tree, or the anonymity of a farmer on his  tractor in the grandeur of green., or the innocence of a child silouetted against a beach at sunset.