2013 Calendar

This year's calendar features Owl, Tern and The Bear busy planting seeds on the shore of a rocky island.

Write to me if you'd like one. There is no cost.

Weary Souls

"A Weary Soul"
10-28-12 (finished 11-21-12)
mixed media, collage

Two solitary souls rest their tired feet at the base of a fir tree. They have been walking all day and now realize that they are on an island, surrounded by water …and they don't have a boat. The pillow-like moss softens the depressing realization that they are stranded. However, it's not too cold and all is calm. Sleep calls to the man and his four-legged companion. There is nothing to eat and they are too tired to even care. It will be a long night of sleeping and waiting and perhaps, all the catnaps (the dog's also) will amount to a good night's sleep.  Perhaps in their dreams a solution will present itself.

What Happened?

"Did anything happen? Did anything change?"
11-08-12

Post election wonderings. When Obama was first elected, there was great fanfare and euphoria among his supporters. There was fear too: would he be assassinated before January or be somehow cheated from assuming office? It was weird and scary. A tender time for all concerned.

This year's election was quite different. The change is slowly revealing itself in the post-election posturing of those who care to exercise power. But my feeling in the immediate aftermath was that very little seemed to have changed. So this doodle appears to be about this state of bemusement or befuddlement: what happened? Here we see Mrs. Owl and Mr. Tern joined by a stork shambling along kicking the Autumn leaves trying to take in the disparity between actual events and the current stalled situation. Did anything happen? Yes… but?

"Yes!" Mr Tern says! "Yes!"

detail

detail, Mrs. Owl

detail: stork and Mr. Tern

detail (frottage, watercolor)

Babes In The Woods

untitled painting, 11-05-12b
collage, mixed media

tree trunks and ducks are collaged

the scout…

detail of leaves

detail of tree trunks: collage, watercolor, ink, litho crayon & tusche

Often when I work in my sketchbook, a scene takes shape before any sort of narrative content is added. In this case, you can imagine, the forest was created first and the ducks were added last. I started out with these long rectangles of bond paper with ink blotted on them. Once glued down, I started adding the brown and other neutral tones that formed the indeterminate depths of the forested space. For a while, as the cheap sketchbook paper buckled, it was unclear whether the collage paper would be the tree trunks or the other way around. The buckled paper bulged out like 3-d trunk-like forms. I was tempted. I decided to go with my original idea and started drawing in the detail of the tree bark and the layers of vegetation and the leaf-littered ground plane. This set the atmosphere.  And then I knew why I had been drawing real ducks all summer!

One, two, three little white ducks, lost or adventurous carefully finding their way through the dangerous forest!
What will become of them? Will they meet other fowl or ferocious fanged foxes or aloof rabbits? Where are they going to?

I don't know. Do you??

Toussaint

I study the faces of Nature and look for my ancestors

As the leaves fall, birds' nests are revealed

Beckoning scratchy bowls 

11-1-2012
ink, watercolor, colored pencil, crayon