Doodle Art (In progress)

Doodle in progress.

A woman, the feminine, our warms and cools and all of the "in-betweens" that make us up. 

The Life in Her (Original Art)

"The Life in Her"

18" X 24" 

This was two separate pieces; Loose canvas mounted on canvas stretched over a board)
Acrylic

(Twitter)

Girl in Red (Original Art)

'Girl in Red'

Acrylic

12.25" X 12.25" X 1.5"

(2) 5" X 7"

(1) 4" X 12"

(1) 9" X 12"

Lady in the Wind (Original Art)

I drew out a couple of sketches at 3 am to capture the mood and the next day laid out an outline on an 16" X 20" X 1.5" canvas.

The completed piece is heavily layered and textured using acrylic paint.  Para-gliders soar, cumulonimbus clouds build, far off rain falls and wild ocean waves spray a rocking sailboat; All held by the mood of the Lady in the Wind.

 

'Lady in the Wind'

16" X 20" X 1.5"

Acrylic - Stretched canvas

"The Light in Her" (Original Art)

"The Light in Her"

18" X 21" 

Loose Canvas, Acrylic
(Unfinished)

Sunrise with the Wind Woman (Original Art)

Sunrise with the Wind Woman

12" X 16" X .75" 

Acrylic Paint/ Oil Pastels

"Wind Woman" (Original Fine Art - Dimensional)

"Wind Woman"

18” X 25” X 1.5”

Original Fine Art - Acrylic (Sealed to protect against fading/UV)

This original artwork is comprised of three 8" X 10" X 3/4" canvases mounted to a 18" X 24" X 3/4" canvas bringing the completed work to 18” X 25” X 1.5”.  
Available online here

Like this style?  Email me to request a personalized version. 

Me and the Wild thing

Usually it’s a statement, “You should sell your art!”

Sometimes it is a question, “Why don’t you sell your art?”

Questions of this nature bemuse and flatter.  I am puzzled because I know I am not particularly good.  I am charmed because perhaps they feel what I felt while painting.

I married the most intelligent, brilliant and handsome man.  We live a life of adventure, friendship and beauty.  Life, work, pets, dinner, dishes –most of these daily tasks bring me happiness and satisfaction.

Despite this incredible life... there is something restless inside me.  And I feel I understand people who fight to live happily while sharing space with something inside them.  When ‘this’ rises up inside, I must rise to greet it.  If I do not, if I decide to ignore or fight it, 'it' and it's rip tide of need will shred my sanity.  You see, inside of me, there is a wild thing. 

The last few weeks were on fast forward and I haven’t painted At All in over three weeks.  Not one sketch or doodle.  My hands began to hurt first; I started to clench and flex them in my sleep.  Next my eyes start to look hungry in the mirror.  Now I am half listening to people around me, half of me checked out in distraction. This growing, hyperventilating need to pull into myself; to sit alone in a grove of trees found only in my head -it is about to consume me.  This starved feeling had begun to torch all other feelings into ash –my nightly dreams become a frantic race to my imagined trees and as I nearly reach  them - the morning alarm again goes off.

Early this morning, still short on time, thinking about a lunch I haven’t packed, a phone call from a recruiter, my boss’s email, a class I need to take a look at, laundry in the dryer –Instead, for a moment, I went outside to watch Lone Peak disappear in the oncoming storm.  I watched the cloud cover expand, thick and wet, as it draped across the mountain and I listened to the softest smallest wind breathe….please…

Two hours later I took twenty minutes to lay a base of blues, purple, grey and greens on a stark white naked canvas.  I cannot tell you how it feels, I can try:  It is oxygen flooding into my hands, a feeling of water and wind in my lungs and my terrible torturing tension eases. 

You see, I am not a religious person and I am not fond of the idea there could be a guy in a beard hanging out in clouds, delivering bizarre rules.  However I do believe in the Wind Woman. I believe in the prophetic powers of sunflowers, dreams and instincts.  

Here is the complication about selling my art:  Each painting is a spell I cast using paint to reflect the light breaking in my soul; I cast out an imagined silver and gold net to draw in emotion, the moment, the point of view I am seeing. 

I have always hung them where I live so every time I walk in, I rest when I see them.  The wild thing relaxes.  Safety, beauty; the intangible threads of my life woven into these small bright windows.  It doesn’t matter to me if they are good or correctly scaled or controversial and strange.   They are me.  I painted them for the purpose of existing.  I painted them because it made me smile.  If they make someone else smile that is exciting!  Because they felt what I felt and I have successfully expressed my truth; We are all connected, no one is as alone as they think, wish or fear. 

How do I sell that?  What is the right price tag?

Just fly

All of us hide in ourselves. We hide in makeup or no makeup or in too many or too little clothes. We hide behind smiles, behind boasts, behind silence; we are all hiding.

Watery warm autumn sunlight kisses my cheek and jaw line. The Wind Woman plays lightly with my hair. She is whispering in my ear, her cool bare breath against my face, tickling me into a smile.

People are flying and I want to fly too. I came out here to watch, to be inspired, to talk to the Wind Woman, the Lady of Wild Hair and Random Tangents. Lately I am afraid of things I want and I wonder why. Is it a mortality fear? Fear of aging, am I overly sensitive to the fragility of my human body? I had pondered this two days ago too. I thought about the fear when I launched and flew but then completely forgot about it as I excitedly landed EXACTLY where I wanted.

‘AH HA!! TADDDAAAA!!!’ I shouted to myself, this included an imaginary high five to self too. Out loud I only quietly giggled to myself, mildly drunk on my happiness. I launched again, caught up in the surging glory of success. I continued to forget about fear as I flew back and forth awhile –until I unexpectedly bumped into it again on landing.

When I notice something about myself I notice it in others. Or imagine it in others. Either and/ or. Most of the time I think no one notices I am watching them; trying to understand how we are all so alike and yet so separated. Occasionally, I think my ‘observing’s’ are noticed by some and that some become suspicious and think me suspect of something. When I notice them noticing, I wish I could ask, “I see this in me, I think I see it in you. What conclusions have you arrived to?”

But people are hiding and dislike nothing more than being found out.

Back to today. The air is calmer than yesterday, rich in dense cool air, rising up like lazy champagne bubbles… My Wind Woman sighs her question softly ‘Would you like a glass?’

Yes, yes I would. Despite falling over the dog, then the cat and then my shoes and dropped coat; somehow I make it out to the park with my head attached. Carefully, systematically, I pull and lay out my wing and my things. I call my dearest to tell him where I am. I strap in, flight check twice and pull up.

It was perfect -until my glove caught in the brake handle, came off and I flopped the wing over trying to catch it, making myself laugh. Redo was effortless, launch was clean, and up up up I went. I made a very low bench, the kind that had me grinning all the way, wondering if I would land on the trail.

On the back ridge, looking at the romantic lonely Timpanogos and her snowy ridge outline, studying the fairy land that must be Lone Peak, I decided: Sometimes, maybe we are afraid of what we want most because it is what we want most. Nothing is as disappointing as hope unrealized; so the more we want and hope for something, the more we are guarded against it.

I told my Wind Woman my conclusion. In answer she shook out my fear like dust from an over trodden door way rug and told me ‘Just fly.